College women in tech say they already see sexism

Gender inequality discourages many in the pursuit of a computer science career

Dozens of women in tech — from entrepreneurs to start- up employees — have spoken up in recent months about their experiences with sexism and sexual harassment in the workplace, leaving many college- aged women studying computer science worried for what’s to come and thinking twice about pursuing careers in the industry.

Among the recent sexual harassment scandals in the industry:

Justin Caldbeck, co- founder of Binary Capital, announced a leave of absence at the end of June after being accused by six women of sexual harassment.

Chris Sacca, founder of Lowercase Capital, was accused of touching the face of an entrepreneur and investor at a tech gathering in Las Vegas. He issued a public apology.

Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups, stepped down in June after The New York Times revealed that he had been accused of sexually harassing women he worked with.

Travis Kalanick, who left his position as Uber CEO in June, apologized for Uber’s culture in February after several scandals, reports of pervasive sexism and software developer Susan Fowler’s allegations of sexual harassment and sexism at the company.

Women studying computer science say the culture of Silicon Valley has already started affecting them in college.

Emily Sim, a junior computer science major at Tufts University, said she has experienced sexism and sexual harassment in tech settings that have made her moderate her personality and how she acts in the workplace, including in internships.

“It makes me scared for people like me — fresh out of college, going into the workplace and not feeling that they can be themselves for a lot of reasons, but also because it affects productivity,” she says. Sim says she thinks this dynamic is bound to get worse af- ter graduation. “It’s micro- aggressions from our classmates that we deal with now,” she says. “We know when we go into the workplace it will transcend to more than just that.”

Sarah Wooders, a computer science junior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said she felt those micro- aggressions as a software engineering intern at Bloomberg, where she sensed women were being assigned less desirable projects than men.

“I wrote down that I wanted to do things with algorithms, math and very heavy back- end, and my preferences were kind of ignored,” Wooders said. “There were only a few other women out of maybe 150 people, but I noticed that they all had very frontend, much less technical, much less interesting projects and seemed to be not as happy with their projects.”

When Wooders described her experience during her exit interview, she said she felt her problem was dismissed. “The ( interviewer) was like, ‘ That’s impossible, we do so much for women,’ which I thought was a kind of ridiculous thing to say,” she tells USA TODAY College.

Problems like this can cause women to leave the field before they even graduate, but according to Sydney Gibson, a junior and computer science major at MIT, women sometimes decide to leave the major because of knowledge gaps and discouragement.

“Less women than men come into MIT already familiar with how to code, general computer science knowledge, general math knowledge,” Gibson said. “There’s more catching up for them to do, and sometimes professors and other students aren’t receptive to that. I personally have learned to be aggressive in the classroom.”

More than 1 million job openings in computing industries will be available by 2024, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology, and companies will need women to fill those spaces.

Some groups trying to create this space for women include Girls Who Code, Women in Technology, a non- profit that focuses on empowering women, the Anita Borg Institute, which helps women grow their careers, and Women in Computer Science, which is helping increase participation of women in the tech field.

Through groups like these, women have learned ways of navigating the tech world.

“I’m personally trying to specialize in an area of computer science that makes me valuable and not easy to look over,” Gibson said.

More than 1 million job openings in computing industries will be available by 2024.

SARA GIBSON “Less women than men come into MIT already familiar with how to code, general computer science knowledge, general math knowledge,” says computer science major Sydney Gibson.