Startups, Culture, and Why Gender Diversity Matters December 5, 2012 Jenny Slade, NCWIT

Where to Start … (It’s Not With Binders)

Women in Tech, By the Numbers: Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, 2011; Dow Jones VentureSource, Percent of U.S. technology jobs held by women 25 Percent of women executives at U.S. venture-backed startups 7 Percent of U.S. professional occupations held by women 57 Percent of U.S. software developers who are women 19

Why This Matters to You.

Women Correlate with Success. Analysis of more than 20,000 venture-backed companies showed that successful startups have twice as many women in senior positions as unsuccessful companies. Dow Jones VentureSource, 2011.

Women Help You Grow. Tech companies with women have been shown to use 40 percent less capital and be more likely to survive the transition from startup to established company. Cindy Padnos, Illuminate Ventures: "High Performance Entrepreneurs: Women in High-Tech," 2010.

Women Improve ROI. Tech companies with the highest representation of women in their management teams have a 34% higher return on investment than those with few or no women. Catalyst. (2004). The bottom line: Connecting corporate performance and gender diversity.

Women Improve Innovation. The presence of women in a group is more likely to increase the collective intelligence (problem-solving ability, creativity) of the group than the presence of individuals with higher intelligence. “Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups,” Science October 2010, Woolley, Chabris, Pentland, Hashmi and Malone.

Women Enhance Teams. Scott Page, The difference: How the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies, Princeton University Press, Groups with greater diversity solve complex problems better and faster than homogenous groups.

Women Are 50% of the Population. "We simply cannot afford to alienate large chunks of the workforce. It is a widely understood truth that the single biggest challenge is attracting the right people … to literally handicap yourself by 50 percent is insanity.” - Dan Shapiro, Google

Women Are 50% of the Market.

Why So Few Women in Tech? PipelineAttritionAttraction

The Selection (and Self-selection) Problem.  Lack of encouragement and confidence  Lack of mentors and professional development  Lack of good supervisory relationships  Lack of clear paths to promotion  Lack of support for competing life responsibilities  Unconscious bias

What Is Unconscious Bias? We all have shortcuts, “schemas” that help us make sense of the world. But our shortcuts sometimes make us misinterpret things. That’s unconscious bias.

Example: White male engineering students score lower when told in advance that Asians typically score higher on math tests Source: Aronson, et al., 1999; Steele & Aronson, 1998 Unconscious Bias Is Stereotype Threat.

Unconscious Bias is Tokenism. African American s Xkcd.org with modification by Cohoon, 2012

Unconscious Bias Is Micro-inequities.  Slights: “You’re the receptionist, right?”  Exclusion: “Oops, I forgot to cc her on the about stock options.” »Recognition: “No, I’m pretty sure it was Tom’s idea, not Jane’s, to use a link algorithm.” »Isolation: “Dude, let’s grab a beer!”

John Doe Jane Doe Unconscious Bias in Performance Appraisal. Moss-Racusin, Dovidio, Brescoll, Graham, and Handelsman: "Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, : Identical resumes. Gendered names. Reviewers (of both genders) strongly favor Howard in skills, hireability, and salary.

“Blind” orchestra auditions, with musicians behind a curtain, increased the number of female musicians hired by 25% to 46% percent. Goldin & Rouse (2000) The American Economic Review, 90(4), Unconscious Bias in Hiring.

Unconscious Bias Is Unconscious.

Removing Bias Means Tweaking the Status Quo.

What Do You See In This Picture?

Women and Men at Startups See Things Differently …

Change Your Status Quo. Select for Diversity.  Screen out bias.  Provide encouragement and reinforcement.  Provide mentors and professional development.  Build good supervisors.  Define clear paths to promotion.  Support competing life responsibilities.

1)Invite diversity. Use diverse networks, not just your status quo networks, to recruit. 2)Include a woman, and a pile sort, in your job interviews. 3)Remove biased language from job descriptions. 4)Audit your physical space for gender-neutral vibes. 5)If you’re a man, be a male advocate. 5 Things You Can Do Now.

1) Invite Diversity.

2) Include a Woman, and a Pile Sort, in Job Interviews. Pile sort:

3) Remove Biased Language from Job Descriptions. “Startups and Job Advertisements,” Aaron Kay, PhD: CONFIDENT OBJECTIVE DECISIVE ANALYTICAL AUTONOMOUS DOMINANT

4) Audit Your Physical Space for Gender-neutral Vibes. (Cheryan, S., Plaut, V., Davies, P., & Steele, C. (2009). Ambient belonging: How stereotypical cues impact gender participation in computer science. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(6), ;

5) If You’re a Man, Be a Male Advocate.

Changing the Status Quo to Work for Women Works for Men, Too.

NCWIT is the National Center for Women & Information Technology Our coalition includes more than 250 universities, corporations, and non-profits. We Can Help.

We’ve Got You Plugged In.

 Supervisory Program-in-a-Box Series  Top 5 Reasons You Should Work at a Startup  Top Ten Ways to Be a Male Advocate for Technical Women  Top 10 Ways Managers Can Increase the Visibility of Technical Women We’ve Got Free, Researched Tools.

We Can Help.

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