Startups, Culture, and Why Gender Diversity MattersDecember 5, 2012Jenny Slade, NCWIT

Where to Start … (It’s Not With Binders)

Women in Tech, By the Numbers:

Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, 2011; Dow Jones VentureSource, 2011.

Percent of U.S. technology jobs held by women25

Percent of women executives at U.S. venture-backed startups7

Percent of U.S. professional occupations held by women

57

Percent of U.S. software developers who are women19

Why This Matters to You.

Women Correlate with Success.

Analysis of more than 20,000 venture-backed companies

showed that successful startups have twice as many women in senior

positions as unsuccessful companies.

Dow Jones VentureSource, 2011.

Women Help You Grow.Tech companies with women have been shown to use 40 percent less capital and be more likely to survive the transition from startup to established company.

Cindy Padnos, Illuminate Ventures: "High Performance Entrepreneurs: Women in High-Tech," 2010.

Women Improve ROI.Tech companies with the highest representation of women in their management teams have a 34% higher return on investment than those with few or no women.

Catalyst. (2004). The bottom line: Connecting corporate performance and gender diversity.

Women Improve Innovation.The presence of women in a group is more likely to increase the collective intelligence (problem-solving ability, creativity) of the group than the presence of individuals with higher intelligence.

“Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups,” Science October 2010, Woolley, Chabris, Pentland, Hashmi and Malone.

Women Enhance Teams.

Scott Page, The difference: How the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies, Princeton University Press, 2009.

Groups with greater diversity solve complex problems better and faster than homogenous groups.

Women Are 50% of the Population.

"We simply cannot afford to alienate large chunks of the workforce. It is a

widely understood truth that the single biggest challenge is attracting the right people … to literally handicap yourself

by 50 percent is insanity.” - Dan Shapiro, Google

Women Are 50% of the Market.

Why So Few Women in Tech?

Pipeline AttritionAttraction

The Selection (and Self-selection) Problem.

Lack of encouragement and confidence Lack of mentors and professional development Lack of good supervisory relationships Lack of clear paths to promotion Lack of support for competing life responsibilities

Unconscious bias

What Is Unconscious Bias?

We all have shortcuts, “schemas” that help us

make sense of the world. But our shortcuts

sometimes make us misinterpret things.

That’s unconscious bias.

Example: White male engineering students

score lower when told in advance that Asians

typically score higher on math tests

Source: Aronson, et al., 1999; Steele & Aronson, 1998

Unconscious Bias Is Stereotype Threat.

Unconscious Bias is Tokenism.

African Americans

Xkcd.org with modification by Cohoon, 2012

Unconscious Bias Is Micro-inequities.

» Slights: “You’re the receptionist, right?”

» Exclusion: “Oops, I forgot to cc her on the email about stock options.”

» Recognition: “No, I’m pretty sure it was Tom’s idea, not Jane’s, to use a link algorithm.”

» Isolation: “Dude, let’s grab a beer!”

JohnDoe Jane

Doe

Unconscious Bias in Performance Appraisal.

Moss-Racusin, Dovidio, Brescoll, Graham, and Handelsman: "Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012. 109: 16474-16479.

Identical resumes. Gendered names.

Reviewers (of both genders) strongly favor Howard in skills, hireability, and salary.

“Blind” orchestra auditions, with musicians behind a curtain, increased the number of female musicians hired by 25% to 46% percent.

Goldin & Rouse (2000) The American Economic Review, 90(4), 715-741.

Unconscious Bias in Hiring.

Unconscious Bias Is Unconscious.

Removing Bias Means Tweaking the Status Quo.

What Do You See In This Picture?

Women and Men at Startups See Things Differently …

Change Your Status Quo. Select for Diversity.

Screen out bias. Provide encouragement and reinforcement. Provide mentors and professional development. Build good supervisors. Define clear paths to promotion. Support competing life responsibilities.

1) Invite diversity. Use diverse networks, not just your status quo networks, to recruit.

2) Include a woman, and a pile sort, in your job interviews.

3) Remove biased language from job descriptions.

4) Audit your physical space for gender-neutral vibes.

5) If you’re a man, be a male advocate.

5 Things You Can Do Now.

1) Invite Diversity.

2) Include a Woman, and a Pile Sort, in Job Interviews.

Pile sort: www.ncwit.org/interviewstrategies

3) Remove Biased Language from Job Descriptions.

“Startups and Job Advertisements,” Aaron Kay, PhD: http://ww2.ncwit.org/pdf/A.Kay_JobPostings_EAmtg12.pdf; http://vimeo.com/46501265

CONFIDENT OBJECTIVE DECISIVE ANALYTICAL AUTONOMOUS DOMINANT

4) Audit Your Physical Space for Gender-neutral Vibes.

(Cheryan, S., Plaut, V., Davies, P., & Steele, C. (2009). Ambient belonging: How stereotypical cues impact gender participation in computer science. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(6), 1045-1060; http://www.ncwit.org/physicalspaceuw

5) If You’re a Man, Be a Male Advocate.

http://www.ncwit.org/resources/read-online-maleadvocate

Changing the Status Quo to Work for Women Works for Men, Too.

NCWIT is the National Center for Women & Information Technology

Our coalition includes more than 250 universities, corporations, and non-profits.

We Can Help.

We’ve Got You Plugged In.

Supervisory Program-in-a-Box Series

Top 5 Reasons You Should Work at a Startup

Top Ten Ways to Be a Male Advocate for Technical Women

Top 10 Ways Managers Can Increase the Visibility of Technical Women

We’ve Got Free, Researched Tools.

We Can Help.

Tell Your Friends.

Questions?

@NCWIT