Insights from women in tech: “That was the moment when I felt power over the computer.”

There are dozens of jaw-dropping stats when you research women in tech. Case in point: A PricewaterhouseCooper report showed that only 22% of students could name a famous female working in technology, whereas roughly 66% could name a famous man working in technology. Reports also show that the stereotype of tech as a traditionally male-dominated field puts up a lot of boundaries when it comes to breaking the bias.

Tech is a very dynamic, fast-developing industry, and building a career in the field often involves learning, brick by brick, different components and the latest lessons. Liubov, who has worked in tech for nearly a decade, told us how she started in web design — which she called “the first brick of my IT experience” — and has since found that “all of the technologies, strategies and approaches are changing in geometric progression.”

This idea of growing over time and persevering (or, as Marie Curie once said, that “progress was neither swift nor easy”) can make it OK to make mistakes, to have more to learn, to need reassurance that it can be done. And that kind of encouragement is important.

Particularly in our tech-driven world, engineers and developers often have the power to help shape the world, but without a diverse set of voices and perspectives in those rooms, the solutions they develop and implement could potentially miss out on crucial insights. Encouraging underrepresented groups to have their voices heard in tech can be very empowering and enlightening on both sides.

Another developer we interviewed, Maria, told us what first sparked her interest in the industry. In 9th grade, she missed her first computer science class and tried to catch up through a downloaded presentation with explanations and examples. Starting with Pascal language, she logged the code, ran it and was encouraged to see that it worked. “It was simply logging text to the console — but that was the moment when I felt power over the computer.”

There’s not one single thing that will light that spark and encourage more women to join tech — and it’s also important that we don’t elevate tech as the only worthwhile path, as there are so many other ways we can use our strengths to build a better society — but it’s about time we make some progress. We at least owe it to future generations to truly present the possibilities. We owe it to ourselves to make sure that, if we’re entrusting AI with the power to analyze data and make decisions, the AI doesn’t have blind spots and isn’t programmed to perpetuate biases. We owe it to ourselves to show that science and art exist together, in tandem, and we need connections to them both to live. We owe it to ourselves to face up to difficult things — and to make it easier for others to do the same.

As mathematician, physicist and author Emilie du Chatelet said, “Let us choose for ourselves our path in life, and let us try to strew that path with flowers.”