Why this big gap for women in the workplace should get much more attention

Jena McGregor | The Washington Post | 29 September 2016

“By now the statistics are well-known, if still unsettling: Women make up less than five percent of the CEOs at the biggest corporations. Just under 20 percent of directors at S&P 500 companies are female. Only 18 percent of computer science degrees are awarded to women, and under 30 percent of the science and engineering workforce is female.

To try and improve those consistently low numbers, high-profile initiatives have been taking aim at them, from the Rockfeller Foundation’s initiative to get 100 female CEOs in the Fortune 500 to Melinda Gates’ newly announced decision to dedicate more resources to getting women into tech.

Yet while attention has been showered on these important, widely covered problems — the lack of women in leadership positions, and the rarity of women in STEM fields — there’s another pipeline problem that doesn’t get nearly as much time in the spotlight. And while it’s persistent and pervasive, it stands to be fixed much more easily than the others.”

Read more here.

 

Study: Racial Wage Gaps Larger Today Than in 1979

Stephen Miller | Society for Human Resource Management | 28 September 2018

“The pay disparity between white and black workers was larger in 2015 than it was in 1979, according to new research. The increasing racial wage gap has been especially detrimental to black employees’ economic well-being during the period of weak wage growth over the past decade, in the wake of the Great Recession.

Researchers from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., compared black and white workers’ average hourly wages, adjusting for education, experience and region of residence. After taking these factors into account, they still found a sizeable wage gap between black and white workers.”

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What the Gender Gap in Tech Could Cost Us

Brad Gossman | The Wall Street Journal | 27 September 2016

“As artificial intelligence gets embedded into day-to-day activities — predicting what we need from virtual assistants, teachers, even doctors — is the technology neutrally scrubbing out gender biases, or encoding them permanently on our future?

The companies developing AI, like most of Silicon Valley, have a predominantly male workforce of engineers and developers. As Melinda Gates noted during this year’s Code Conference, “When I graduated 34% of undergraduates in computer science were women… we’re now down to 17%.”

There is real risk that such gender imbalance is invisibly shaping machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence applications. If programs are coded by men, inevitably with themselves in mind as the end user, will that exacerbate gender inequity? If algorithms learn from users, but the users are mostly men, what are the machines learning?”

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Computer Science Center Stage at UN General Assembly Thanks to One Entrepreneur’s Vision to Bring Coding to Classrooms

Silvia Davi | Equities.com | 27 September 2016

“Having attended last week’s UN General Assembly, this weekend, I reflected upon the leaders making great strides in our country and across the globe. One leader I was fascinated with was Hadi Partovi, CEO and Founder of Code, CODE.org, a non-profit organization operating like a fast-growing tech start-up with the mission of teaching every student in America how to code.

Computer Science is very different today than the computer application classes we took as kids. Most children in America today have access to smart phones, and are being raised amidst a digital revolution. Today’s kids don’t need to be taught how to use a keyboard, how to access Google or download an app. However, not every school in our country is consistently taking Computer Science to the next level. Code is focused on solving the problem at the elementary level with a new way of teaching Computer Science.”

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Girls who code: How images can help shatter tech’s gender stereotypes

Michelle Ranken | Crosscut.com |27 September 2016

“Sex sells, or so the saying goes. So it should come as no surprise that in 2007, the top-selling image for the search term “woman” at Getty images featured an attractive woman lying naked and wrapped up in sheets, staring rather longingly into the camera.

 

Over the years, however, the picture has changed, according to Pam Grossman, director of visual trends at Getty, a national stock photo agency based in downtown Seattle. In 2013, Getty noticed that top-selling images depicting females were evolving into photos of girls and women in powerful, leadership roles. People in the business call the phenomenon “Female Rising.”

 

And get this: 2016 marks the first time in the past five years in which Getty’s top-selling image for the search term “scientist” is of a woman. In fact, Getty reported that in the last year, the search term “woman + STEM” went up by a whopping 526 percent. (“STEM” is short for science, technology, engineering and math.)”

Read more here.

 

Feds accuse Silicon Valley firm of hiring bias

Brandon Bailey | The Washington Times | September 26 2016

“SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a lawsuit accusing a fast-growing Silicon Valley software company of systematically discriminating against Asian job applicants.

Palantir Technologies was co-founded by prominent tech financier Peter Thiel, with backing from an investment arm of the CIA, and was recently valued at $20 billion. The privately held company makes powerful data-analytics software used by U.S. military, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, along with banks, insurance companies and other non-government clients.

The unusual lawsuit – which comes as Silicon Valley is grappling with broader criticism for a lack of diversity – claims Palantir “routinely eliminated” Asian job candidates during the resume-screening and telephone-interview stages of the company’s hiring process. The claims are based on a statistical analysis conducted by federal officials responsible for making sure government contractors comply with anti-discrimination rules.”

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$100 Million Fund to Tackle Tech’s Diversity Problem

Jen Kinney | Next City | 12 September 2016

“Over the next five years, a new fund will aim to award $100 million in coding scholarships to groups underrepresented in the tech sector, including women and racial minorities, according to a press release. The Tech Opportunity Fund, launched by code school The Iron Yard in collaboration with Code Fellows and Operation HOPE, will make scholarships available in 24 U.S. cities, including Indianapolis, Nashville, Raleigh, Tampa and Detroit.

The Iron Yard has committed $40 million in full-tuition scholarships to its own coding programs, and Code Fellows has committed $5 million in full-tuition scholarships to its schools. The fund hopes to meet its $100 million goal through as-yet-unannounced commitments by additional educational, civic and employer partners.

The Tech Opportunity Fund will also attempt to remove other barriers that could keep a qualified student from attending code school — like a need for affordable housing, counseling or transportation — through partnerships with city agencies and civic organizations.”

Read more here.

 

Microsoft Wants Autistic Coders. Can It Find Them And Keep Them?

Vauhini Vara | Fast Company | 6 September 2016

“Normally, when someone applies for a job at Microsoft and gets through the early stages of consideration—the resume screening, the phone interview, maybe a homework assignment to assess their skills—they’re brought on campus for a day of intense back-to-back interviews with managers, where they’re quizzed about their experience and, if they’re applying for a technical position, asked to work out problems on the fly. But Microsoft had brought Adickman and 16 others to join the third cohort in a year-old program crafted especially for autistic applicants.

 

The program, which began in May 2015, does away with the typical interview approach, instead inviting candidates to hang out on campus for two weeks and work on projects while being observed and casually meeting managers who might be interested in hiring them. Only at the end of this stage do more formal interviews take place.”

Read more here.