Computer Science for All Stands on the Shoulders of Champions

As a long-time advocate for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in tech, I was excited to learn that 60 Minutes produced a segment focused on Closing the Gender Gap in The Tech Industry. I am a steady fan of 60 Minutes and it boasts its last season drew an average of 11.4 million viewers. I was heartened that this platform would provide much-needed exposure and support the hard work of so many of us who have, and continue to, labor to increase intersectional gender impact on tech, along with all its powerful socioeconomic implications.  

Unfortunately, I, like many, was disappointed when in the opening statement, Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi discredited the efforts of companies, universities, and foundations by noting their work as failed and pivoted to focus on one organization as being the savior “…to finally crack the code.”   

Immediately following it’s airing, we heard from Reshma Saujani, Founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, and Ayah Bdeir, Founder and CEO of littleBits, who were contacted by 60 Minutes, but not included in the segment. Notably absent from this conversation were so many other advocates, groups and organizations, strong male allies, as well as countless women who have worked tirelessly and whose efforts could have been spotlighted. 

The irony regarding the fact that the featured organization is led by a man was not lost on the woman technologists who tuned in.   

This lack of inclusion and integrity in reporting is below the dignity of 60 Minutes. The segment did not provide a real sense of the efforts that have been going on for decades and we need to be diligent to set the record straight. Rather than advocate for girls and women, 60 Minutes’ and the others who participated in presenting this narrow characterization of the issue, served to perpetuate the bias that has contributed to women leaving the profession and young girls finding few female role models. The continuing erasure of women technologists and champions in favor of men needs to stop. 

60 Minutes’ knight in shining armor, as well as everyone working in this space, stand on the shoulders of the champions who came before them.   

To accurately reflect what it takes to move the needle on increasing the number of women in tech, there are so many whose contributions need acknowledging. Folks like Jan Cuny, Program Director for Computing Education at the National Science Foundation, who continues to fund and shape the primary research and other advocacy that today provides the groundwork upon which the entire Computer Science for All movement draws. That includes Code.org.

Pioneers like Jane Margolis, Rachel Estrella, Joanna Goode, Jennifer Jellison Holme, and Kim Nao would have been plenty capable of describing their own ideas and or could even have been cited for their book authored in 2008, Stuck in the Shallow End, and in 2002, Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, authored by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher. 

Their case studies brought to light insights critical to the work of diversifying computer science. Foundationally, they show that providing computer science classes is not enough to entice multicultural and female students to take them, and illuminate many influences contributing to the gender gap in computing. Their research served as the basis for the work of ExploringCS.org and the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) curricula, which focuses on training teachers in order to move the needle. ECS is the curricula on which Code.org modeled its own curricula.    

It was through the benefit of the collective works of trailblazers like those I mentioned—and many I haven’t—that led to the founding of the early Computer Science for All program in Chicago Public Schools, which built computer science classes into the curriculum for every student in the district. Computer science is its own core requirement, which means every student must have it to graduate—the first such framework of its kind. There are so many heroes and sheroes who contributed, scores of teachers and my tiny but mighty staff. Shout out to another computer science champion, Gail Chapman, for helping us make it work in Chicago. And, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy giants such as Megan Smith and her support of the Obama administration’s national CS for All initiatives. This list doesn’t even scratch the surface of what really brings us to where we are today.

“This was a missed opportunity to acknowledge underrepresented people leading grassroots movements for cultural change,” as poignantly described by Heather Cabot, author of GEEK GIRL RISING: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech released in 2017, in her rebuttal to 60 minutes for Forbes. It also perpetuates the uphill battle to continue this work, where credit and attention could bring much-needed funding and collaboration, and where the lack of both can cause great programs to die. 

Ruthe Farmer, former Senior Policy Advisor for Tech Inclusion during the Obama White House, another computer science education shero, was so motivated by 60 Minutes’ lack of acknowledgement of women and men working to close the gap in tech that she created a Google Spreadsheet to thank them all and is promoting it @ruthef. 

We expect a higher level of journalism from respected media outlets like 60 Minutes. We expect individuals and organizations who do gain the spotlight to acknowledge the existence of unconscious biases, to investigate their own, and to do better. We expect that young girls and women will be given the opportunity to hear from and be inspired by the female role models who have actually paved the way in tech. Girls and women will aspire to be what they can see when history is told accurately, inclusive of all the contributions and hard work of women, an important goal of AnitaB.org.

The list of women technologists who created the tech that media darlings are using to create their billion and trillion dollar companies, is quite long. Presenting one male role model as the pioneer and savior of the computer science for all movement is consequently uninspiring to the many female technologists, and young girls still discovering their passions, who will fill our tech pipelines, lead our tech projects, and who are sorely needed to solve our present and future problems with technology.  

Apologies to the many women I missed above – please add them in comments below! – but that’s the whole point. There are so, so many women who have brought us to where we are today through increased access to tech education that ascribing the success to one person, especially one man, is absurd and, patently irresponsible.