Growing our community as Girls in Tech

Preaching to be given an opportunity in the Tech space as a girl child is fast becoming a commonplace in our modern society but the onus falls on us to accept these opportunity when they present themselves to us.

The tech space has been revered and deemed a man’s world and has been seen as no fit for women since its inception. The ratio of girls to boys offering STEM courses keep dwindling because girls don’t believe they have the mental capacity or IQ to sustain themselves or perform as well as their male counterparts on an average tech job. Technology is woven into everything. You can’t talk about anything these days without technology as one of the ingredients and unfortunately we hear tech and scream coding since technically most girls see it as the only role in tech. Often women don’t understand what other options are available — and since no one talks about the 100 other opportunities that cut across the tech field that stops them from venturing into this aspect of work. It is a no brainer that a few of us are not ready to put in the work because we inherently have come to rely on the fact that we could never get accepted.

The big question is after we earn our space in tech what next? Girl’s are not as open to accepting to study or work technical roles because of the ideas that might have been ingrained in their minds concerning technology. In Africa for instance, a woman’s place is no where near the man as women are the lesser gender suited for more trivial things. Unfortunately even after years of preaching tech, girl’s are not willing to leave their comfort zone and the few that might are discouraged.

Of the multiple multiple reasons why there’s a rather small community of women in tech, it boils down to a quantity problem. We simply do not have enough women choosing tech careers.

To strike a balance in relating to the circumstances of the issue, we must go beyond the pretexts of the occupational conditions the female gender face throughout their lifetime. Harvey Mudd’s President, Maria Klawe compiled her own research and offered a more substantive explanation, “We’ve done lots of research on why young women don’t choose tech careers and number one is they think it’s not interesting. Number two, they think they wouldn’t be good at it. Number three, they think they will be working with a number of people that they just wouldn’t feel comfortable or happy working alongside.” In my own opinion, there is also the fact that there a number of girls who are interested in STEM don’t pursue technology-related degrees because of negative stereotypes, lack of role models, discouragement, low self-confidence and fear of competing in a male-dominated industry. Where’s the lie in this? The constant need for girls to seek validation in their work space push them out of the bounds of tech.

Here’s where the work lies

It’s not enough. that we encourage more women into technology related jobs; it’s that we need to show all women as Intel’s CIO Kim Stevenson “the impact a technical background can have on a woman’s career, and the economic potential that accompanies it.” Deborah Vazquez, CEO of IT Staffing Firm PROTECH, believes that it’s important in any career to have a plan and to leverage your skills to attain that goal. Going beyond the pinkification of girls at the early stage to the introduction of ideas that may create an avenue to skill up later on in life presents a plan to be a part of technology for girls.

Cora Carmody, the CIO of Jacobs Engineering, and who founded and runs Technology Goddesses, believes a critical factor in nurturing women into a technical career path involves pairing up school-aged girls with female mentors that are two years older than them. Because, as she explained it to me: “Girls are more likely to emulate older girls that are two grades ahead of them, not middle aged.” To secure a growing community of girls in tech the mentoring should be as much work for the mentee as for the mentor.

What you don’t have to do as a girl in tech

• You don’t have to like Star Wars
• You don’t have to be the smartest
• You don’t have to look nerdy- wear glasses or hoodies
• You don’t have to prove you belong
• You don’t have to seek validation from anyone — you give your best as much as you can

Wrapping it all up

If you believe as I do that the lingua franca of the future is a fluency in technology, then there are many things we need to do to keep the top of the funnel full of girls as much as boys pursuing technical careers. Because in a world where technology increasingly permeates everything we do, in nearly every profession — there is nothing more important than having both men and women pursue technology careers to ensure our competitiveness.

To debunk this idea; women are not less capable intellectually than men of pursuing science and math-based degrees but they have been resigned to think the field might not work for them in the long run. The real-world consequence for the future of society and technology will likely be represented in the decline of the girl child in tech. Women make up half the world, so it’s only logical they make up half the workforce. Infact according to Mondo, “Nearly 62 percent of our executive and management-level teams at Mondo are made up of women, and we have experienced the far-reaching benefits, like enhanced problem-solving and increased innovation, that prioritizing gender diversity in your workforce provides.” So here’s another moment where we can say this without gloating “What a man can do a woman can do better”