Retaining Women in Tech: Shifting the Paradigm

Synthesis Lectures on Professionalism and Career Advancement for Scientists and Engineers

For over 40 years, the tech industry has been working to attract more Women. Yet, continue to be underrepresented in technology jobs compared to other professions. Worse, once hired, women leave the field mid-carrer twice as often as men. In 2013, Karen Holtzblatt lauched The Women in Tech Retention Project at WITops.irg, dedicated to understanding what helps women in tech thrive. In 2014, Nicola Marsden joined the effort, bringing her extensive knowledge and research on gender and bias for women in tech. Together with worldwide volunteers, this research identified what helps women thrive and practical interventions to improve women's experience at work.
In this book, we share women's stories, our research, relevant literatur, and our perspective on making change to help retain women. All the research and solutions we share are based in deep research and user-centered ideation techniques. Part I describes the QWork Experiense Framework and the six key factors that help women thrive: a dynamic valuing team; stimulating projects; the push into challenges with support; local role models, nonjudgmental flexibility to manage home/work balance; and developing personal power. Employees thinking of leavingtheir job have significantly lower scores on these factors showing their importance for retention.
Part II describes tested interventions that redesign work practices to bertter support women, diverse teams, and all team members. We chose these interventions guided by data from over 1,000 people from multiple genders, ethnicities, family situations, and countries. Interventions also adress managing interpersonal dynamics to increase valuing and decrease devaluing behaviors and techniques for teams to define, monitor, and continously improve their culture. We conclude by describing our principles for redesigning process with an eye toward issues important to women and diverse teams.

ABOUT SYNTHESIS
This volume is a pronted verstion of a work that appears in the Synthesis digital Library of Engineering and Computer Science. Synthesis lectures provide concise original presentations of important research and developement topics, published quickly in digital and print formats. For more inforamtion, visit our website.

Karen Holtzblatt, WITops and InContext Design
Nicola Marsden, Heilbronn University, Germany

• Publisher:‎ Morgan & Claypool Publishers (1 Mar. 2022)
• Language: ‎English
• Paperback: ‎ 288 pages
• ISBN-13:‎ 978-1636392929

The Smart Wife - Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot

Meet the smart wife - at your service, an eclectic collection of feminized AI, robotic, and smart devices. This digital assistant i friendly and sometimes flirty, docile and efficient, occasionally glitchy but perpetually available. She might go by Siri or Alexa, or inhabit Google Home. She can keep us company, order groceries, vacuum the floor, turn out the lights. In The smart Wife, Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy examine the emergence of digital devices that carry out "wifework" - domestic responsibilities that have traditionally fallen to (human) wives.
Strengers and Kennedy show that the principal prototype for these virtual helpers - designed in male-dominated industries - is the 1950s houswife: white, middle class, heteronormative, and nurturing, with a spick-and-span home. It's time, they say, to give the smart wife a reboot; the design of gendered devices re-inscribes outdated and unfounded stereotypes. Advanced technology is taking us backward on gender equity. Strengers and Kennedy offer a smart wife "manifesta", proposing a rebooted smart wife that would promote a revaluing of femininity in society in all her glorious diversity.

Yolande Strenger is Associate Professor of Digital Technology and Society in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University, Melbourne. Jenny Kennedy is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne.

• Publisher:‎ The MIT Press
• Language: ‎English
• Paperback: ‎ 320 pages
• ISBN-13:‎  978-0262542791

Unlocking the Clubhouse - Women in Computing

The information technology revolution is transforming almost every aspect of society, but girls and women are largely out of the loop. Although women surf the Web in equal numbers to men and make a majority of online purchases, few are involved in the design and creation of new technology. It is mostly men whose perspectives and priorities inform the development of computing innovations and who reap the lion's share of the financial rewards. As only a small fraction of high school and college computer science students are female, the field is likely to remain a "male clubhouse," absent major changes.

In Unlocking the Clubhouse, social scientist Jane Margolis and computer scientist and educator Allan Fisher examine the many influences contributing to the gender gap in computing. The book is based on interviews with more than 100 computer science students of both sexes from Carnegie Mellon University, a major center of computer science research, over a period of four years, as well as classroom observations and conversations with hundreds of college and high school faculty. The interviews capture the dynamic details of the female computing experience, from the family computer kept in a brother's bedroom to women's feelings of alienation in college computing classes. The authors investigate the familial, educational, and institutional origins of the computing gender gap. They also describe educational reforms that have made a dramatic difference at Carnegie Mellon - where the percentage of women entering the School of Computer Science rose from 7% in 1995 to 42% in 2000 - and at high schools around the country.

Jane Margolis is a researcher at the Graduate School of Education and Information Systems at the University of California, Los Angeles. Allan Fisher, former Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the School of Computer Science at Cerbegie Mellon University, is President and CEO of Carnegie Technology Education, a Carnegie Mellon oducation company.

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Language: ‎English
• Paperback: 184 pages
• ISBN: 9780262632690

Women Empowerment - Women in Tech

Du willst die gläserne Decke durchbrechen und in einer MINT-Branche durchstarten? Entdecke, wie du dir Chancen eröffnest und deinen Weg zu beruflichem Erfolg findest. Female Empowerment - Women in Tech ist ein kompetenter Wegweiser für weibliche Karrierestarter, angehende Führungskräfte und Unternehmerinnen, die zuversichtlich ihren Erfolg vorantreiben und ihre Ziele erreichen wollen. Unter der fachkundigen Anleitung von de Vries und von Nessen tauchst du tief in die Gedanken und Erfahrungen von 25 Expertinnen ein. Dabei wirst du Tipps und Tools entdecken, die dich auf deinem Weg an die Spitze unterstützen. Gewappnet mit diesem Insiderwissen erweiterst du schnell deinen Horizont und findest zu deiner wahren Stärke.

In Female Empowerment - Women in Tech erfährst du:

• Geheimnisse zur Stärkung deiner persönlichen Entwicklung und Selbstmanagement-Fähigkeiten, um dich von der Masse abzuheben
• eine facettenreiche Mischung aus weiblichen Führungspersönlichkeiten und Expertinnen der MINT-Industrie, deren Geschichten dich auf deiner Reise inspirieren und ermutigen werden
• Vorbilder, die dir zeigen, wie du das Ziel im Fokus behältst und dich von Gleichgesinnten unterstützen lässt
• essentielle Methoden zum Netzwergen mit anderen Frauen* und zur Weiterentwicklung deiner Fähigkeiten und deines Mindsets
• unverzichtbare Ratschläge von erfahrenen Managerinnen, innovativen Gründerinnen und Geschäftsführerinnen und vieles, vieles mehr!

Female Empowerment - Women in Tech ist ein unverzichtbarer Leitfaden, um dein Schicksal mit Klarheit und Selbstvertrauen in die eigenen Hände zu nehmen. Wenn du ehrliche Gespräche, tiefgehende Analysen und leicht verständliche Anleitungen magst, dann wird du die Energie in diesem Buch lieben.

Sabrina von Nessen ist Speakerin, Mentorin und Führungskraft mit 20 Jahren Erfahrung in der Finanz- und IT-Branche. Sie ist begeistert von Technologie und Emotional Leadership.Sandrine de Vries vermittelt als Personalberaterin freiberufliche Software-Entwickler. Female Empowerment hat durch ihre familiäre Prägung einen hohen Stellenwert. Sie ermutigt junge Menschen, sich mit dem Zukunftsthema IT auseinanderzusetzen.

• Herausgeber‎: Independently published
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Taschenbuch, 194 Seiten
• ISBN: 979-8652358761

Material Girls - Why Reality Matters for Feminism

Material Girls is a timely and trenchant critique of the influential theory that we all have an inner feeling known as a gender identity, and that this feeling is more socially significant than our biological sex.

Professor Kathleen Stock surveys the philosophical ideas that led to this point, and closely interrogates each one, from De Beauvoir's statement that, 'One is not born, but rather becomes a woman' (an assertion she contends has been misinterpreted and repurposed), to Judith Butler's claim that language creates biological reality, rather than describing it. She looks at biological sex in a range of important contexts, including women-only spaces and resources, healthcare, epidemiology, political organization and data collection.

Material Girls makes a clear, humane and feminist case for our retaining the ability to discuss reality, and concludes with a positive vision for the future, in which trans rights activists and feminists can collaborate to achieve some of their political aims.

 Kathleen Stock: Is a Brithish philosopher and writer. She has published acadamic work sexual objecification, sexual orientation and other themes. 

• Publisher:‎ Fleet
• Language: ‎English
• Paperback: 320 pages
• ISBN-13:‎ 978-0349726618