Women in Technology: gender gap persists - Roanoke Times

BLACKSBURG — Chloé Marchand wears a blue streak in her hair, makes good grades in school, builds robots in her spare time and unapologetically says she loves science and technology.

But even this 14-year-old shies away from sharing her passion with her female friends at Christiansburg High School, her parents say.

Chloé denies it has much to do with the fact that they’re girls, but she says “it’s just not their thing.”

This is what it looks like to sit at the beginning of the technology industry’s pipeline problem.

From robots to video games, society has long associated masculinity with the hobbies that often launch in-demand, high-paying careers in technology. Now, women hold 21.7 percent of technical jobs at top companies across the industry, according to research from the Anita Borg Institute.

Those working to fix the disparity say they’re going to have to overturn generations-old gender stereotypes that begin pushing girls out in childhood, intensify around puberty and follow them through their careers.

The issue has become a major concern for companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google, which recently began disclosing diversity numbers but still struggle to increase their share of women.

In order for Microsoft to hire enough female technologists, the company has said it needs to boost earlier computer science education so there are enough women with engineering degrees.

Virginia Tech says for it to produce enough female engineers, it needs more technology-minded women to apply out of high school.

Montgomery County Public Schools say in order to get more high school girls interested in technology, it needs them to begin developing that passion at an even earlier age.

And finally the science clubs that try to ignite that passion say they struggle to balance their numbers because girls too often consider technology a “boys’ thing.”

That’s where you find Chloé, a bright young woman with a knack for designing machine parts with computer software — but even she can’t find female friends to join the robot team with her.

She says it’s not for everybody, and “I don’t push it on people.”

“My own daughter — she was in it; she loved it; she worked hard for it,” Chloé’s father and technology enthusiast, Franky Marchand, said. “She was not proud enough, or she didn’t feel it was OK enough to share with her girlfriends. It was, I guess, a mixture of too geeky and kind of a guy thing. She didn’t want to tell the others and publicize it.”

Marchand worked a two-decade career in mechanical engineering before taking over as the general manager of a 2,000-employee Volvo Trucks plant in Pulaski County. He and his wife, Isabella Marchand, also organize Chloé’s award-winning robot team, the “Tuxedo Pandas.”

Franky Marchand said he volunteers with the Pandas in hopes of laying the groundwork required to address the gender disparity, hopefully by the time Chloé reaches the peak of her career.

Right now, if his daughter was to take a computer science or programming class in Montgomery County schools, she would be outnumbered by roughly 53 boys to five girls, according to school officials.

If she had graduated from Virginia Tech’s computer science program earlier this year, she would have received a diploma alongside 29 other women and 183 men, according to university statistics.

If she worked for Microsoft in 2015, she would have been outnumbered 84,600 men to 31,000 women, according to data volunteered by the company.

“Lots of people are on the bandwagon now. Twelve years ago nobody was talking about it; now everybody is talking about it,” said Barbara Ericson, a Georgia Tech researcher who has studied women in the computer science industry since 2004. “We’re creeping up, but we’re still pretty bad. Still have a long way to go.”

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Marchand said he sees the disparity in his own work, when he’s forced to go out of his way to find enough female engineers to bring diversity to Volvo Trucks.

But by then, he said it’s too late.

“The subject is so much cooler if we move the discussion from the hiring back to the early influence — to this,” he said, pointing to a room of Tuxedo Pandas working on robots with a roughly equal boy-to-girl ratio. “If we move it at that point, we don’t have to worry about it.”

According to Ericson, the Marchands have positioned themselves at one of the most challenging and important moments for young women in technology.

Before middle school, she said many girls excel in math and science. But then comes puberty.

“I’m changing, what does that mean, what does society think I should be doing?” Ericson said. “Before that, they’re not as worried about social and peer pressure. But by middle school that becomes really important.”

This, Ericson said, is the first place many women drop out of the industry before they have a chance.

Chloé was too young to join the Tuxedo Pandas the first year her parents coached the team, and no other girls signed up. So the Marchands made it part of their mission to fix that, actively recruiting girls and making sure the girls who did show up took active roles on the team.

The club’s gender makeup is roughly equal today, but it’s something the coaches have to be vigilant about.

When the Tuxedo Pandas entered a robot at last year’s FIRST Tech Challenge, pink lettering across the front proclaimed: #BuiltByGirls.

“It’s difficult because they have that feeling that they’re not good at it,” Isabella Marchand said. “It’s that first step that is difficult. The boys will come, bring their friends, no problem.”

Jessa Braak, a 13-year-old self-proclaimed “tomboyish person,” said she’s also had a hard time convincing her friends to join the Pandas.

She fell in love with science before she can remember, watching robot movies and tinkering as early as she could.

Braak remembers one of the first times it became clear she was challenging gender norms when a class in fourth or fifth grade held an end-of-the-year auction. She decided to save up her points to buy a sticker pack with characters from the Avengers comic book series.

“When I went to pick it up a girl was like, ‘You like boy things?’ ” Braak recalled years later. “It’s not a boy thing. It’s a superhero. So yeah, I’ve noticed it.”

Braak said there was a time those attitudes bothered her and she would avoid talking about her hobbies in school.

But now, she’s over it.

“Right now, I’m more of an independent person. I don’t really care what people think,” Braak said. “I always felt like people don’t encourage [girls] enough to be into science and robotics, so I always try to.”

Ayca Bulbul, a 12-year-old Blacksburg Middle School student, also recognizes she’s breaking the mold. She says math comes easily, she likes to read during recesses and has never earned anything less than an A in school.

But she said boys are the ones who show up to events like robot club with all the confidence.

“Most of them [girls] kind of think that they can’t do it,” Bulbul said. “It’s too hard; it will be too difficult; too time consuming.”

Ericson said these forces that hinder girls in science clubs reverberate through their time in high school. By the time students take the AP computer science test, girls are far outnumbered in high schools across the country.

Of the 36 AP tests tracked by the College Board, computer science has the fewest female test-takers by percentage.

In Virginia, women took 54.5 percent of all AP tests in 2015, but accounted for 23.3 percent of AP computer science tests, according to data from the College Board.

At Roanoke City Public Schools, 26 males and 11 females (29.7 percent) took the test in 2016, according to information obtained through the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

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Patty Gaudreau, the science curriculum supervisor for the Montgomery County schools Chloé attends, said she’s not hiding from the issue.

She said she recognizes the troubling statistics, and wants her schools to be part of the national push to turn the tide.

Gaudreau said some changes are small, such as introducing students to coding games that are rabbit- and Disney princess-themed — instead of war.

Other initiatives focus on career education.

Montgomery County students as young as sixth grade are using the Career Cruising application for the first time this year. They’re taking surveys to remove gender biases and pinpoint which field a particular student may find appealing.

The application shows students different careers that fall into each category and then helps them build a course schedule that will foster their interests — regardless of gender.

“Hopefully we can encourage kids to take more of these classes and it won’t be such an odd thing for a girl,” Gaudreau said. “I think the infrastructure is ready to embrace women. I just think we’ve got to start earlier building that awareness so they recognize a good job and aspire to it.”

Ericson, the Georgia Tech researcher, agrees. She points to initiatives like President Barack Obama’s plan to invest $4 billion in expanding K12 computer science education through the Computer Science for All program.

“[Girls] don’t even know if they like it or not. You have to expose them to it to find out if they like it,” Ericson said.

Asked if she thinks the numbers will even out, Ericson said it could happen — if everyone has an opportunity to fall in love with technology before puberty catches up with them.

“I think we’ll get there if [computer science] for all really happens,” she said.

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