It is no secret that the world of technology is male dominant. The ratio of male to female engineers and coders is overwhelming. In short, the tech world is a big exclusive boys’ club, and there are people working to change the formula.
One of those change agents is Sheryl Sandberg. The Facebook’s chief operating officer since 2008, and one of the early employees of Google who reached the position of vice president of Global Online Sales and Operation is no stranger to this all boys’ land; she experienced, first hand, how difficult it is for a woman to climb the ladder. Her book “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will” is part her story and part a practical guide for professionals to step up and claim higher position in the workplace, especially for women.
“The thing about stereotypes, and it hits leadership, it hits technical fields, is they’re completely self-reinforcing,” Sandberg said to Mashable. “The reason there aren’t more women in leadership is because there aren’t more women in leadership. Therefore, we don’t think of women as leaders. Draw a leader, you draw a man.
“It’s a ‘chicken and egg’’ problem, and you just have to get more women in to make it feel more supportive for women. So given that it’s so male, how do you fix that? You give women peer support,” she continued.
Now, thanks to her efforts, two social media giants, Facebook and LinkedIn are announcing a partnership to form “circles” aimed at women studying engineering and computer science. Circles are meant to be a supporting community encouraging and connecting women studying technology in different universities and colleges in the United States. There are around 330 circles already in place in universities like Harvard, NYU, and Stanford.
According to Mashable, “Just 18 percent of female students major in computer science, down from 35 percent in 1985. By offering Learn In Circles on college campuses, Sandberg hopes more female students will choose a technical career and stick with it.”
“This is a chance for students who often feel isolated or who don’t feel confident to come together and learn from each other,” says Telle Whitney, CEO and President of the Anita Borg Institute, a part of the partnership between Facebook, LinkedIn and LeanIn.org.
Narrowing the zoom bit on the Kingdom, it is not that different from the rest of the world; women are hesitant to study anything related to technology either because the institutes providing such education are limited, or because the employment opportunities after graduation are also scarce.
I hope we could see similar initiatives in the Kingdom; it could be part of the official move to open more employment opportunities for women. I have no doubt that a lot of Saudi women would excel at being engineers and IT professionals once they got the chance to demonstrate their abilities.
