That Time When Women Stopped Coding

What occurred during the same time as the beginning of the decline of women in computer science? 1984: The share of women in computer science started falling at roughly the same moment when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers.These machines were marketed almost entirely to men and boys.

Why does it matter that males had been playing on computers growing up? One gets good at what they practice, and if females aren’t given the opportuinity to practice working with a computer, they wouldn’t have a mechanism to get good at that skill. Famously in the book outliers, Bill Gates is cited as an edge case because he had access to a computer at a university while he was in grade school.

Review the data: Employee breakdown of key technology companies

The majority of worker within these companies are male, and the majority of those men are caucasian.

Ask the question: Why diversity matters to your tech company

When are diversity efforts most successful? Diversity efforts are most successful when they’re driven by a commitment from company leaders. And meaningful commitment requires leaders to understand why diversity matters.

Why do diverse companies perform better? Diverse groups of people bring to organizations more and different ways of seeing a problem and, thus, faster/better ways of solving it.

Give an example of how a diverse company can serve a diverse user base or vise-versa. Diversity is more than just the color of people’s skin or their gender. It’s about the many ways there are to be a human being. Different types of experience; culture, language, socio-economic background, etc. all contribute to a particular person’s worldview. This means that having different types of people looking =at the same problem means that the problem will be viewed through various lenses. This can allow a company to capitalize on things that may not occur to a less diverse organization. The benefits can be enormous.

Additionally, if a diverse user base for a product or service exists, then a company can reap the same type of benefots, but from the persprective of the end-user. Again, this can result ina large advantage to that company if they’re wise enough to take the time to listen to their clients.