The technology sector is burgeoning, so if women really want to be at the seat of power in the future, it’s a space they need to break into.
We assembled a panel of leading women in tech to take part in a live Q&A to discuss what we need to do to increase female representation in the sector. Here’s a roundup of some of the best advice they shared.
Twitter is to train prosecutors in England and Wales to better fight online abuse, as the internet is increasingly used as a weapon by perpetrators of domestic abuse, rape and sexual violence against women.
To examine how digital fluency impacts equality, Accenture surveyed nearly 5,000 men and women, assigning them scores based on variables like how, and how often, they used the internet and other online collaboration tools.
Men scored better than women in three-quarters of the countries studied. Women in the US were the most digitally fluent overall, but they still scored lower than their male counterparts. And the country didn’t even rank among the top 10 in terms of the smallest digital-fluency gap between the genders.
Excellent read from Nilofer Merchant.
So, basically, if you followed this limited logic… you’d hear that if you’re a woman, black, foreign, or old, you need not apply; you will not be seen. No matter how good your idea could be. No matter how many lives it could save, or new solutions you create, or how much revenue it could generate.
(via https://soundcloud.com/overtheairevents/ota15-interview-with-women-in-technology-at-the-bbc?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=tumblr)
Source: SoundCloud / Over the Air Events
One day left to apply!
I’m taking this class right now called Technologies of Feminism, and we spend a lot of time talking about whether or not software can be biased. It’s hard to explore in a print story. This is where my mind is right now. I’m thinking about how Facebook and Google are trying to get the rest of the world into their version of the internet. When you sign up somewhere in the developed world, do you sign up for Facebook’s version of the internet? Are you automatically ascribed to their version of data collection and privacy policies? Are we creating digital imperialism? Is this the new imperialism? I don’t know. These are the things I’m trying to understand.
A huge majority of women (80%) want creative, independent job roles. Only 30% of them believe tech jobs can provide this. When a study asked boys to think of words they associated with computers, they came up with “design”, “games” and “video”. The girls? “Typing”, “maths” and “boredom”.
