As Google wrestles with the way it compensates males and females amid a Labor Department investigation and a capability magnificence motion lawsuit alleging it has underpaid women, a New York Times file reveals the business enterprise has seemingly tipped the scales in the alternative manner and started underpaying low-degree male engineers. But in response to this information, industry observers point out that remedying the evident underrepresentation of girls and people of color in tech transcends pay by myself. The obstacles that prevent various people from advancing interior Google and other Silicon Valley giants are complicated and ingrained in the tradition of the tech and engineering world. In different phrases, it isn’t straightforward.
Further underscoring the demanding situation of addressing the diversity gap is the latest complaint leveled at the venerable TV information magazine 60 Minutes. The display drew hearth from Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani. At the same time, it aired “Cracking The Code,” a story about the undertaking of bringing more women into the generation area, yet did now not spotlight any lady-led efforts. In doing so, like Google’s current attempt to mitigate inequities through pay, the file oversimplified why the industry has struggled to transport the needle. After spending five years interviewing more than 300 woman engineers, entrepreneurs, teachers, university students, and assignment investors for Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech, the ebook I and co-writer Samantha Walravens published in 2017, I can say with conviction that there’s a whole lot greater to the story.
The broadcast focused on the “pipeline trouble” and encouraged extra girls to learn how to code and enter the sector. Yes, there is a dire want to get more youngsters from all backgrounds to increase twenty-first-century competencies to fill the roles of the next day. However, essential problems also need to be fixed in the groups powering the virtual financial system. As Saujani argues, real exchange calls for considerate action throughout the entire schooling continuum and tech ecosystem — from kindergarten classrooms through university and grad college lecture halls and into the personnel. Yet, the 60 tales left out the challenges of maintaining ladies and those of color and the reasons for what a few have termed the “leaky pipeline.” It glossed over how bias and sexism inside tech agencies are directly related to the absence of girls and numerous people in management and on corporate boards, the salary gap, the lack of project capital invested in startups based on women and people of color, the manner AP laptop science used to learn in high colleges until the College Board revamped it in recent years; the few girls in tech portrayed on TV and at the big display screen; and the absence of significant recruitment at HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and in cities out of doors America’s coastal tech hubs.
As a former community TV information correspondent, I am familiar with the editing procedure and how hard it is to boil down a complicated television tale into a brief piece. I admit I no longer recognize what became left at the “slicing room ground.” (As this post was posted, Ayah Bdeir, founder of Little Bits, discovered some details of how her interview failed to make it into the piece.) I requested a comment on Saujani’s issues, and CBS has not spoken back. A section on CBS News This Morning, the day after the 60 Minutes piece aired, took a far more thorough look at the issue by inspecting employee-led movements combatting gender discrimination that has bubbled up inside Google and different tech businesses in recent years.
But as I sat with my circle of relatives to watch Sunday night’s broadcast (consisting of my center school-aged daughter and son, who have each participated in Code.Org’s programs), I was struck by the lack of depth and the ignored opportunity to elevate the voices of the underrepresented people main the grassroots motion for cultural change and the effect they may be having. A deeper dive and airtime for activists like Saujani, Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls Code and CSforAll’s Ruthe Farmer and businesses consisting of NCWIT; BUILTBYGIRLS; GirlsMakeGames; Project Include; she++; the Girls Scouts; digital undivided; Backstage Capital; Pipeline Angels and endless others helmed using girls, and those of color may want to have introduced precious insights to this nuanced tale.
