Fixing Tech’s Gender Gap

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Welcome to the hbr ideacast from harvard business review. I'm alison beard.

I would like to be an engineer and hopefully inspire girls of young youth and underrepresented neighborhoods to do the same thing. I learned that computer science was not.

The hard, monotonous engineering that I and so many women around me viewed it as.

If you're not open to stuff like seeing girl coders, you're not going to think to be a coder. You only see women doing women dominated jobs. There's no women and men dominated jobs.

You're hearing the voices of young women who are part of Girls who Code, a non profit with a mission to close the gender gap in computer science. The organization was founded by our guest today, Reshma Saujani. She didn't have a math or technology background herself, but during a run For Congress in 2010, she visited several New York schools and noticed something odd. STEM labs were filled with boys, not girls. She lost the election, but it inspired her to make educating young women in these subjects life's work. It wasn't just the lack of female students she saw in coding classes. It was also the national statistics on the dearth of women in tech. Although women earn about 50% of science and engineering degrees, they account for less than a third of people employed in those fields. And only a quarter of female science graduates specialize in computer science. Something still seems to be holding women back from a lot of today's most interesting and lucrative jobs. Saheljani is determined to change that dynamic. She's not only the CEO of Girls who Code, but also the author of a new book, Brave, not Perfect. Reshma, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Thank you so much Alison, for having me. Why do you think that it has.

Been such a hurdle to get girls and women pursuing careers in computer science in particular because they are graduating with degrees in science and engineering. It's just they're not then staying in the workforce.

Well, it's also weird because the world's first programmer was a woman, right? You think about Ada Lovelace and the Eniac woman and Grace Hopper and there have always been women in technology and women in computing. But things started really changing in the 1980s, where in the 1980s, if you walked into any computer science classroom, it would have been 40% girls and 60% boys. So really close to parity. And then Those numbers started trickling to where we are now, which is less than 20%, because I think culture. In the 1980s, you saw the Birth of the Programmer, and you saw him on Weird Science and Revenge of the Nerds. And when you ask girls, what does a computer scientist look like? It looks like a dude with a hoodie sitting in a basement somewhere, and you can't be what you cannot see. And so we started creating the caricature of what it looked like to be a. To be a computer scientist, and girls didn't see themselves in it. And I also think that a lot of this has to do with the way that we raise girls. Like, we raise girls to be perfect, and we raise boys to be brave. And girls start believing that they're either good at something or bad at something. And for every single one of us, math is not immediately easy. It's annoying. It's challenging. It's hard. If you get an answer wrong, and instead of saying, oh, wait, let me try it again, you go straight to, I suck or I'm not smart, right? You're gonna get turned off that. Especially when you're raised to do everything perfectly.

But it's really hard, right? Especially given societal norms, the way our education, employment systems work. We do want to be perfect, because a lot of times, perfect is expected of us. So what are some of the specific strategies that have worked for the girls in the program, the women that you've seen and talked to and for you in your own life?

Yeah, I mean, I. Look, I was that girl. Like, I, you know, was the perfect immigrant daughter. Went to all the right schools, went to worked at all the right places, woke up at age 33, pretty much on my floor, just miserable because I didn't understand. Right? I thought, if I did everything right, I'll be happy. And, you know, the thing with perfectionism, you know, it's not only creating a leadership gap, but it's really causing an unhappiness gap. Right. Women are twice as likely to be depressed than men are. And what we're seeing right now is so many women are just unsatisfied with their life. They miss opportunities because they don't think that they're smart enough or ready or not perfect enough. And we let our great ideas die on the vine, and we see other people pursuing our dreams, and we sit there and we're full of regret and envy, and that creates anxiety and depression and unhappiness. And so I. You know, in my life, when I ran for Congress and I lost and it didn't break me. It was like an eye opener. Like, oh, my God. Like, I can try things and fail and actually be happier. What? And so I started exercising my bravery muscle, which I do every day. And here are some of the things that I do and that I think other women have done and that have worked. One is I practice imperfection. So if you ever get an email from me, it probably has, like, 10 typos, and it's, like, definitely doesn't make sense. So for a lot of women, right, like, if I say to them, practice imperfections. So send an email with a typo in it, you'll literally have this collective, like, gasp, like, what? But, like, think about how much time we spend writing and rewriting and rereading and writing when we could have been doing other things.

That's a hard message for an editor to hear, actually.

I know. So I want you to do it this week. So, you know, practice imperfections. Send an email with a typo in it, right? That's one way. Secondly, do something you suck at. So that means doing something not for the sake of getting better at it, but, like, for the sake of being mediocre. So for me, it's surfing. I cannot swim. Like, that surfboard is super heavy. I don't like a lot of water, but I make myself go surfing, and I barely get up on the board. But let me tell you, when I walk off that beach, I feel so good. I'm standing taller. I feel proud. I feel like I can do anything. And the third thing is just take one step. I had no business starting girls who code. I didn't code, but I had an idea, and I was really passionate about this idea. So I took one step. I went out and bought the URL.

So can you give me an example of how I might put that advice into practice at work, though? How am I supposed to show imperfection when my job is to get everything right? How am I supposed to do something that I suck at when I want my boss to think that I'm competent and someone that she's happy to still employ? Take one step. Makes a little bit more sense to me. But talk to me a little bit about how I would implement the other two.

Part of building a bravery mindset means you have to realize, and I think Carol Dweck has this amazing quote, that if life were one long, middle school, girls would run the world, but it's not. And the thing that works in the workplace is bravery, not perfection. So all this time that you're waiting to be the Perfect leader. A bunch of guys are just passing you by, getting promotion after promotion after promotion. So the first thing I would say in work, in terms of practicing imperfection, is like raising your hand for an assignment that you may not feel prepared to do. Don't wait till you're 100% ready. I see this happen with the women I work with at Girls who Code all the Time. You know, I'll say, you know, why don't you take on that project or do that thing? And they'll be like, well, let me go home and think about it. And I know what's gonna happen. She's gonna go home and figure out all the reasons why she should say no. And in the meantime, it's like, the guys are, like, knocking down my door, ready to, like, run human resources when they know nothing about human resources, right? And, you know, the doing something that you suck at, like, you know, it's funny. I think it's like I was talking to a mechanical engineering teacher, and he was telling me, you know, before I even put the assignment on the board, the guys are raising their hands, being like, I know the answer. And he's like, you don't even know what the question is. Right? But you see how that plays out kind of at work. Part of it is, like, you don't have to get an A at work. There is a difference between excellence and perfection. So I'm not telling women not to be excellent. You should be excellent. But that means, like, you're enjoying the journey, and it's not about the outcome. And so I think the point about, like, doing something you suck at and practicing doing something you suck at in your life, that skill set prepares you for work because you realize that you don't have to be perfect to lead.

Now, your program has been up and running for some time now and served so many girls. You're teaching them to code. You're sharing these strategies. What outcomes are you seeing in terms of what they go on to do in their lives?

It's a great question. Well, our alumni are going on to major in computer science at 15 times the national average. Our black and Latina alumni are going on to major in computer science at 16 times the national average. You walk into any computer science science department in the country, and it is full of our alumni. So I have no doubt that we will close the gender gap in terms of the pipeline. And now the work that needs to be done is to make sure that companies will actually hire them. The other thing, for me, it's beyond coding, right like, when you think about the numbers of women in STEM who will drop out, even when they declare computer science a major, it's almost 50%. Or the amount of women who will leave within the first three years at a technology company.

Well, that brings me to my next question, really, because how much of this should be on us trying to be more brave? And how much should be on our educational system, on employers to change the way they do business, the way they hire and promote women?

Yeah, See, I think that we're born brave, and I think culture makes us feel like we have to be perfect. And so I think we're up against a lot. And some of this stuff is very unintentional. So I think when parents are immediately wanting to protect and coddle, they think they're building confidence, right? So when Mom's taking you out of gymnastics because you can't do a cartwheel because you're coming home crying every day, and she's putting you into swimming because she wants you to feel good, she's doing that because she thinks she loves you. And so I think in many ways, the way that we've been parenting our girls has just been wrong. Instead of putting them in, like, a cocoon bubble wrap, right? We have to teach them how to be brave, and we have to teach them how to fail. And I think that the onus is on us as parents, as educators, as aunts and uncles. Right? And I think. Look, I think workplaces, you know, have to figure out how they, too, can reward women for imperfection and failure. You know, I tell men all the time, like, what is your role in building a bravery movement? How are you going to be an ally who's going to basically encourage women to be more brave and to take risks? And when you do offer a woman a promotion and she turns it down now, you know, maybe it's not because she's not wanting it, but she feels like she may not be ready. And what's your role, basically, in lifting her up?

Yeah, so much has been written about the bro culture in tech. You know, there was the infamous Google memo. Can a group of brave women really change that culture from the bottom up?

Yes. I see it with my girls already. I see what they're doing, you know, in computer science departments right now, and they're banding together and they're standing up for themselves, and they're, you know, speaking out against microaggressions. I mean, you see it in the Google walkout with these powerful women and their male allies saying, you know what? Enough is enough. I do think that it's happening, but I do also think that when we think about bravery in the workplace, we see it in the big. On the big stage. You know, whether it is, you know, women running for president or if it's, you know, women who are taking down powerful men like Harvey Weinstein, we first have to learn everyday bravery. How do we stop silencing ourselves? Whether we get cut off in line when we're getting a cup of coffee and we apologize, or, you know, we're in a meeting and we don't say what we really want to say because we're waiting to ask the perfect question, or we don't raise our hand up for an assignment because we don't think we know exactly how to do it, so why bother to even try? Like, it's that everyday bravery conditioning that we have to learn to really take down these bro cultures.

And you mentioned in the book that you'd actually written a response to that Google memo. You. I know it was postponed due to news, and I don't know if it was ever published, but what were some of your key points?

Well, I think my, you know, my key points is in many. We've always heard this said about us, that our brains are wired differently. Right? And I hear this all the time when it comes to girls who code. Well, girls just don't want to learn how to code. And I think it's time to basically put those arguments to an end and we have to stand up and talk about what's. What was really at stake in his memo. And I think the thing about Silicon Valley is I think many times they pretend to be merocratic, they pretend to be libertarians, they pretend to say that, well, everybody can participate, but it's simply not true. And in many ways, the valley has lost its way. If we want to be a place where all nerds are welcome, then let's make all nerds welcome.

Right? You're in this odd position, though, that you're pushing the tech industry to change its ways, but at the same time, you need to partner with them to run your organization. So how do you navigate that challenge?

I keep it real and I stay authentic, and I never walk away from my truth.

You also told a story about standing up at a tech conference and angering the audience.

Tell that story. I mean, I do a lot of that. I think it's important to speak truth to. And that doesn't mean that when you do it, it feels good. And for me, I feel like when I have an opportunity to get in front of a bunch of men in technology. I feel like it is my duty to tell the truth and to not say what they want to hear so I can walk away with a million dollar check. And that doesn't mean that when I walk off that stage and they're staring at me like, what? And no one comes up to me afterwards and says, what a wonderful speech or thank you for that, which is what happens a lot. That doesn't, for that moment, feel bad. It doesn't always feel good to be brave immediately, but I feel like I have no. I don't even know how to live my life, Alison, in any other way now. And that doesn't mean that I don't make some enemies along the way.

So what's your biggest frustration in how these tech companies are approaching diversity?

Yeah, well, I don't want. It bothers me that we continue to talk about this like it's a pipeline problem. You know, a few years ago, I started getting. As our girls got older and they started applying for technical internships in their juniors and senior year, I started getting emails from girls being like, you know, Reshma, I apply. I have a 4.0 at Stanford. I applied to X Company and I didn't even get an interview. And I started making a list because it became one name, two names, 50 names, 100 names. And when Reshma makes a list, it's not good for anybody. And I was like, something's not right here. And, you know, we started surveying our girls and, you know, it was really kind of shocking, right, with what we found, because there is real cultural problems in companies that need to change. You can't have all male interview panels, right? Like, that should be something that we should solve and fix. We have to stop asking women or men or people of color questions in interviews that make them feel small. You know, we have to stop hiring ourselves. I think for a lot of men who have, quite frankly, not been working with a lot of women throughout their lives, they don't know how to behave. And we just need to call it for what it is and think about retraining almost at the base level. You know, not an hour session on like microaggressions or unconscious racism. It's deep. It's deep, right? And we have to treat it that way. So look, nobody gives up power. And that's really ultimately what we are talking about right now. You know, letting women and people of color through the gates, that's giving up power, right?

What do you say to organizations that push back and Say, well, we do have gender diversity because our entire HR department is female or our entire marketing department as female. Why is it so important to have balance across the board and particularly in stem?

Well, I think because automation is changing everything about the way that we live and work. And whether it's artificial intelligence or data science, every day that goes by, women are being left behind. You know, a story one of my students was telling me about Alexa and Google Home, she was saying, you know, Alexa and Google Home are being used, you know, by men to lock out their spouses and in instances of domestic violence, and they're turning up the music really loud or they're locking them out of their homes. Now, when you have mostly all male engineers who are building products, they're not thinking about that, are they? And there's so many instances, right, about how artificial intelligence and data centers are, quite frankly, biased and sexist and racist. And so we got to be sitting around the table, you know, not just in the marketing departments, right? We got to be sitting around the table in every department.

When you decided to start Girls who Code, did you get any pushback along the lines of, well, why isn't it all underprivileged kids who code?

Hmm. I got more pushback. Like, why aren't you starting Boys who Code? Or, you know, is it true that, like, I mean, don't you think it's going to be, I mean, girls. Girls brains are just built a little bit differently. I got more of that. I had very strongly felt. So my model, you know, is that if you walk is to have half girls that are in the classroom under the poverty line, and half girls, black and Latina. So if you walk into any Girls who Code classroom, it looks like American classrooms should look like today, American classrooms are incredibly segregated. You walk into ours, there's black girls, there's brown girls, there's gay girls, there's trans, there's Muslim girls, and these are young girls that have never actually met someone who didn't look like them, many of them, right? And so they're not only learning about each other, but they're building future companies together, and that's the future. And so I strongly, strongly feel that that's the way that we need to teach, is by bringing girls together from all walks of life. So I'll literally have a girl who left a homeless shelter in the morning to walk to Barry Deller's office at iac, and she'll be sitting next to somebody who has literally been a private school that costs $50,000 a year. And both of them are so, quite frankly, underserved in terms of their coding education. But they're also building a friendship and they're learning about each other and it's honestly healing the country in a way that we desperately need right now.

And you feel that there's great value in that single sex educational environment, even in an extracurricular sense.

Thousand percent. And like, it's funny. Well, because I think that again, I think that girls are able to kind of come together and learn and fail together. You know, I don't think we under. You know, I had this young girl, Isabelle, come into my office a few months ago, and she was saying to her mom, you know, mom, I'm not good at math. And she said, honey, what are you talking about? You just got an A on your math test. And she's like, well, when I was at school the other day, the math teacher asked me to give her the answer, and instead of saying, I didn't know it right away, give me more time, I just said I had to go to the bathroom. So there's often so much pressure that girls are feeling, and it's sometimes from the boys. I mean, I've had girls tell me that when they're doing this math assignment on the board, the boys will be like, what are you, slow? And it's so painful, right, to hear something like that. And again, girls go from like, wait, I need more time to I'm stupid, I'm not smart, I'm not good enough. And so I think in single sex environments, they feel comfortable asking questions or saying, I don't know the answer.

Yeah.

Now, Girls who Code is a US organization, and we've had a very US centric conversation. Are there other countries that are doing a better job of getting women into STEM fields?

Oh, well, we're going global this year, so now students global.

Yay.

So we're going. We're, you know, really starting in U.S. i mean, Canada, UK and India. Yeah. I mean, look, this is a problem everywhere. And in some places it's better, right? In some places it's worse. In some places it's different. So, like in India, for example, they have less of a problem in terms of parity for CS majors, but more of a problem in terms of women dropping out kind of three, four years into their technology jobs. They have less of a problem culturally. They don't have the pinkification of like the, you know, the toy aisle or the Barbie doll that says, I hate math, let's go shopping instead. You know, you watch a Bollywood serial. And you'll see a lot of female engineers. So, you know, I think there's different problems in different places, but I still don't think that, like, anyone has really figured it out.

Yeah. What is the hardest part of your job?

Day in and day out, I'm impatient about solving the problem. I get really scared at how quickly automation is happening. I mean, I've been fighting. I've been an activist on women's issues since I was 13 years old. And I look at the leadership numbers and I'm 43. And in 30 years, it's gotten a little better, but not as much as I want it to. And, you know, some of this stuff is in our control. Like, I talk myself out of things all the time. I silence myself all the time. And then I go home and I ruminate about it. You know, why did I apologize for that? Why didn't I? You know, and you know, this, you know, this morning I feel like a bunch of us. Something happened and we all stood up for ourselves. And I was just so proud, you know, because not every moment is that moment. So things are changing. But I know for my. In my own life, I still have a lot of work to do. And I just want to say that I think that things can change. Like if you practice everyday bravery, things can change. I really believe that. And I've seen it with six years of teaching my girls and they are so fierce. From this.

Reshma, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Thank you so much, Alison, for having me.

That's Reshma Saujani, CEO of Girls who.

Code and author of the book Brave Not Perfect.

This episode was produced by Mary Dube.

We get technical help from Rob Eckart. Adam Buchholz is our audio product manager. Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. I'm Alison Beard.

Sam.