Why does the tech industry suffer from a lack of diversity among employees, executives, venture-backed founders, venture capital firms and board members which still remains predominantly white and male.
Is it because there is not enough qualified talent from diverse backgrounds? A pipeline problem?
Just this month, Facebook’s global head of diversity once again blamed the company’s meager amount of black and brown employees on a lack of available talent. This was met with criticism and anger among diversity and inclusion advocates across the tech industry
Is it a recruiting process challenge? Asks Uber Chief Diversity Officer Bo Young Lee told TechCrunch.
Do we need to change the narrative in tech when it comes to to diversity, equity and inclusion ?
Is the lack of diversity in tech
A. because of a lack of what is in the recruitment pipeline
or
B. because of a deep seated prejudice or preconceived ideas on who should be controlling the industry?
Catriona Wallace suggests that this needs to change by removing inequalities, structural racism, mysoginy and micro-inequities from the tech companies themselves.
Courri Brady, director at diversity, equity and inclusion consulting firm Paradigm, suggests that there are preconceived ideas that only certain schools, programs or other companies are the only places that produce good talent, and those people are not diverse, causing “narrowcasting” in the recruitment process
It’s all starts with the equality of education says
Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin, a research lead for gender, race and power in artificial intelligence at the AI Now Institute, suggests that it is not about getting a SAT score or a GRE - but that it’s about privilige and “credentialing”
Decades of research have shown SATs correlate in no way with how you’re going to do in college or how you might be as a student, but correlate everything with how wealthy your family is, which also then correlates with race and access to all other sorts of things like tutoring and etc.
The education system seems to have functioned as a gatekeeper to knowledge through credentialing, she said
“Credentialing is a form of gatekeeping and protecting who has access to power and who doesn’t,” she said. “There’s this term that I think was coined a few years ago about how Silicon Valley tech companies are not meritocracies, but ‘mirrortocracies,’ so you’re hiring people who have similar credentials to you, had the same sort of schooling, etcetera.
There is evidence that diversity often yields better work and better outcomes in a variety of situations.
Focusing on certain types of qualifications and credentials, prevent diversity from happenning.
Is it because computing is so economically and politically important that computing has become so exclusive to the priviliged ?
Disrupting for good
How do we rechannel the pipeline to allow a more diverse group of humans to collaborate, learn and grow together?
There seems to be pipelines to prosperity
And
Pipelines to prison
We have a criminal justice system that is inherently infected with racial bias
The number of black people under the control of the correctional system is staggering.
The lack of legitimate job opportunities in low-income black neighborhoods, combined with the infusion of illegal drugs into these neighborhoods, created an incentive to sell drugs.
Getting more technology and the tech industry involved in criminal justice efforts pays dividends. On so many levels — Justin Erlich, special assistant attorney general, office of AG Kamala Harris
how do we change this paradigm?
Hoe do we channel the pipeline - from prisons to prosperity ?
https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/31/the-other-pipeline/
Instead of relying on the pipeline as an excuse,
Let’s work to make education truly equitable
People who are interested in this - from Dr Catriona Wallace post
Courri Brady (he/him/his), MBA Joy Lisi Rankin, PhD Ifeoma Ozoma TechCrunch Meredith Whittaker Aerica Shimizu Banks Kate Crawford Tim Heasley
Ethical AI Advisory Dr Joy Townsend
Roslyn Hames Andrew Lai Matthew Clunies-Ross Boab
