computer scientist Anita Borg challenged the tech community to a moonshot: equal representation of women in tech by 2020. Twenty-five years later, we’re still far from that goal. In 2018, fewer than 30% of the employees in tech’s biggest companies and 20% of faculty in university computer science departments were women.
On Women’s Equality Day in 2020, it’s appropriate to revisit Borg’s moonshot challenge. Today, awareness of the gender diversity problem in tech has increased, and professional development programs have improved women’s skills and opportunities. But special programs and “fixing women” by improving their skills have not been enough. By and large, the tech field doesn’t need to fix women, it needs to fix itself.
As former head of a national supercomputer centre and a data scientist, I know that cultural change is hard but not impossible. It requires organisations to jobs with a computer science degree and promote material, not symbolic, change. It requires sustained effort and shifts of power to include more diverse players. Intentional strategies to promote openness, ensure equity, diversify leadership and measure success can work. I’ve seen it happen.
I loved math as a kid. I loved finding elegant solutions to abstract problems. I loved learning that Mobius strips have only one side and that there is more than one size of infinity. I was a math major in college and eventually found a home in computer science in graduate school.
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