Are we at an inflection point?
There has been so much emphasis on women in STEM over the past few years. But it is worth noting that in the 70’s & early 80’s women dominated in computer science & more so in coding.
In the US 37% of computer science graduates between 1970 and 1984 were women. All this without any specific program to increase the participation of women.
Post 1984, the numbers started to decline and by 2011 this had fallen to as low as 12%. It was around this time that everyone woke up to the dismal gap. Women in STEM programs became mainstream & a norm.
Why did women move away from STEM?
Around 1984, the first generation of students who owned home computers entered colleges. The entire home computer value proposition including gifting had then focused around “Computers for boys “.
The problem with stereotypes is that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.
What happened in 1984?
Women realized that Men had a head start from day 1 of their higher education. The number of women started dwindling in computer science courses & the saddest part was no one noticed that women were being left behind in large numbers.
Did the corporates and colleges not realize this?
Did families and friends realize their gifting was biased? Or that they were creating this great divide by following stereotype campaigns?
Possibly not….
The various players in the ecosystem did not realize the role they were playing while the shifts were happening till the drop in women from STEM compounded exponentially.
We all fall into the trap of stereotypes.?We have met the enemy of equality and that enemy is us.
Can you beat the fact that initial home computers could have been such a negative catalyst for participation in STEM higher studies?
This led us at #BankingonKarMa to think, can 2020 & the extensive leverage of technology be another inflexion point like 1984?
While the pandemic has had its negative impact on women representation, there is a new generation of women who now can use technology & new ways of working to their advantage. Women are thriving at these jobs.
Tech firms are also moving the needle beyond tokenism to real action to have women come in, stay & thrive in the workforce.
Us - as the average man, woman, family member, peer at work, business unit leader, client, policy maker- All of us collectively, what we do now will redefine the future.
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Can the corporate & academia team up this time? Digital as the great leveler, will we let it happen?
We are seeing the signs - Women in India are learning online at higher rates compared to pre-pandemic, representing 44 per cent of new learners in 2021, up from 37 per cent in 2019.
While the gender gap in employment has widened, the gender gap in online learning has narrowed during the pandemic.
We are here now, at the same point as 1980s.
Most of the time we are punished if we go against the trend, only at the inflection point are we rewarded.
Do you think a future article in 2040 might read something like this?
“Until 2020, the world was struggling to reduce the gender employment and leadership gap. While there were improvements in pockets, the numbers did not change significantly. Women continued to be left out completely or never made it to leadership positions for a balanced workforce across levels.
Today the equal representation that we see has a lot to do with the Covid pandemic that hit humanity. Covid as we all know was a heavy price to pay and took its toll. However, it was also the time when technology came in as a leveler.
A change in mindset too, as men and women realized how a small virus can alter their lives completely. Society as such was willing to unlearn and relearn new ways. Women saw this as a chance for them and used technology to handle barriers. Societies, family structures, governments embraced this change and the hitherto burdens and pressures that were on women alone were mitigated.
Over the next few years women entered, re-entered work force in large numbers in all fields. Technology and innovation continued to disrupt. Now in 2040, we see women in leadership roles, executive positions, women founders and entrepreneurs everywhere. We owe this to the post covid individuals and institutions, who proved yet again that human beings can learn, adapt and correct the past wrongs.”
?To quote from the movie ‘Hidden Figures’
Whoever gets their first will make the rules.
What is your version of the 2040 article? Let us know, we are listening.
Cheers,
#BankingonKarMa
PS: Views are ours and only ours, whilst we draw a lot of inspiration from our conversations and dialog with people!!!! A big Thank you to you all know who you are!!!!
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BCG Platinion Managing Director, Ex-IBM Distinguished Engineer & CTO-Hybrid Cloud Services IBM Consulting India; ex-AWS
3 年A good article manifesting a point of view backed by historical data and facts… as far as I think women need to reduce emphasis on their woman-ness and leverage their super powerful human-ness - their ability to sustain themselves in wait-mode and grasp the situation without any judgements is tremendous… this is a heightened state of consciousness that transcends all points of inflections that happen in time…
AI Content Writer | IT & EdTech Professional | Specializing in AI & Cloud Solutions
3 年Thought provoking article and written in a way to make strong impact? ..Thanks much for your efforts !! My conversation to my future-self 2040 : 'The 2020 pandemic paved a progressive way for an inclusive work environment as well as gender neutral leadership roles. But the WFH culture it brought in has also contributed for channelizing women majorly towards IT or ITES as their career. The rest of the divisions of Engineering like Mechanical, civil,aeronautical ,electrical? that were already having meagre participation of women due to the expected job nature , have become men only departments . This could have been avoided through wider vision about capabilities of women and overall change in society with respect to sharing of family responsibilities. '
Growth Consultant, Business Leader
3 年Interesting thoughts Mala…our limitations make us think of cause and effect In a limited way….it will take more than this ‘pandemic’ to effect a change..a few observations 1. we still do not know the amount of girls who went out of education due to the pandemic…the number in india will be staggering 2. Children in the priveleged class in india are opting out of stem to humanities and art…last generation at least had huge pressure to adopt stem The summation of above may just take the trend line down…20 years may not be enough to make changes..
American Banker Top 20 Most Influential Women in Fintech | 3x Book Author | Coming Soon: Banking on Artificial Intelligence (2025) | Founder — Unconventional Ventures | Podcast — One Vision | Public Speaker | Top Voice
3 年Powerful and thought provoking piece, Mala. "The problem with stereotypes is that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story." It's past time that we stop the stereotyping (fun fact: there are lots of women who like STEM and we can have more presentation in tech ... if we are intentional.) Let's hear from more voices because the world demands it -- and because we are all better off with it.
Passionate Marketer fueled by quest to conquer biology!
3 年Thought provoking Shankar Sundarrajan Mala Balakrishnan your 2040 outlook is filled with positivity and shine, mine would be cautiously optimistic … a blog post for another day :-)