‘We need to create multiple pathways to bring more women and non-binary into tech’
Brenda Darden Wilkerson, Global President & CEO of Californiabased nonprofit AnitaB.org, spoke to The Hindu about the myriad challenges women in the tech industry face
son: Well, we (women) are over half the population in the world. So, tech, since it touches everyone and everything, really should be representative of our needs. The very narrow population that creates tech has not covered our needs or the needs of other segments of the population, whether it’s the elderly, the disabled, people in rural areas... We need the table where the tech is created to look just like the societies it’s created for. That’s the work that we do.
You have been working with women as well as people from the nonbinary communities. Do you see more nonbinary people coming into tech or more importantly, the tech industry welcoming them?
Well, you have to have the conversation. The status quo remains the status quo if you don’t talk about the needs of other people.
Welcoming the nonbinary community is very important. And it will start probably in the same way as it started with women – through education.
So, we now have to discuss what it means to be nonbinary, and what are the pressures they experience when they’re in the workplace or society in general so that we can start to change the culture around how they’re seen and how they’re treated.
I feel like it is an opportunity for us to not only help all of our families and communities but also companies to become much more successful. If they can serve the population that they’re not serving very well right now, it’s going to be better business for them. It’s a winwin all the way around.
From entry to promotion to disparities in pay, the challenges
women face in the workplace are multilayered. How do you address each of these levels?
One of the first things we talk about is creating multiple pathways for women into tech. We want women from different backgrounds and experiences – even those who started with marketing or finance and so on – to come in. It’s not just about getting young girls or women to come into tech. I’d love to get in women of my age who have had various other experiences. The next is to build partnerships where they can get the training and mentorship that they need, sponsorships within their companies and so on.
And then very, very critical, is community.
One of the best strategies to keep people out of tech is to isolate them, to make them feel like they’re the only ones.
Patriarchy has worked because there were always groups for men offering them plan, mentorship, people to look up to and become successful.
So, we provide communities for women. The community here in India is very strong. I see amazing women who are dedicated to not only their careers, but others’ careers.
We also work with the institutions where women learn, where they work, and where they get funded.
Often people ask, ‘how do you help women.’ Women don’t need help. They need the barriers removed. Existing systems, policies and procedures have many times not only not helped women but have hindered them from being able to be successful.
When it comes to workplace culture, there’s the written and the unwritten. The unwritten many times are more insidious than the written the assumption that women historically shouldn’t speak up, for example. Grace Hopper famously said that the most dangerous phrase in the English language is ‘we’ve always done it this way.’
So, let’s educate men and get them ready to receive women into the environment. We’re doing the same thing for the nonbinary people as well.
If you can start to have leaders who, first of all, look like us that is what has helped men over and over and over through the decades if we can foster the same sort of leadership pathway for women, then we know things will change. We need role models. We need to see others like us succeeding and doing amazing things. And it’s not that we’re not. Many times, those contributions are erased. I had never heard of Gladys West until about three years ago. She is the mother of GPS. I didn’t know about Grace Hopper. They didn’t teach me about them when I was growing up. So, we make sure we give that exposure. And we see people go on in their careers and do amazing things because they got that exposure.
How do you measure the impact of your work?
One of the ways we know that things are not working is when the retention is not there – that is when women are hired, but they are not retained. Over the years of their career, the trajectory into leadership for women is shorter than it is for men.
There are three things that we look at how many women are being retained, how many are being promoted, and at what rate? These three are really important spaces.
The other thing that is important to me is to encourage women to become entrepreneurs and build their own companies.
In the U.S., 49% of the new companies created since the pandemic were headed by women. So, if we can then work with funders to make sure that they get funding, teach them of alternate ways because VC funding is not the only way to get funding, it can go a long way.
Can you talk about some of the challenges specific to India when it comes to women in tech?
Shreya Krishnan: In India, intersectionality comes in with ideas of Brahminical feminism. Women who are Brahmins have more access. With their access, they have a certain voice because they come from a particular class. And with that class, they are able to advocate for feminism.
But what are you doing about people who don’t have that? What are you doing about Dalit women? These are some of the questions. Then there are minorities and so much religious discrimination against them.
When it comes to policy, advocacy and the way the world is designed, whether it’s in the U.S. or India, there is so much shared narrative about access, opportunities, equity, and understanding equity. There are people who are more pissed off with imperfect feminism than with the perpetual misogyny and patriarchy.
As per research the journey towards equity and pay parity in India will take around 200 years; Which means our grandchildren are probably going to see the fruits of what we’re doing. Which also means why it’s all the more important.
In India, you’re looking at intersectionalities that are far more complex because you have class, caste, you have the urbanrural divide, multiple languages, the Englishspeaking and nonEnglishspeaking divide…
To create equality, social justice and equity is the only way forward. We need to level the playing field.
The good news is today everybody wants to be diverse. Everybody has the intent now to say they want diversity either as a ‘tickinthebox’, a token, or as a genuine effort. There’s a conversation in process. Then, you channel that in the right direction. It’s a journey. And if people come to the table with a little bit of openness and intention, then the rest for us will be easier because we’ve started the work.