Bridging the Gender Gap in Tech

Despite the success of female tech industry CEOs like Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard, and Oracle’s co-CEO Safra Catz, it seems such prominent women still haven’t inspired a great deal of others to pursue studies and careers in IT. What’s more frustrating is that women who do work in the tech industry are often paid less than their male counterparts, and tend to hold less senior positions.
In some countries, there have been in-depth studies of this issue which provide valuable insights. For example, in the United Kingdom, girls actually do better than boys in tech skills exams. But fewer girls take the tech-related GCSE subjects and even less do so at A-Level, which in turn means that this affects their numbers in higher education. Surveys show that they are less interested in tech careers in the UK, which has resulted in a tech workforce with only 16 percent females.
In the United States, 46 percent of the advanced placement calculus test takers are females, but three-quarters of them don’t end up taking a computer science class. This explains why only 9 percent of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in the U.S. are women.

This is what education specialists consider to be a problem in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) funnel, which shows that only 35 percent of girls are interested in these fields at school, compared to 65 percent of boys.

In global companies, the employment numbers seem more encouraging but still reflect the imbalance.

In May this year, Google statistics showed that women made up 30 percent of its total workforce, but that they only held 21 percent of its senior positions. Yahoo’s workforce is 37 percent women, Microsoft’s 29 percent, LinkedIn’s 39 percent, and Facebook’s 31 percent, but only half of them have technical jobs.

Most of these companies say they intend to tackle this issue, especially Google which has announced that it will invest $50 million in programs to get more girls interested in coding. The company is also working with Girl Scouts of the USA and female celebrities to spark more female interest in computer science.

Looking at tech startups also provides some indicators, but it seems there’s an even more horrendous gender gap there. A Harvard Business School study revealed that only 7 percent of startups that attract venture capital are led by women entrepreneurs. On the funding side of the industry, the percentage of women working in VCs is also small at a mere 11 percent. Add to that the fact that around 20 percent of coders in tech startups are women, and you start to think that there must be some socio-economic reasons holding them back.

Sociologists claim that the ‘geek’ factor is to blame. The surprisingly clichéd result that appears in surveys is that women believe a career in computing would involve hours spent writing codes in a cubicle alongside a host of socially awkward characters, working in teams dominated by men in which a female would feel alienated, or worse yet, discriminated against. Recent studies show that the work-all-night and work-on-weekends culture is pushing women away too. Accordingly, a common response from women is that working conditions and culture in the tech world aren’t welcoming enough. So the sector is becoming a boys club which alienates girls.

A significant percentage of university graduates in the Middle East are women, but the workforce is still dominated by men. In Jordan, 51 percent of university graduates are women but they only constitute 16 percent of the workforce (the lowest in the region). In tech startups, however, the numbers appear a bit more encouraging with around one-in-five being led by female entrepreneurs. However, these entrepreneurs say there are many challenges to overcome still, such as proving to investors that they’re as capable as their male counterparts in managing and leading teams of males, and balancing work and family life.

Without grassroots action, the situation isn’t likely to get any better soon. Accordingly, there are various initiatives around the Arab region to address the problem, mostly as local chapters of global initiatives like “Girls In Tech,” “Women in Tech International (WITI),” “Girls Who Code,” “Women Who Tech,” and “Women 2.0.” “Girls In Tech” has been active in the region this year with Egypt and the UAE chapters organizing events. While WITI has representative offices in nine Arab countries, including Jordan, to conduct surveys and spread awareness.

Clearly, all parties involved must strive to encourage women to vigorously pursue technology careers. As economic growth becomes more dependent on technology, this gender inequity could be a detrimental factor to that growth.

Bill Gates summed it up by saying: “Any country where half the population is not allowed to reach their full potential is not going to be competitive.”

Published as my Tech Talk Column in Venture magazine. 

Let's Connect on Twitter: @zeidnasser. Or email me on zanasser@gmail.com

The ‘Social’ Enterprise is here

We live in the age of ‘social’ software and ‘smart’ devices, which could make you cynical when you hear terms like ‘social-this’ or ‘social-that’. However, sometimes the use of ‘social’ as a prefix is indeed merited.

An excellent example is the maturing field of social-style interaction incorporated into enterprise software, to create what is being considered a ‘Social Business’, or ‘Enterprise 2.0’.

Basically, it is an additional layer of communication and sharing capabilities that is added to already existing online software which enables employees, customers and suppliers to collaborate and organize information, using web and mobile platforms.

Software as a Service (SaaS) has been a prevalent model in modern organizations for a few years now. Every major software vendor now enables company staff to work from anywhere by incorporating core business functions of the organization into an interface accessible from any device.

What was missing, though, was the adoption of some of the best ideas and functions available through social media from the consumer side. Chatting and messaging, posting on forums or user groups and collaborating on shared content are all clear examples of what can be taken into the organization for its benefit.

Analysts and consultants call this the ‘consumerization of business’; but to keep it simple, it’s just businesses being smart and capitalizing on the changing nature of the typical employee.

People want the same communication experience they enjoy in their personal lives, to be available in their professional life; to share data with co-workers, and seamlessly communicate through messaging instead of just using email. If this increases their productivity and happiness, companies should realize its impact on the bottom line.

With the entrance of millennials into the work place – those born between the early-eighties and the turn of the century- it has become imperative to adopt such communication and collaboration abilities to retain younger employees.

That’s why the biggest players in enterprise software are getting in on the act.

In 2012, Microsoft acquired Yammer, a private social network, which puts people, conversations, content, and business data on one platform. At the time, more than 200,000 companies worldwide were already using Yammer to collaborate with employees. It was an example of businesses seeking out a solution, even from a small vendor, if the bigger software companies weren’t providing it.

So, Microsoft jumped at this opportunity demonstrating that social media in the enterprise is much more than a fad. Yammer is now part of Microsoft’s Office division, and is major part of its Office 365 strategy, within the SharePoint Online service.

Oracle, another major player in enterprise software, has recently purchased Involver, to create what it calls ‘a cloud-based social platform across marketing, sales and service touch-points’. Oracle is now presenting an expanded social platform using Involver's SML (Social Markup Language). The result will be a more comprehensive, and consumerized, experience.

The enterprise software specialist SAP has also launched “Jam” which is a secure, social collaboration solution that extends across SAP’s entire technology landscape to give social capabilities.

IBM already has a Social Business division, and its aims in this field are well articulated.  IBM says it wants to “connect employees and customers to share their best ideas and new processes’.

It would appear that the customer is now, finally, in control! Enterprises will also reap the benefits of enhanced feedback for the purposes of product and service development.

This is an ‘open’ age of information. So, enterprises are going to have to open up too.

There are, of course, software security challenges involved. But that’s part of this evolution, whereby the benefits truly outweigh the potential concerns, which can be tackled.

Empowering employees and communicating better with consumers must be every company’s goal. Positive experiences create satisfied customers, and more revenues. That’s the optimal goal that corporate IT departments aim to achieve.

For decades, businesses have claimed to be ‘at the service of the customer’. Now, such claims are being truly tested as technology weeds-out those who cannot deliver on that promise. Beware the rise of the ‘social enterprise’, you have been warned.

zanasser@gmail.com

Revolution 2.0 is actually Awakening 1.0

It’s being called Revolution 2.0. It was facilitated by Facebook pages that brought young Tunisians and Egyptians together, starting a national conversation and taking action. It was driven by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Twitter updates, which attracted the attention of the world to an evolution of a revolution.

This movement has been building up for years and you have to look at it as a step-by-step process of empowerment.

The Internet has been available in the Arab countries for nearly 15 years, but its penetration levels to almost every segment and social class only started a few years ago. With that Internet access came knowledge and communication, coinciding with the introduction of social media platforms- like Facebook, YouTube and others. It then took some time for Facebook to be Arabized, but a flood of Arabs joined immediately. The number of Facebook users in Arab countries is currently around 20 million. However, to this day, Twitter users in the Arab World are estimated to be less than 100,000, so it can’t be seriously considered a high-impact media on the populous, but what it can do is reach and mobilize the media and technology savvy Arab youth, a now highly influential segment.

For a few years, there was a lot ‘training’ and ‘testing’ involved; finding out how governments and authorities would react to opposition on the Internet. Censorship, website blocks and even turning off the Internet became expected responses, but those driving change kept raising the stakes and pushing up the levels of freedom of expression.

My friend, Wael Ghonim, played an important role in these events by starting the Facebook page ‘We are all Khalid Saeed’ – the young man brutally beaten and killed last year. Wael became a face of this revolution when he was kidnapped and jailed, and became a hero when he was released.

For all of us, who knew Wael as a regular guy, a tech and media professional like us, his disappearance caused an outrage. A massive online movement built-up online to search for him and demand his release. Tweets and Facebook updates about him were saturating social networks. Websites and blogs across the world picked them up, followed by global news organizations and then a whole wave of ‘where is Wael’ emerged that made the headline news in every country in the world. His employer, Google could no longer remain silent and had to provide comment. His release was also heavily covered.

The members of the Middle East technology and media community who ‘connected’ over the past few years through meetings at conferences or doing business together, realized that they could do so much more when ‘one of their own’ needed help.
And, every one of Wael’s Facebook and Twitter friends felt they had played their small part in the Egyptian uprising.

But, the real heroes were not the people sitting behind a keyboard tweeting! They were those who responded to the digital call for action, but reacted in the real world and put their lives in danger and got real injuries. In the end, it became clear technology, as it always has been, was nothing more than a tool in the hands of a willing people. There are no digital replacements for human sentiments and causes.

On New Year’s Eve, I was interviewed by Al Jazeera, who also spoke to other guests on a panel regarding the topic of technology and economy in the Middle East in 2011. A couple of the guests were older - and old fashioned- people who said they had lost faith in Arab youth, saying they were too busy paying attention to ‘trivial matters’.

My response was that there was already clear and encouraging movement, across the Middle East, by young entrepreneurs and activists who were driving economic and social change, creating new jobs and building a new, better future for Arab youth using tools and knowledge that previous generations did not have access to. It was probably the last thing on any of our minds that this Arab youth would be creating new political systems too!

The media can call it whatever they want: Revolution 2.0, the Digital Uprising or whatever. The reality is that millions of Arabs are thrilled, not because of the technology involved, but because it feels like ‘Awakening 1.0’.

zanasser@gmail.com

It’s official: PCs have been replaced by personal gadgets

You are probably tired by now from hearing about Apple. But for industry watchers like us- writers and analysts who have followed computing for three decades- we cannot ignore the milestones being crossed and the turning points being witnessed in this era!

Here’s the latest milestone, that sheds some light on the reality of the growth in mobile computing versus desktop/laptop computing.

Newsweek has reported that, within six months, Apple's revenues from the iPhone and iPad will be more than double its revenues from the entire Macintosh computer product line. Imagine how a company founded in the late seventies to produce personal computers, then going through a cycle of ups and downs, has completely re-invented itself as a producer of slim mobile gadgets, which are now the new form of computers.

After all, what does a personal computer do nowadays? It’s an Internet-connected machine we use for email, telephony, information, social networking, gaming and some light business applications. What if you could add options like a size that fits into your pocket or a small handbag, including a music player and 5 megapixel camera. How can a desktop or laptop computer compete with that for personal use?

Don’t get me wrong. Fully-featured PCs with wide screens, expansion slots, peripherals and big keyboards are still needed for both business and entertainment; but the majority of people today seem to be doing just fine utilizing touch-screens or mini keyboards on smaller devices. As a result, many are ditching their computers.

Combine the impact of of the recent efforts of Apple, Blackberry, Nokia and others and you begin to see the convergence of computing, telephony and photography is complete.

In the poorer countries of the world, smart phones- which we are mobile computing gadgets- are the more widely available computing platform, are cheaper and therefore help bridge the digital divide. Just look at the number of mobile phone subscribers in Africa, compared to home or office broadband Internet subscribers. Clearly, a shift is happening in the way ‘we compute’.

For now, I cannot yet comfortably write and lay out this column on a smart phone, but I could probably do it with an iPad equipped with the right software: A complete device the size of a book, thinner than my monitor and without the need for a separate keyboard, mouse or cumbersome computer case. Amazing!

People keep saying change is coming. Well, it has already arrived. Let’s learn to deal with it!

zanasser@gmail.com