Take a look at some of the top tech companies in the world and you can see a substantial lack of women founders. Glance through a toy store and you can see that construction and computer games are geared towards boys while girls are encouraged to play with dolls. Or even ask someone to describe a tech entrepreneur. Reshma Saujani, Debbie Sterling and Julie Ann Horvath bet the average person pictures a Mark Zuckerberg-type sporting a hoodie, but most importantly, they bet the average person imagines a man.
Moira Forbes moderated a panel with Saujani, Sterling and Horvath at the Forbes Under 30 Summit today to discuss the tech community’s male biases and how to make tech hubs gender neutral. Forbes said that while the conversations about getting more women into STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) roles were increasing, it was out of bleak news -- the number of women selecting computer science as a major is close to 20%, a sharp decline from when it was 40% in the 1980s.
The all-star panel was made up of some of the strongest advocates for women. Saujani is the CEO and founder of Girls Who Code, a company that aims to give young women computing tools to pursue careers; Sterling is the CEO and founder of GoldieBlox, which has created toys to inspire future female engineers; Horvath is a designer and frontend developer at &yet. Each agreed that that changing the way people look at tech entrepreneurs is key to getting more women in the industry.
“Its making space for women,” said Horvath. “Reshma and Debbie are creating the idea that women belong in engineering with that generation being raised and being taught that right now, its going to be easier for women like me to exist.”
Saujani agreed that with a perception that a computer scientist is male, women are less inclined to go into that field.
“Many times girls don’t know what a computer scientist is," Saujani said. "And when they think about what they do think it is, its a white guy in a basement, again with his hoodie, and that’s not fun."
Sterling remembers graduating Stanford with some of the founders of the tech companies that have changed the world, and seeing very few women involved. When questioning why that is, she was struck by a conversation with a coworker who confessed that she stole her brother’s toys as a young child. Sterling believes the lack of women in the STEM section derives from the toys girls are encouraged to play with at a young age.
“For girls its about how you look and for boys its about how you think,” Sterling said when recalling a trip to the toy store to see the items designated for boys and girls. “I felt there was an opportunity to give girls more options.”
The panel of women hoped that changing the image of a tech entrepreneur, it would inspire a new generation of female leaders in the industry.
“Its showing girls that tech is cool whether you’re a cheerleader or a geek, this is for you,” Saujani said, when talking about the Girls Who Code working on a CoverGirl campaign. “Its so important to meet girls where they are at and to really change the face of what we think it means to be in technology.”
