On International Women’s Day: Progress, but gap persists
International Women’s Day — today! — is one of those classic good-news/bad-news events. Especially when it comes to women in technology.
On the good side, the event has demonstrated major staying power. It began more than a century ago — the first was in 1911 and was observed by more than a million people. This year it involves hundreds of millions, if not billions. It is a national holiday, or partial holiday, in more than two dozen countries although, notably, not in the U.S.
Its advocacy has yielded measurable results. In the U.S., women are close to half of the workforce. An increasing number of women hold top corporate leadership positions and sit on corporate boards. For the first time in U.S. history, a woman is vice president of the United States.
There is visible progress in tech as well. From women being relatively on the fringe in the cybersecurity industry just a decade ago, they are increasingly in the spotlight, on center stage.
The annual RSA security conference, usually held in San Francisco but virtual this year due to the pandemic, has increased the role of women significantly over the past decade. Two years ago, 32% of speakers overall and 46% of the keynotes were delivered by women.
RSA did not respond to a question about those percentages at the 2021 conference, scheduled for the week of May 17, but according to its website, the percentage of women delivering keynotes is less than in 2019, at 38% — 11 of 29. Still, the organization has been an ongoing, vocal advocate for women in tech.
The Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) of women in computing, also held virtually in October 2020, drew more than 30,000 participants.
There are dozens of cybersecurity organizations created by, and for, women, among them Women Who Code, Girls in Tech, Black Girls Code , the League of Women Coders, Women in Security and Privacy, and Women in Technology International.
And more companies are offering work schedules and benefits that address “work/life balance,” to make it easier for both women and men to have family lives.
Still needed, more than 100 years later
But the downside is that there is still a need for an International Women’s Day. After all, nobody has ever proposed an International Men’s Day — at least not seriously.
That’s because the gender gap persists, especially in information technology (IT) generally and cybersecurity in particular. As noted, while women are about half of the U.S. workforce overall, they are only an estimated 26% of the tech workforce. That’s a substantive improvement from 11% in 2013, but a long way from parity.
Meera Rao, senior director for product management (DevOps solutions) with the Synopsys Software Integrity Group, said after more than a decade in the field, she hasn’t seen the gap closing, at least not at the top. “When I joined the cybersecurity industry 14 years ago, I saw very few women in leadership positions, and now that I am in a leadership position, I still see very few women,” she said.
Most of the reasons for that are well-known by now. More men than women major in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). So, no surprise, fewer women consider a career in tech.
Diane Downie, software engineer, principal, with the Synopsys Software Integrity Group, said that trajectory starts early. “There was progress in closing the gap early in my career,” she said, “but that progress stagnated due to the personal computer, as crazy as that sounds. Parents gave computers to their little boys and not to their little girls. So the boys were that much more ahead by high school, and girls lost interest.”
Which, predictably, yields fewer role models for girls and young women.
Her colleague, Sweta Deivanayagam, associate principal security consultant with the Synopsys Software Integrity Group, said that in recent years there have been grassroots initiatives to encourage young girls to get into in STEM fields, which she said has helped reduce the gender gap. “But we still have a long way to go. It will take concerted, long-term efforts to overcome decades of imbalance,” she said.
Rao agrees. “We will not be able to solve the issue of lack of women in this industry by just talking about gender diversity. We first need to increase the number of women in computer science overall. We need to encourage more young girls to pursue computer science.”
Rao, Downie, Deivanayagam, and several other women who are excelling in the field also say that in spite of ongoing calls for diversity and corporate efforts to showcase women in leadership roles, the gender gap persists largely because of culture, both in and out of the workplace. And the core cultural components that need to be addressed to shrink the gender gap are essentially the same ones they have been talking about for years.
Respect
Tanya Janca is owner of a stellar IT resumé that includes senior cloud advocate for Microsoft, application security evangelist, trainer, public speaker, ethical hacker, OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) Ottawa leader, OWASP DevSlop project leader, founder of We Hack Purple, cofounder of WoSEC (Women of Security), mentor, and author of “Alice & Bob Learn Application Security.”
But she said qualified women are actually leaving the field “due to sexism — lower pay, fewer opportunities, fewer promotions, and being expected to do more work for the same or less pay.”
She said she thinks the #MeToo movement helped give women more of a voice to discuss those issues, where “previously if women brought up a lot of these things we were told we were overreacting, we were oversharing, or we were just plain shut down.”
“The fact that now we can talk about those things, and even better that men are bringing them up, is progress,” she said. “But we still have work to do, especially for women who are not white, who are disabled, neuroatypical, LGBTQ, etc.”
Asma Zubair, senior manager of interactive application security testing product management with the Synopsys Software Integrity Group,, said the respect problem can manifest itself in meetings where “women have difficulty getting airtime. If two people speak at the same time, women tend to yield to their male colleague. If women become assertive or take a strong stance, they are more likely to be tagged as feisty, aggressive, emotional, or hesitant to accept change.”
Rao says she has dealt with a lack of respect throughout her career, frequently in group settings where, “I have not been introduced properly with my title, have been interrupted often, sidelined, and had people talking over me or rephrasing what I said.”
One incident that she said still haunts her was when a male coworker sent her nasty emails blaming her for a problem, saying she wasn’t qualified for her position and included others on the team as recipients.
“I had reached out to him several times to help solve his problems. He never bothered to respond,” she said. “I’m glad we had email trails going back months and years so I could prove my innocence.”
More often, the bias is unconscious, these women say, but it can be just as toxic, spilling into areas like hiring and promotion. And given that men are the majority, that obviously can expand the gender gap.
“None of us is unbiased,” Downie said. “We easily relate to people who are like ourselves. I have seen men more likely to hire and promote other men through what I think is unconscious bias. It’s the idea that ‘he reminds me of myself. I can see how great he will be in this role.’”
“But there is great training on behavioral interviewing available that not only helps you remove your own bias, but also helps you find the person you really need,” she said.
And while these women say they appreciate the expanding role women are given at high-profile conferences, “that is not necessarily a sufficient indicator [of increasing parity],” Zubair said. “The right way to look at it is to measure the representation across the whole spectrum — college and early career stages all the way to the boardrooms.”
Work/life balance
As has been documented for generations, the gender gap is also exacerbated by assumptions about gender roles outside the workplace. Downie said the ongoing pandemic has illustrated that in stark terms. “It doesn’t take much to undermine progress,” she said, citing federal Department of Labor statistics reported on NPR that last September women were leaving the workforce at four times the rate of men.
“The impacts of the pandemic were particularly hard on women because family responsibilities disproportionately fall on women and women were the hardest hit by the pandemic layoffs,” she said.
Added to that are ongoing stereotypes. “I have been asked if I plan to continue working after getting married, or will be willing to travel after having children,” Deivanayagam said. “These are questions that would not be asked to a male coworker, and make assumptions based only on my gender.”
Role models
More women in tech — especially in leadership roles — means more examples of what girls and young women can aspire to be. And that is happening to some degree.
Janca says she has tried to be a role model and that industry organizations for women help her and others.
“I’m one of the founders of WoSEC, and it has helped me personally quite a bit,” she said. “I’ve made a ton of friends and made connections that resulted in many opportunities for myself and others. It’s resulted in women starting businesses together, women finding jobs, leaving toxic workplaces, mentoring each other, and standing up for each other.”
But she said subtle role model images can undermine more positive messages for women. “For instance, when we see ‘computer nerds’ on TV, they are awkward, often out of shape, shy, obsessed with Star Wars, and other things that I personally do not identify with at all,” she said, adding that “many girls and woman are not told they should consider it as a career, while boys and men are given that suggestion more often. I feel like more of us need to tell little girls ‘You’re going to be an amazing hacker some day!’”
Deivanayagam said it is important to normalize seeing women in high-profile roles — as keynote speakers, on panels, giving talks and as executives. “As we keep seeing women break barriers, showcase their technical expertise and ideas, the industry will slowly begin to take notice and start catching up,” she said.
Strength in numbers
The bottom line is that numbers matter. There is power in percentages. And women who are succeeding in tech agree that some of the work of boosting the percentage, and therefore the power and influence of women, must be done by women themselves.
One way is to do what they are doing — very good work.
“If diversity can showcase better products and investors can see the value of investing in diverse companies, then everyone else will get on board,” Downie said.
Another is to help each other. “Providing opportunities and guidance, being mentors and role models are the keys to increasing women’s representation in any industry,” Zubair said..
Janca said every time she’s on a podcast, “I ask them if I may send them a list of other women who are less well-known than I am and who may make great guests. I rotate women off the list and add new ones whenever someone has had a few opportunities work out for them. I’m opening doors for other women, and we can all do things like this.”
Downie said she started a group in her local office “to create a network for women to support each other and learn how to advocate for themselves.”
That group, she said, has been a victim of COVID, but added, “there are going to be different things that will resonate for different individuals, but we can always be there for one another. My favorite quote from GHC this year: “Lift others as you rise.”
