Caroline Liu

There are very few powerful women in Silicon Valley, a mecca for some of the world’s largest tech corporations as well as thousands of startup companies.  The blatant gender gap in the technological world is a consequence of various layers of discouragement women in the field face, starting with the disproportionate amount of girls educated in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and continuing with the harsh bias in the workplace.  Even after graduating with a degree and finding a job in the industry, 41% of women still leave careers in technology.

Enter Tracy Chou - Senior Engineer at Pinterest and gender equality pioneer in the tech industry.  Recognized as one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Tech, Chou has done much more for women than aid in the framework of the so-called 'female-oriented' social network.  She’s a fervent critic of the lack of diversity in the tech world.

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Image via Vogue

But this rising software engineer didn’t always want to be involved in the trade of computer science.  Chou spent her college years working towards an Electrical Engineering degree at Stanford University, in part because the gender imbalance in computer science was already noticeable (and sufficiently intimidating) at the undergraduate level. 

'In the past, I felt very personally frustrated and dejected,' Chou admits at the Above All Human conference. 'I wasn’t really sure why I wanted to be in the [tech] industry, even though I loved the work.'

Her college internships at Facebook and Google slowly turned her towards software engineering, despite initially resisting a specialization in any field in order to keep her options open.  Even while spending a fifth year at Stanford to earn a computer science degree with the accelerated master's program, Chou saw it more as a technical skill to assist her with a career in finance or consulting.

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Chou is building a safer community for students like me who feel alienated in male-dominated STEM fields.

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It wasn’t until Quora convinced her to give software engineering a chance that she took on a foundational role at the startup and realized how intriguing the work could be.  Even more, she began seeing and discussing the personal and public benefits of working in startups and the necessity of diversity in tech.

'The quality, relevance, and impact of the products and services output by the technology sector can only be improved by having the people who are building them be demographically representative of the people who are using them,' Chou writes in a blog post.

As a data-driven computer scientist, Chou knew that the truth about women in engineering roles could be found in raw numbers.  So she made a call for statistics in a blog post she wrote in October 2013.  In it she discusses the (in)visibility of women in the field of technology and states that open dialogue about the gender disparity issue is the only way to start tackling the problem in the industry as a whole.

She started the conversation by publishing Pinterest’s stats: 12% of their engineers are women.  As numbers began pouring into Chou’s database, you could see that women comprised less than 20% of engineers at most companies.  It became clear that giants like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, and LinkedIn were doing poorly with diversity and inclusivity in their workforces—but, their willingness to admit these discrepancies are indicative of a coming wave of change.

As a college freshman and ​potential ​computer science student, I know how intimidating it can be to look around in your crowded introductory lecture hall to find that your male peers make up most of the room.  I can only imagine what it will be like in the coming years as my few female peers in the department start thinning out even more.  Chou is building a safer community for students like me who feel alienated in male-dominated STEM fields.  I’m sure I’m not the only woman who finds ​inspiration and value in Chou’s conversation about the inequalities of the tech world​, and I​'m certainly not the only person who's ready to join the conversation. ​ 

 

Caroline Liu is a freshman and Quest Scholar at Wesleyan University.  In addition to writing for bSmart Guide, she is a National Contributor for Spoon University and Director of Social Media for The Prospect.  Find her on Twitter @caroqliu.

 

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