Telling the Stories of Black Women in Tech This Black History Month

There is much to reflect on as a Black woman this Black History Month — as there is every day, of every week, of every month in this country. But one thing that’s been on my mind recently, especially as an educator and mother of two tween/teen students, is the nationwide trend of book banning in schools. From Kansas to Texas , from Toni Morrison to Ta-Nehisi Coates , school districts across the country are banning books — specifically, books written by and about people of color.?

There’s so much to unpack here. For now, I want to focus on how censoring these books is not just detrimental to students of all backgrounds’ ability to understand Black history,?but is also a threat to our mission at Girls Who Code.?

Many students have not been taught about the contributions of Black people, especially Black women, to this country’s history; even when they are, those lessons are often cursory and superficial, and minimize the impact of those contributions. That’s true across all industries, but especially so in STEM: in fact, a recent study found not only that scientists featured in textbooks are still predominantly white men, but that no Black women scientists at all were represented in the textbooks studied.

Uplifting Black women’s stories is key to changing a cultural narrative that alienates Black women and prevents them from seeing themselves as leaders and innovators. I see it firsthand every day in STEM fields through my work as Girls Who Code’s CEO. In fact, Black women hold only 3% of computing jobs in the US.?

Young Black girls can’t be what they can’t see, which is why telling the stories of Black women in STEM is so important to Girls Who Code’s mission of creating a more inclusive and representative tech workforce. We spotlight the stories of women like theoretical physicist Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson , groundbreaking ophthalmologist Dr. Patricia Bath , and NASA stars Katherine Johnson and Mary Jackson — and we’re just getting started.

Understanding the importance of Black women’s contributions to tech isn’t just critical for reasons of representation, but also impacts the efficacy of tech today and future innovations in the field. Take AI, for example. It took the research of Joy Buolamwini , a Black woman, to reveal how facial analysis tools failed to recognize Black faces as easily as they did white ones. These voices are necessary, yet still so often seen as threats: Black women questioning the status quo in tech, like computer scientist Timnit Gebru, still face silencing and backlash .

Telling the stories of Black women in STEM and uplifting Black women currently thriving in STEM can be the difference we need to empower a pipeline of girls to pursue the tech careers of the future. I hope you’ll follow Girls Who Code across social media platforms all month long as we bring those stories to light.