Four Hurdles Organizations Face With Women In Tech And What To Do
By: Joan Michelson
Tags: STEM, Women in STEM, Women In Tech, Anita Borg

Businesswoman discussing computer program with female colleague at desk in creative office, Getty

The biggest hurdle for women in tech “is the same underpinnings of many of the other challenges we face in our society: fear and power, Brenda Darden Wilkerson told me on my podcast recently. She’s in the thick of it as CEO of the AnitaB.org Institute for Women in Technology, the world’s largest organization for women in technology and the founder of the renowned Grace Hopper Conference. “Computer science was…created by the women…to do the things these women were doing. And that was thought to be clerical, until all of a sudden the power of it was recognized by the men and that’s when that power shift occurred.”

As Wilkerson talked about the book called When Computers Were Human, I thought about Katherine Johnson and her female colleagues at NASA who were the subject of the best-selling book, Hidden Figures, by Margot Lee Shetterly, which became a ground-breaking movie.

Brenda Darden Wilkerson, CEO of the AnitaB.org Institute for Women in Technology All Rights Reserved.Chuckstr Photography 2013

Wilkerson said the power of what we can do with technology is what attracted men to it and what keeps men trying to control it. “There is, let’s face it, there’s a lot of power in the creation of technology. The technologies we use every day to run our businesses, to do, the work….Technology is literally our tether to the outside world. There’s a lot of power in being able to create and do that sort of thing. I think there’s a fear in giving up that power.”

In essence, the people who control the technology, have the power, Wilkerson believes, because technology “impacts everything about our lives.”

The challenges that fear and power have bred, Wilkerson explained, are the things we can do something about, though.

That fear and power caused a number of dynamics that employers and women technologists wrestle with to this day. One of them is “the narrative around who can and who should” be doing technology, “this ridiculous notion around merit,” about what makes a qualified technologist, Wilkerson told me. For example, we only look at people with computer science degrees or certifications, whereas technology can be self-taught. “I think we ask the wrong questions.”

Four challenges for organizations that want more women in technology and how to address them:

1. The alleged pipeline problem: “A lot of times you’ll hear ‘it’s a pipeline problem,’ as though…the only way in is this long, sequential way, from like Alaska to the Midwest, and if you don’t get on in Alaska, you won’t get to the Midwest, and it’s not true,” Wilkerson explained. “It’s about who is defined to be the one who should be at the table, and when we change that, we’re going to change who is at the table,” Wilkerson explained. She suggests we consider women beyond those with computer science degrees and include women doing various tech roles regardless of their education or training.

NEW YORK, NY — APRIL 27: Megan Smith CTO of United States visits AOL HQ in New York(Photo by Adela Loconte/Getty Images)

2. Women in the lower rungs of tech: Elevate women to tech leadership roles to get more innovation, more new thinking. She is an example of this. She was an educator in Chicago who had never served as a CEO until this role with the AnitaB.org Institute. Obama’s Chief Technology Officer, Megan Smith, who had worked with Wilkerson on the administration’s “Computer Science For All” initiative, suggested Wilkerson to the recruiter for the job.

“Think of it this way: We’re what’s missing. We’re over half the population, the table where tech is created has maybe a quarter women, most of them pushed around the lower rungs, not in leadership. That means that our ideas and our strengths are not at its fullest because we’re not well-represented throughout.”

(Photo by Salvatore Laporta/KONTROLAB/LightRocket via Getty Images)

3. Recruiting women in tech: It’s about the process and the culture, and employers need to be held accountable for living up to the values they espouse about diversity, equity and inclusion. Wilkerson suggests organizations look within for talented women to put in tech roles. “Have you thought about women who are IN your organizations, maybe they’re in marketing or finance, and they want to come over to do tech? They’re valuable. They’ve got time with you, they know your products, they have loyalty, they can learn the tech.”

Wilkerson insists that there are companies doing this well, and the organizations that are struggling with it should ask the people doing it well how they are making it work. “They’ll follow each other before they’ll read the data.”

4. Why women leave technology jobs (and sometimes careers): “Pay inequity is one of the reasons that historically women in tech have left tech at twice the rate of men, besides harassment, besides that they don’t get promoted in the ways that they should,” Wilkerson told me. She added that women also need schedule flexibility, family leave, and “those things that support the needs of the whole person,” all of which are being highlighted by the coronavirus pandemic and the added demands on women with family care responsibilities.

Washington DC, National Academy of Science, Boardroom (Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The biggest hurdle, as in most issues that require change, is defaulting consciously or unconsciously to the way things have always been done, and to the same systems.

One line Wilkerson said seems to sum up how organizations that seriously want to address these challenges can have more women on their tech teams: “It’s about thinking about these things differently.”

“So, it’s about what do organizations value that adds to innovation,” Wilkerson continued. “And it’s those differences and the empathy of experiences of that having had to figure out that second, or third or fourth way, is really what’s going to bring that innovation to the table….We need people who would say, wait, wait, what about…..?”