Women in Tech: Change the Conversation

"Because women produce more cortisol -- a hormone that is secreted during times of stress -- Weidenmiller believes women are "biologically built" for the stressful tech industry."

Seriously, who would buy that argument? Plenty of industries can be considered stressful, but that doesn't mean that one sex is necessarily better suited to it than the other. 

>> less than 10% of the projects on crowdfunding site Kickstarter feature female-led teams, 65% percent of those projects reached their fundraising goals; just 30% of male-led ventures succeeded. Likewise, Indiegogo numbers show that women are 61% more likely than men to meet their financial goals on its site.

This could be understood in many ways - one among them is that women only take safe bets - so yes they're most likely to sucseed(but try less), while many take more risky bets - so they try more, but also fail more. And there's some research talking about gender differences in risk preferences support this point.

And this also explain why most venture capital(VC) funded business are male - the VC model is built around taking big "crazy" risks, because statistically that gives the best returns. So men , who in general start riskier businesses , more often get invested and probably at higher rates.

And technology in general is a VC based industry - and i'm sure similst notions guide investment decisions inside big businesses.

wow she seems very inspirational. But this tech industry hardly gives equal opportunity to women in leadership position. We are always victims of being fairer sex and not being taken seriously. US still is much better, India and Indians cannot tolerate women in leadership positions in tech industry. Work life balance is a big issue for women leaders in India.

Thats a very good point @sheetal. Is it possible to change those cultural narratives?

Every time I read pieces like this one, I wonder whether I work in a really unusual environment, or whether I'm simply oblivious. Women were certainly a small minority in our engineering graduating class (most women were in chem E, none graduated in our EE class, two graduated among the MEs), and a small minority among the engineers throughout my career. But the women there are, for the life of me, are as good or as not so good as the men. Same with the women in management positions.

I simply do not see this big dicotomy. I do see a lack of interest, among young women, for STEM careers. But the few that do make it to STEM jobs vary from quite good to not so good, just like the guys. I've certainly not noticed that the women are far better, because they had to be to get that far, or any of those other truisms one keeps hearing.

If there is any reason for guys to be "scared," it would be that more women than men are going through college these days. That's inexcusable. I feel ashamed for my gender, in that sense.

@Sheetal.Pandey: I have to take exception to your statement that "India and Indians cannot tolerate women in leadership positions in tech industry." This broad characterization is simply not true, I could cite you umpteen cases where there are women CEO's and in other leadership roles in India. I personally do not care what gender is in the leading role as long as that person is doing well, inspiring every one around her/him to do better, i.e., a value-adding leader.

Now, if you state that women aspiring for leadership in Indian tech companies face higher resistance in their path in comparison to their male counterparts, I wholeheartedly agree with you! That is where a lot more needs to be done to create a fair and gender-neutral environment to nurture future leaders.

MP Divakar

There are other areas in which men are over-represented:

http://healthresearchreport.me/2014/12/11/study-supports-the-theory-that-men-are-idiots/

I'm not sure that anyone wants to rectify the gender imbalance there, though. :-)*

Girls don't geek because they don't want to.  I think part of it has to do with the image of engineering and programming in the US. No red blooded American teenage girl wants to spend her four years of college with a bunch of geeks. They all go into medicine to be with the hunky doctors. If you want to find women in the sciences  look along the pre-med path in biology and chemistry. And because these diciplines play a role in a lot of instrumentation, there have been lots of women around in position of authority in the companies I've worked for. They just don't do the geek work.

@Wnderer - I think girls prefer biology and medicine mostly because they view the field as something that directly helps people(i.e. wanting to cure cancer), where men care much less about that , and more about curiosity ,building cool things, etc.

Whatever the reasons are, I think you'll find, for instance, that veterinary medicine is WAY over-represented by women these days. Numbers like 75-80 percent of vet school classes are women.

Okay, so is there any large scale soul searching going on about that? My daughter and son-in-law are both vet specialists, so you'd think I might have some inkling if people were concerned. Yet I'm unaware of any angst on this score.

Wnderer generalized: Girls don't geek because they don't want to.

As they say, "The 19th Century just called and it wants its generalization back".

My personal experience with most of the women I've met in engineering and computer science (as a student, as a professor, and as a practicing engineer) is that they bloody well did want to be there and that they enjoyed the intellectual challenge every bit as much as the best males.  If I were to be forced to generalize I would say that they typically wanted to be there more than males.  I'd attibute this to the large percentage of males who are encouraged to go into STEM even if they don't want to, versus the large percentage of females who are discouraged from STEM even if they they do want to.  So the females who do jump the hurdles are there because they really wanted to be.

JMO/YMMV

@betajet:

I agree, most women in the field HAVE to want to be there or they wouldn't have overcome the hurdles put in their path.

I include myself in that, by the way. When I was in college, I was frequently the only woman in my upper division engineering classes. I also got well above average grades in those classes. Since then, I've often found myself as the only woman engineer in a group. Where I work now, I'm starting to see more women engineers.

So, yes, I'm there because I want to be.

I found this piece to be a refreshing take on the situation.

@betajet -- So the females who do jump the hurdles are there because they really wanted to be.  

What hurdles? The females who go into engineering want to be there, the ones that don't, don't.  The concept that programming and engineering are somehow more sexist than other sciences is BS. You'd need to have girls pursuing engineering and either changing majors in college or changing careers after graduating for that to be true. Freshman year there are girls in the same physics, math and chemistry classes as the boys who become engineers and then the girls pursue different majors from the boys.  I've said nothing about women not being capable of being engineers.  The women who are capable of being engineers don't choose to be engineers. Women go into the sciences. They go into medicine. You are insulting engineers, engineering professors and engineering schools saying they're actively trying to keep women out of engineering and it's not true.  Quite the opposite. There have programs for the last thirty years trying to get more women into engineering and they haven't worked.

The undending discussions about women in technology are now starting to get boring. Like Bert said, even I wonder, is our industry really that chauvinistic? Every engineer (or for that matter, every professional) faces hurdles in their lives on account of being unique in one way or the other. For example, in a diverse country like India where different regions have hugely different language and culture, it is no uncommon that people speaking language X find themselves in an office where most people speak language A or B. That kind of a situation brings its own hurdles. Engineers may also find themselves 'sticking out' of the pack in terms of their race or colour. So what do we do? Whine? Complain? Keep saying how we, the minority are so great and can beat every else hollow? Keep finding conspiracy theories? Or do we just dig in our heels and let our work do the talking?

My experience of working with women engineers is that - some are outstanding, some are average, some are just no good - in short, just like you expect any engineer to be. Which, I think, is perfectly fine.

IMHO, if women are interested in technology, they should just go ahead and do it. Companies are nowadays devising special programmes to fast track the career growth of their women executives. And right from school, I never heard any of my women classmates complaining that their families won't allow them to do engineering. 

I really don't know how much more encouragement is needed.

BTW, most girls tend to be very good in the languages, and boys are rather poor at that. Any disaster management being planned there?

@wnderer  I think one of the issues here is a cultural divide between what girls are interested in, and what they're told they should be interested in. Colleges can have programs for women (though I imagine few people would tell you there are "enough" programs), but encouraging girls, teens, women to get invovled in the field is another story. Weidenmiller believes much of the negative talk around women in tech is further deterring those potential engineers.

@wnderer  I think one of the issues here is a cultural divide between what girls are interested in, and what they're told they should be interested in. Colleges can have programs for women (though I imagine few people would tell you there are "enough" programs), but encouraging girls, teens, women to get invovled in the field is another story. Weidenmiller believes much of the negative talk around women in tech is further deterring those potential engineers.

@scud I never heard any of my women classmates complaining that their families won't allow them to do engineering.

Back in the '80's I mentored a very bright young college intern.  She took some time off to visit relatives in South Korea.  When she returned she told me how the relatives asked her mother "Why do you let Wendy study engineering?  That is a man's job."

She is now a university professor.

A fundamental key in socially adapting to the differences in focus, as they have always existed in the interrelationships between men and women, involves understanding them as arising from a process of complementarity... and that it applies to how one approaches their studies ( or should apply to how they conduct their teaching ) in the fields of engineering, as well as anything else. 

Stating the basic issue as simply as possible:

Women are great at figuring out the ways to do something and get it done...

... while men are good at figuring out all sorts of ways and reasons to get out of doing it.


See how that works?

re: "No red blooded American teenage girl wants to spend her four years of college with a bunch of geeks"

My teenage daughter would take exception to that statement, as would I. She revels in her geekiness and has made geekiness cool amongst her circle of friends. She's proud of it and doesn't listen to anyone who puts her down for it.

For anyone who thinks women have no place in engineering, may I point out a little known fact, that -- not content with just singing and acting -- Ms Britney Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics. If you visit this website, she will guide you in the fundamentals of the vital semiconductor laser components that have made it possible to hear her super music in a digital format.

@Duane: No red blooded American teenage girl wants to spend her four years of college with a bunch of geeks

I know you were quoting someone else -- I take no position on this one way or the other -- all I know is that as a red-blooded English boy, I would have been more than happy to spend my four years of college with a bunch of teenage girls -- Instead I got landed with a bunch of geeks (actually, I was the king of the geeks :-)

Maybe my statements were hyperbole, but I stand by them. I believe the image of engineering in the media is chasing away girls and also boys, who don't want to be seen as geeks, away from engineering. That's why so many engineers are foreigners from other cultures that have a different view of who engineers are.

Any discussion of female engineers, especially from India, would be incomplete without a mention of Jayshree Ullal. A most impressive lady, (and nice, to boot).

http://www.arista.com/en/company/management-team

Women are rare in physics, too. In conversation with another student in an acting class, she mentioned that she had a Masters in physics. When I commented on the rarity, she said it had one great advantage; there was never a shortage of washroom space in the breaks between classes.

Wnderer wrote: I believe the image of engineering in the media is chasing away girls and also boys, who don't want to be seen as geeks, away from engineering.

IMO what's driving USA students away from engineering is outsourcing , H1-B visas , age discrimination , underemployment , and everything they read in Dilbert -- over half of which, alas, is true.   They quite simply see a bleak future in engineering.  While you hear a lot about how important STEM is, the real message to USA students is quite clear: Wall Street is where the money is.

JMO/YMMV

@Max

And Oliva Newton John is the granddaughter of physicist Max Born. 

@seaEE: Oliva Newton John is the granddaughter of physicist Max Born .

Well! Strike me with a kipper! You could have knocked me over with a fishwife!

Bonnie Baker is an EE who works for TI and formerly worked for Microchip. I have never met her and have no connection with her, apart from being very grateful for the articles that she writes about Analog to Digital converters and related topics. She has deep subject knowledge and a gift for communicating concepts in a way that is easy to grasp. Anyone who has needed this type of information and has discovered her articles and books cannot help but share my admiration of her work. Her contributions to the field have probably influenced more people's assumptions about women than all of the "Women in Tech" articles put together.

Max said Well! Strike me with a kipper! You could have knocked me over with a fishwife!

I agree it is somewhat astonishing, but looking back on her career, perhaps one should be slightly less surprised.  When she sang hit songs like, Let's Be Physicists, Physicists!  Or when she sang songs like Hopelessly Devoted to Mu, I think it is apparent now that Olivia's physicist roots and scientific bent were showing.

@Bob Snyder

I recall a Burr Brown seminar I went to given by Bonnie Baker.  I still have my Burr Brown Applications Seminar Fall 1994 book.  The chapter entitled Isolating Signals and Power Supplies lists Bonnie as the contributing author.

Britney, on the other hand, had hits with

• Baby one monostable time
• I'm a slave flip-flop
• Do somethin' (about the first time she tried to get a LED to flash)
• Work Bitch (more about the LED...)
• Someday I will understand (ditto)
• 3 (when she discovered how many legs a transistor has)
• Radar (when she had progressed a bit)
• Overprotected (when she put too-low-voltage Zeners on her power lines

And in answer to your next question, no, I am NOT a big Britney fan, I had to look these up :-)

@seaEE: ...Let's Be Physicists, Physicists!  Or when she sang songs like Hopelessly Devoted to Mu ...

We won't see songs like these again (said Max whilst humming "A place where nobody dared to go, The love that we came to know, They call it Xanadu..." )

@David: Britney, on the other hand, had hits with Baby one monostable time ...

I remember a brilliant advert on TV when that one first came out -- some famous American politician was sitting in a chair watching the video of her singing it on his TV ... and at the end the dog by his side want "Woof" and he said "Down Boy" (one day when I'm older I hope to learn what he meant LOL)

re: "the media is chasing away girls and also boys, who don't want to be seen as geeks, away from engineering"

I think this expresses the biggest part of the problem. It's not just the media though. Societal attitudes alone (which helps drive the media, which helps drive societal attitudes...) contribute a great deal to the problem.

I find it interesting and a bit refreshing that the term "geek" has developed a bit of positive cachet in the last few years. The remaining problem, however, is that it seems that many of the people who would self-identify as a geek, in order to be "cool", will still deride math and technology knowledge.

@Duane... Anyone who, like your daughter, is independent-minded enough to ignore peer pressure (which was bad enough in my school days and is now, by all accounts, much worse) should be able to do anything they want to.  I was like that at school but it did cause me a bit of inward heartache.  I'm not sure how much of this is nurture and how much is nature, but kudos to you for whatever nurturing contribution you have made!

If true, why do other industries like financial one performing convenient borrowing vehicle not have the same problem... It's all the subtle things that add up in how people perceive women in particular and any underrepresented group in general. Everyone needs to start with themselves and really think hard about the assumptions each one of us makes. I guarantee you that the nicest people in the world who would swear they would never discriminate still sometimes make unconscious incorrect assumptions due to gender.

While ignorant bigoted men are an occupational hazard, women producing positive business results will melt through a lot of bias in most bottom line oriented companies. As women already outnumber men in college, considerable talent is becoming available to help move out of the dark ages of gender bias and into a more positive 21st century meritocracy. Every woman who blazes the trail into new fields helps pave the way for those behind her. Go for it!

It is really sad that something like that is happening!