Read No.	Name of chapter
15	Silicon Valley’s gender gap is the result of computer-game marketing 20 years ago
15	Why diversity matters to your tech company

Silicon Valley’s gender gap is the result of computer-game marketing 20 years ago

Marketing games

Elizabeth Ames from the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology believes that one of the primary reasons can be traced back to the close relationship between computing and gaming in the 1980s. “A lot of early computers were used for game playing,” Ames says. “Those games tended to be more aimed more at boys and men, so it was easy for boys to get a leg up in that area through gaming.”

The experience gap widens

This led to what researcher Jane Margolis calls the “experience gap.” In a study she conducted in 1995, she found that among first-year computer-science students at Carnegie Mellon University, 40% of male respondents passed the advanced-placement computer-science exam, meaning they could skip the introductory-level programming class. None of the first year women achieved the same result. Men were also more familiar with programming languages than women and were more likely to report having an “expert” level of programming proficiency before enrolling at Carnegie Mellon. Unsurprisingly, many women opted out of the computer-related courses early.

An American Association of University Women review of more than 380 studies from academic journals, corporations, and government sources found that more early exposure to engineering and computing among boys in school creates “more positive attitudes toward and interest in STEM subjects.” By the time students now reach university, 20% of men plan to take on a career in engineering or computing. Among women, that number is just 5.8%. Women start out so far behind that they often can’t catch up.

Even when women do have considerable experience with coding and mathematics, the male-dominated environment that has arisen becomes an obstacle to entry for many. Professor Linda Sax, a researcher at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, recalls, “I was someone who grew up very confident in my math abilities, but it wasn’t until I went to college that I began to doubt myself.”

Sax says she felt intimidated by the male-dominated culture she encountered at university. She remembers one incident in which she asked the professor a question that he curtly dismissed. A male student asked the same question moments later and got a positive response. “It just felt very isolating,” she says. Sax ended up not completing her degree in programming, choosing a career in quantitative research in education instead.

The few women who do make it into the field are far less likely to stay than their male counterparts. The Center for Talent Innovation, a research think tank, found that US women are 45% more likely than men to leave careers in technology. The research revealed that women often feel isolated due to a lack of female role models and the sense of being excluded from “buddy networks” among men. Once you add in the fact that only 38% of US women get their ideas endorsed by leadership (compared to 44% of men), you soon end up with the scenario in which almost a third of women say they want to quit within the first year.

Though there are isolated examples of both vintage and contemporary computer advertising aimed at women, it is clear that the advertising narrative around women and technology needs to be more inclusive if the gender gap is going to close. Until that happens, as Ames argues, advertising will continue to drive “a subtle message to girls and women that it’s not a place where they belong.”

Why diversity matters to your tech company

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.

Study after study in fields like organizational science, psychology and education indicate that diversity offers significant benefits for teams focused on creativity and innovation. According to Scott E. Page, professor of complex systems, political science and economics at the University of Michigan: “Diverse groups of people bring to organizations more and different ways of seeing a problem and, thus, faster/better ways of solving it.”

Diverse companies perform better

Given that diverse teams are smarter and more creative than homogeneous ones, it is unsurprising that a wealth of research shows a strong correlation between diverse organizations and positive financial outcomes. In a 2011 study of diversity in the top firms in Standard & Poor’s Composite 1500 list, researchers found “female representation in top management leads to an increase of $42 million in firm value.”

Diverse companies can better serve a diverse user base

When the employees of an organization better represent their users and desired users, they will build more effectively for those groups. When YouTube’s almost entirely right-handed developer team built the iOS app without considering how left-handed people would use it, for example, 5% to 10% of videos were uploaded upside down as a result. This factor may be especially relevant for leaders of consumer tech companies.

When Tracy Chou of Pinterest shared the company’s demographic information last year, she explained: “We only stand to improve the quality and impact of our products if the people building them are representative of the user base and reflect the same diversity of demography, culture, life experiences and interests that makes our community so vibrant.”

It’s the right thing to do

While diversity and inclusion efforts are most often driven by business rationales, we’ve spoken with a few CEOs who are motivated primarily by a belief that cultivating an inclusive tech community is simply the right thing to do.

Some of these leaders have noted that the tech industry is creating vast opportunity and that by excluding certain groups from that opportunity the industry is perpetuating and exacerbating existing social inequality. Others have emphasized a concern that by failing to involve particular communities in the process of creating of new technology, we as a society lose out on the benefits of those community members’ ideas.

For company leaders beginning to consider diversity and inclusion, understanding these rationales and identifying one that resonates for you and your organization can be a helpful first step.

But it’s only a first step. After deciding that diversity matters and articulating its importance, leaders must create a strategy for building a more diverse, inclusive company and an accountability plan to ensure that strategy is effective.