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PERCEPTIONS ARE DIFFICULT to change. Some are created by our environment, some of them are subconscious, we just grow up with them without questioning them and treat them as normal.
But whether we like it or not, once they’re set, they have a massive impact on what options we believe are available to us and the choices we make.
This applies to a lot of industries, but in the case of computer programming and IT, these biases mean the sector only really sees one main demographic take up roles instead of several. This is problematic when you consider that roughly 4,500 jobs in the sector are currently unfulfilled, and 10,000 more potential jobs could be left unfulfilled in the short-term.
Part of the solution is making the industry as appealing as possible to those who might never have considered it. If you spread the net as wide as possible and show that the industry doesn’t match the stereotypes, it could lead it to a better place.
That’s something Robin Hauser-Reynolds looks at in Code: Debugging the Gender Gap, a documentary which explores this problem.
The film, which is her second time as director and producer, looks at why there is a lack of women and minorities in computer science and what would change if this was addressed. It’s a broad topic that could branch off in a number of different areas, but keeping the focus was vital.
“Our story is about women in computer science, the lack of women in computer science and let’s find out why that’s happening,” explains Hauser-Reynolds. ”And yes, we have to acknowledge that this is an issue for men [and] for people of colour so we do mention that.”
It is a broad subject, and I truly believe that rather than trying to cover everything, it’s better to delve deep [into specific areas].
Finish Line Features, LLC / Vimeo
During the production of Code, one of the surprising facts that she discovered was how the number of women in the industry has fallen in recent years. In the US, the percentage of women in computer programming was around 36% in the 1980s. Fast forward to today and that’s fallen to roughly 18%, a trend you could extend to most parts of the world.
Coding’s history has been filled with numerous women pushing it to the forefront. People like Ada Lovelace who is widely considered to be the world’s first computer programmer, Grace Hopper, the first compiler of a computer programming language have played a major role in making the industry what it is today, but try naming a prominent female figure now and chances are an answer won’t come to mind straight away.
While there are a number of theories behind why this happened, one possible reason Hauser-Reynolds gives is when the stereotype of the computer genius or nerd became popular.
As personal computers began to grow in popularity, so too did the number of films and TV shows depicting programmers as white, middle class, antisocial men. Even though that isn’t a positive for men either, that perception has unintended knock-on effects.
It’s when the whole idea of the hacker came around and there were a lot of films and pop culture that began around the boy computer science. That stereotype in itself began to alienate women. That’s when computer labs began to pop up and women just began to be marginalised.
So what are the possible solutions? For one, greater exposure to these subjects is a major one instead of just assuming that one person will be interested and the other won’t, but it also ties into how boys and girls are brought up. If it’s a case that women aren’t interested in IT, then it’s worth looking at why this is the case and the ways to rectify that.
One option is to bring it into the school curriculum – an initiative that’s will begin in UK schools in September – which can help show how these sectors are but the reasons behind it are greater than just hoping kids will later choose it as a career.
“In the way that everyone should know about economics, really in this day and age, everyone should know a little bit about coding, what it is and how the string of logic works,” she says.
Not everyone is going to be a programmer, not everyone is going to like mathematics, history or geography or languages or writing for that matter, but to change the perception, to make it available to everyone is what’s important, make it available to girls and women, make it available to people of colour because there’s an economic need for it.
That economic need she refers to comes from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which predicts that by 2020, one million programming jobs will be left unfulfilled. But even outside of that, we’re at a point where most of the things we interact with is software and that’s only going to become more prominent as time progresses.
Not only will there be more careers and jobs that will revolve around this, but it makes a lot of sense for everyone to have a working knowledge, even if they don’t ultimately end up in the sector.
There are jobs that we need to fill and so making them accessible and available to more people and one of the ways we can do that is to change the perception towards it… there’re a lot of people who would be really good at it who feel like they don’t belong.
Code: Debugging the Gender Gap will be making its Irish premiere at Inspirefest 2015 on Thursday 18th June.
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Unbeknownst? Time for these companies to be hammered for such “errors”.
@Ed: That’s usually the case in leaks. The company often gets alerted by people who suffered from the leak a year or so after the fact.
BTW this site is a handy way to search the lists of publicly known leaks: https://haveibeenpwned.com/
@John Murphy: my iPhone told me I was owned when I tried to log into a website the other day and suggested I change the password there. A government website as well but not in Ireland.
“700,000 documents dating from 2014 to 2017 were stored in the folder, including some passports, drivers’ licenses and compliance-related forms”
So nothing is private any more, all our private information is now floating around cyber space freely available to criminals.
Will anybody be held to account?? will customers be compensated?? Joke of a country, can do nothing right. Those responsible should be face criminal charges.
@SteveBuzzard: what’s the “country” got to do with a private company. They should have deleted most of this info though, according to GDPR rules.
@Eugene Norman: Not true. GDPR does not put any time scale on how long companies have to hold data. The Data Protection Act requires them to delete it 7 years after the end of the relationship with the individual so actually very little of it should have been deleted
I thought they are supposed to delete verification documents after a certain period… Not keep them.
Prosecutions? I imagine not of course.
@Franky Jefferson: yeah, all customer data can only be stored for a maximum of 6 months.
@Peter Cavey: Incorrect. GDPR does not put a time frame how long companies can hold you’re data. The Data Protection Act requires companies to delete data after 7 years
@Peter Cavey: Incorrect. Best not comment without correct facts
@M. Murphy: People do be getting very heated about GDPR.
Was it leaky Leo
@Marty Lawless: who?? Oh.. you mean Leako Varadkar
The statement that there is no evidence that the data was accessed rings false when you consider it was an external, independent company that found the data publicly accessible. Unless the server itself was publicly available on the cloud, a serious data security error in of itself, the data had to be accessed for it to have become publicly available.
“700,000 documents dating from 2014 to 2017 were stored in the folder, including some passports, drivers’ licenses and compliance-related forms”
So nothing is private any more, all our private information is now floating around cyber space freely available to criminals.
Will anybody be held to account?? will customers be compensated?? Joke of a country, can do nothing right. Those responsible should face criminal charges.
@SteveBuzzard: Oh FFS don’t be so dramatic. Yes they will be held accountable. The company will be investigated and sanctioned by the Central Bank and the Data Protection Commissioner. As for compensation unless there is evidence that anyone has suffered a loss or damage as a result of the leak then no they will not be compensated as there is no loss or damage to be compensated for
The more info one has to provide the greater the leak! Convoluted EU nonsensical process management at its finest.
Did you purposely forget to mention the Irish times to plug our own.
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