Happy holidays to you and yours from the PWN team!
News from the PWN Pipeline:
'Too few girls and minorities are becoming programmers and engineers.'
This impassioned editorial from the New York Times describes several factors that are actively interfering with the ability of women and minorities to succeed in engineering, computer science, and math-heavy fields. Among these obstacles are often limited options for acquiring a good education in math and science, 'entrenched stereotypes' of who typically succeeds in these fields, and lower expectations and investment from educators and employers. A particularly galling point is made by highlighting research showing that females who are told that math skills are innate are less likely to study for and score more poorly on math tests than female students who are told that math skills can be learned through hard work.
Women missing out on senior boardroom roles.
While more women are successfully climbing the corporate ladder, most are still not crossing the distance into senior executive positions. One view of this problem is that women are over-assimilating to a mid-level work culture instead of continuing to 'agitate' the system and move upwards towards senior boardroom positions.
'A lifetime of exposure to what women should be, how they should behave and who they should represent drives and reinforces unconscious and unseen biases.'
Although recent reports indicate that 9 out of 10 people want to see equal numbers of men and women performing leadership positions, the average workplace does not reflect gender equality in upper-level positions. Traditional pervasive gender stereotypes and expectations about women's ability to lead and to perform their jobs at a highly skilled level, in addition to unconscious gender biases, have the ability to undermine social and political frameworks calling for change.
