Why Diversity in Tech Still Matters: Tackling the Ongoing Challenge in 2024

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the underrepresented in tech podcast, where we talk about issues of underrepresentation and have difficult conversations. Underrepresented in tech is a free database with the goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech.

 

Hello, Samah.

 

[00:00:18] Speaker B: Hello, Michelle.

 

[00:00:20] Speaker A: How are you?

 

[00:00:22] Speaker B: I’m good, how are you? How was your week and weekend last weekend?

 

[00:00:26] Speaker A: Yeah, so we had WordCamp Rochester, and it was small; I said small but mighty. There were lots of good talks and conversation, even though it was a smaller word camp. But we’re finding that many of our camps have been smaller in North America this year. So I’m not going to worry about that. Everybody who was there really enjoyed it. We had about 40 people, and it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.

 

[00:00:50] Speaker B: So that’s awesome. That’s amazing.

 

[00:00:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. How was your weekend?

 

[00:00:55] Speaker B: My weekend was like staying at home and doing some work in the garden. It was kind of the last good weather weekend in the Netherlands, and I had a nice cat visiting me, so I cuddled with him all weekend.

 

[00:01:12] Speaker A: That always feels good.

 

[00:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah, it makes me happy.

 

[00:01:17] Speaker A: So, yeah, it’s funny, I grew up thinking that there were gender norms with certain kinds of things, like boys like dogs, girls like cats. Like, that’s how I grew up. Right? Like women drank wine, men drank liquor and beer, and women drank tea, and men drank coffee. Right. Like mostly because of how my family was, I guess. Right. But I literally thought that that’s how the world ran. Like the first time I drank bourbon, I felt like I was doing something that I shouldn’t be doing because that’s a man’s drink, right? So it’s nice that the gender norms that I thought were in place aren’t necessarily in place. I think they probably were earlier on, like in the fifties or whatever. And perhaps my family was stuck there. But.

 

[00:02:07] Speaker B: Me, I don’t know.

 

I like dogs; I like huskies, but from far away because the thing is, when they come at you and jump at you, it scares me. So cats are more say, and I get bored. So I cuddle with him for half an hour, and I don’t see him for 2 hours.

 

[00:02:23] Speaker A: The best relationship for me, I love it.

 

Well, our topic today is gender norms, though in a little bit that way. So I know you’ve done the research, so I’m going to let you talk and drink my coffee.

 

[00:02:37] Speaker B: Yeah, enjoy the coffee.

 

So today, we’re going to talk about the diversity, tech diversity problem, and why it matters. We’ll also talk about why there is still a lack of diversity in tech in 2024. You shared with me two amazing articles. The first one talks about how the digital world is shaped by the people who build it, and the lack of diversity belongs to creators and major issues. And the number is totally shocking. Only 15% of the tech workforce comes from BAME backgrounds, and just 19% are women. And the lack of representation leads to bias. Technologies such as facial recognition that struggle with darker skin tones and health apps that overlook women’s needs dive in. The article talks a lot about the history of bias and tech diversity, and it is really numbers shocking. I was expecting to see, like, above 50, above 60, but the numbers are like only 19% women working in tech. In a couple of episodes, we talked a lot about the digital gap, about education, and about the chances, but I think in 2024, we’re still addressing those concerns. The article also talks about why it’s really important to talk about diversity, why it’s really important to do something with it, and how he suggested a way to inspire more diverse talent initiatives, something called, like, erase all kittens, an online coding game. It’s designed with inclusivity in mind to teach kids the future, let’s say workers in tech, to not fall into the stereotypes or in the bias to think of everyone as inclusive when everyone is thinking about designing an app or if there’s a security issue online. Yeah.

 

[00:05:05] Speaker A: And so, for people who don’t know, BAME stands for black, Asian, minority, ethnic. So, we might also use the term bipolar in that same idea.

 

[00:05:16] Speaker B: Yeah.

 

So what do you think?

 

I don’t know.

 

Why do you think we still lack diversity intake?

 

[00:05:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it’s an interesting conundrum, right? Because in a lot of respects, like, you know, we’ve talked about misogyny and that women, you know, traditionally, like, I’ve talked about my father. When I told him I was working in tech, he laughed at me because he didn’t think women had brains that could work in technology, right? And this was like, he died two years ago, so it wasn’t that long ago, right? So, like, in the last five years, my father was saying, no, you don’t work in tech. What do you do? You know, what are you doing? And I’m like. And I do, like, I’ve built 300 websites. Like, of course, I work in tech, you know? And then when he found out that, like, people asked me to speak on these subjects, he was just blown away. Like, how do you? How I’m like, okay, do you think my genetics only come from my mother? Like, my father worked in STEM his whole life, right? So.

 

And it’s just, it’s crazy. But I think that there’s still a lot of stigma around the idea that women are somehow less than, or that we can’t, we can’t wrap our little heads around it somehow, right? That, like, like, that we should be able to speak a foreign language, but we shouldn’t be able to code when we know that those things actually are very similar, right, to understand code and it’s like to understand the foreign language because language is code. And so, you know, it’s like you expect a woman to be able to speak French and Spanish and English, but gosh, she can’t wrap her little head around, you know, a little JavaScript or something.

 

It’s a little crazy, right? But I don’t know, I think that, and I think that in some respects, and of course, I’m not making a sweeping statement, not all men before the men come after us, but there are a lot of men who are challenged by women who they don’t want their authority to be to go to a woman, right? If a woman is in a position of power in a company, then that must mean that they are lacking because they would never work for a woman. We’re weak, where, I mean, there are so many things, right, that we get labeled as weak and simple, and all of the things when the truth is we’re just as capable.

 

And traditionally, in gender roles, we’ve gone to different kinds of nurses and teachers, and things like I’ve talked about before, I’m older, right? So, like, when I was in school, it was like, are you gonna be a nurse or a teacher? Kind of thing?

 

And nobody ever said to a woman, you know, do you want to be a rocket scientist?

 

There was no web back then, so it wasn’t like, do you want to build websites? Right? But like other, other stem things, maybe? Like, I had a math teacher who was a woman once upon a time, and it was like, so weird to me as a kid that my math teacher wasn’t a man because of the way that those gender roles had been set up to that point. And I think the same is true for underrepresented folks across the board, right? If you’re in a wheelchair, you’re seen as less than. Like, your brain must not work because your feet don’t, right? Or your legs don’t work. Therefore, you must not be as intelligent as other people.

 

And yet Stephen Hawking was one of the most intelligent men that we know in our time, right? So, like, it’s. There’s just this conundrum of this paradoxical thinking, right? That because we have a certain color skin, because our bodies work a certain way, because we are predisposed to love who we love or because we are, you know, XDev, what are we XX and XY with different chromosomes, that somehow our brains can’t work in the same way? And it’s just rubbish.

 

[00:09:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with you. I found it still crazy in 2024. We’re still talking about women’s rights, and we, with the work, and we are equal and everything. Of course, we go through our hormonal cycle and undergo a lot of changes, but that doesn’t mean that we are less smart or we are less or less capable of doing the job.

 

But also, let’s say, of course, there are all of those things combined with it. I believe the lack of diversity in the tick force is like the non-inclusive job requirements. They can also you can the bias and gender from the recruiters. And also, some people are not like that. Also, how can I say the non-diverse leadership in the companies because they don’t focus on adding diversity? If there are more women at sea level or in leadership, of course, they will target a different audience or recruiters to hire.

 

I agree with you. And also, I remember once we talked about the digital gap, the people who have, don’t have enough resources. Also, and sadly, let’s say the minority, as we said earlier, is the one who has less money; they can afford less access to technology and less learning.

 

All of them will not have the same equal chances of going to university, getting good jobs, or getting the knowledge that other people need. But the numbers are really impressive because I don’t think so. It’s funny because I was checking how many Asians and people of color there are in the world; they are more numerous than white people.

 

When you’re talking about, and also the women, the women are now, I think, above 50, compared to men. So when you say only 19% of the workforce is women, there’s like this huge, massive gap. Of course, we will talk about maternity leaves, about your women, when they get married or have a partnership or kids. Most of the time, I’m speaking about some in the Netherlands; in Europe, women are the ones who sacrificed their careers to work and spend less time with the kids to save money, not to put the kids into daycare. It’s hardly ever the man who wants to do it. But of course, here. It’s funny, I think 20 years ago, if I’m not mistaken, I studied, which means naturalization, before getting Dutch nationality, and in the book mentioned women. I think 20 years ago, if you were working in the bank and you got pregnant and you had kids, you would get fired because you could not function normally. And I found that it was, what the hell? You know, I think they used to.

 

[00:12:18] Speaker A: Believe that some of your intelligence went to the child, like that you lose brain cells in birthing children, which is like. It’s insane. I mean, it was the seventies, and they still didn’t think that infants felt pain, and they still didn’t think that people of color felt pain. So, like, they were still performing surgeries and. And stitches and all these things on black people in the United States without any anesthesia because they didn’t think that they could feel pain, which is insane. Like what? It’s crazy.

 

And so that just kept getting applied to our fields of work and things. And then also, you think about, especially in the United States, and I don’t know what the migration situation of people is in Europe, but we have a lot of people who immigrate to the United States, and oftentimes their degrees and their education, they’re told they have to start again. And so they can’t start in those positions of authority within companies because, you know, I mean, you hear about doctors whose medical practices were booming where they lived, and now they’re like janitors or, you know, doing something else, working in stores because their degrees aren’t recognized here. And I don’t know what it takes to challenge those things. So I can’t speak, you know, a lot about that. But I just know that when you have left your field in one country and try to do that same field in another country, you often aren’t seen as less than others and have to prove yourself to climb some ranks. And I think it’s just. It’s just terrible. Like, knowledge is knowledge, right? So, yeah.

 

We should encourage people to be their best selves and pursue their passionate careers, right? So if you are passionate about STEM, a career in STEM, then you should be encouraged to pursue one as opposed to being told that you should be, you know, teaching children or something.

 

[00:14:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with you. It’s the same in Europe. Like people coming from outside of Europe, whatever your degree, you have to redo it again. And sometimes I find it nasty that you have to do it with a language you just learned. Whatever, whatever you studied before.

 

Yeah, as, yeah, as you said it, it is still we need to talk about, and I don’t want to say fight, but those stereotypes and try to hopefully to reach one generation that women are equal and we’re not going to. Hopefully not talk about the salary gaps as another issue. And, yeah, and also if you’re talking about the minorities, wherever you are, a minority, like the luxury, if you’re, you don’t have this financial security, and you want to follow your dreams, or you want to do something, and you want to risk, or you want to go higher and carry on to work, you will choose not, because at the end, you want to have your paycheck, you want to pay your invoices, your put food on the table, and also at the same time, taking a risk if you’re not financially secure, I understand it. Like, I will not do it. I need my financial security and a rooftop above my head. I’m feeling safe. I did. Is nobody going to kick me out of the house then? Yes. Let’s go. Let’s follow our dreams. So.

 

[00:15:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s just. It’s just interesting to look at the stereotypes over the years and to see how hard it is to overcome them. It just moves so slowly, that kind of progress. And it’s mind-boggling. It is.

 

[00:16:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Hopefully, one day. One day, we’re going to. We don’t have anything more to talk about.

 

[00:16:23] Speaker A: I know, I know.

 

[00:16:24] Speaker B: And shiny, but not at all.

 

[00:16:26] Speaker A: Not at all. Oh, there’s no need for underrepresented in tech anymore. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

 

[00:16:32] Speaker B: I would love to see that day. I would love to see it. Yeah.

 

[00:16:36] Speaker A: And I think with some of our younger generations, it’s starting to happen a little bit. So my daughter, for example, has an associate’s degree in media, right? So she wanted to be a film critic or something at some point. And then she moved to Buffalo, and she took a job with a temp service because she didn’t know what else to do out there.

 

She moved out there to follow a boy. She’s married to him now, but she started working at a bank as a temp, you know, in secretarial type work. Less than ten years later, she’s a vice president of that same bank because she has put the time and effort into it, and she is recognized. She’s also the president of the National African American Resource Group for that same bank. And I am so proud of how much she’s been able to accomplish in her short years compared to how long it took me to get to where I am in my career. And I just told her this weekend how proud I am of the fact that she has accomplished so much already and that she, you know, is a DJ on the weekends because she can pursue passion projects as well. And she makes money at both. And I think that that’s phenomenal. I didn’t have those same opportunities when I was her age. I also had a child, right? So that made it a little bit more difficult. I was single and raising a child, but I was doing my MBA and trying everything possible to move myself forward. But I think.

 

But without those opportunities, right? We also need to encourage women because it’s easy.

 

And for people of color, of course, it’s easy to feel downtrodden, right? It’s easy to feel like it’s just I’m never going to get ahead that kind of feeling.

 

And so encouragement, you know, goes a long way for sure.

 

As well as financial support and just the opportunities for. For people to look at us equally, for sure. Sorry, frog in my throat.

 

[00:18:37] Speaker B: Also, the companies should have more diversity in their hiring policies and target different ethnicities to ensure that everyone has a less biased recruitment process. There are lots of companies. I was watching our favorite app, TikTok, the other day, and a lady. She was applying for jobs but got tired because she was always rejected. She has a master’s degree in something. What happened is that she sent two CVs to the same company.

 

One of them, she wrote her name is Marie, whatever. And she put her photo as if she were without a veil. She’s originally a lady from Tunisia. And the other name, she gave her her Samira, something Arabic name. And she didn’t put her photo.

 

So she put the two applications in, and they were asking if they needed a team or whatever. So Marie one get an interview immediately. And the second one, they sent her rejection. The same CV, the same skills, the same medication. Yeah. So the lady just picked up the phone and read and called them, asking them in French why I was rejected. The question they were asking her, they were asking her first, like your name is it doesn’t fit our culture. And she said, what’s wrong with my name? I was born in France and raised as a French person with an ethnic background in Tunisia. But I’m a French woman, and I am of French nationality. And then the other person said like, are you wearing a veil? And do you want to marry? Do you want to have kids in the future? Because you are a woman who loves to get married and have a lot of kids, you can take a lot of vacations. Me the, oh my goodness, what the hell? And it. She told them, but for the other CV, I just received an email that I have an interview with the person. What, what are you saying? She said it’s the same CV, skills, and a different name. And in the French name, she put her photo, and in the other image, she didn’t put her image. So these are people giving their stereotype bias without seeing how she will look like.

 

And that’s happening a lot. When scanning their CVs, people see a name, let’s say, a Dutch company and see a non-Dutch name, and they think, “I don’t want to go there.” Some people look at you and see a different color or pigmentation. They are nothing like the majority of that country. So you don’t pay your civic attention a lot.

 

[00:21:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s hard. It’s really hard for so many people. And you know, and we talk about the fact that white men are privileged in our community, in our society, and they are, they just are. If a woman’s name carries less power, an ethnic name carries less power. I wish that that was different. And I hope, like you said, that things change enough that our podcast and our project won’t be necessary going forward. But that is not the case very quickly anyway.

 

[00:21:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think. I think it was.

 

According to the situation, it will last for a little bit longer.

 

[00:22:02] Speaker A: A little. More than my lifetime anyway, but a little bit. But every day, if somebody’s mind is changed and they see the light, we’re doing our project right.

 

[00:22:15] Speaker B: So just, yeah, listen. Just listen and think for a second. And people, they don’t put themselves in other people’s shoes. How would I feel if I were that person? You feel the injustice and the unfairness that you feel they had. You have to. To work double or to work harder just to be noticed. And the same. And like other people talking about white Mendez in the Netherlands. I’m thinking about the Netherlands because this is where I live. Sure.

 

They write for you in your passport or ID. You are the wife of the person. And for me, I find it really weird. It’s in my passport. The wife of my husband’s name is Tam of Anchastel, the wife of van Hastel. And I find it weird. I didn’t know that because you think the Middle East is backward. We don’t do that. We don’t add it.

 

And taking a name, and my husband, who said, like, you should take my name. My mother took my father’s name. I said I’m not property because my name is my identity, because I live where not many people have the last name Nasr. And I like to stand out and speak about myself and my identity. Yeah, but. Yeah, but it’s mentioned in my passport. I’m the wife of Tamil. I’m like, I’m the bag of Tamil. You know, I’m property, which is small property for him. And it’s. It’s pissed me off because the idea, for me, I thought about Europe. They’re going to be advanced in women’s rights. Every country and every part of the world has issues. They deal with it.

 

[00:23:56] Speaker A: So his passport doesn’t say the husband of Samah.

 

[00:23:59] Speaker B: No, no. But I can write it. I can write it next time.

 

[00:24:08] Speaker A: I mean, if it connected family members, both directions, that is like, well, okay, but if it’s just. Just women, then. Oh, that’s terrible. I know. Like, we’re just chattel. We’re just property.

 

[00:24:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

[00:24:20] Speaker A: Crazy. In. In the United States, one of the women who fought hard for women’s right to vote, her name is Susan B. Anthony. And I don’t know if her name is known around the world or not, but. But she was. She lived right here in Rochester, New York. And one of the reasons that she fought so hard for women’s rights is because her father was very bad with money, right? He made bad investments and things like that.

 

When the creditors came to their house to seize property to pay the debt, they even took her mother’s eyeglasses because her mother’s property was considered her father’s, right? And so seeing her mother have to, you know, not have her eyeglasses to be able to see properly because of her father’s poor career choices bothered her enough that she wanted women to have better rights and representation for themselves in voting here in the United States. And that was back in the 18 hundreds. So we’re talking quite a while ago, but she died in 1904.

 

But you think back, and it’s like when you tell me about your passport. It doesn’t feel very much different than her mother losing her eyeglasses because it was her father’s property. It was the 1970s here in the United States before women could have their own bank accounts and credit cards and sign and own their property without belonging to a male family member like a husband or a father or brother. It’s just it hasn’t. We’ve come a long way, but it’s more recent than we think. And that’s why it’s so important that we keep moving forward as staunchly and as rapidly as possible so that we are not seen as less than, we are not seen as property, and we can stand for who we are on our own.

 

[00:26:09] Speaker B: I could not say it better, honestly.

 

[00:26:14] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.

 

[00:26:16] Speaker B: I agree with you.

 

[00:26:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I don’t know what we will talk about next week. Please let us know if anybody has ideas or things they want us to tackle. I do have somebody. I’ll talk to you later. That has been putting some bugs in my ear, and we will try to get her on the show soon.

 

But if there are other topics that people think we should be chatting about. We’re happy to research and bring those subjects to the forefront. Anyway, thanks for being with us. We’ll see you on the next episode of Underrepresented in tech. Bye. Zaman. My mission if you’re interested in using our database, joining us as a guest for an episode, or just want to say hi, go to underrepresentedintech.com. see you next week.