TO: Professor Blain
FROM: Marcia Elias
DATE: 9/28/17
SUBJECT: 500-word summary of “Bias in Technology”
Mone, G. (2017). Bias in Technology. Communications of the ACM, 60(1), 19-20
This article talks about the Technology field and their lack of women especially woman of color. Statistics show that industries have hired few African-American, Hispanics, and women compared to whites, Asian-Americans and men. According to a survey done in 2015 by the Computing Research Association, 4.6% of students who were awarded Bachelors in CS were African American and women represented 15.7%.
Diversity in a workplace is good for business because it shows social equality. Without diversity, things can become bias in productivity, for example, when photos of African Americans searched in google are tagged as “Gorillas” because of a mishap and when a soap dispenser did not register the hand of an African American. These things could had been prevented if there were more ideas that were diverse. Ideas from different genders and cultural backgrounds, products or services can be tailored to everybody and consumers would be pleased with the products they buy. With little to no progress in hiring women and those of color from previous years shows a pattern of a pipeline problem, meaning the lack of qualified women and people of color in a workplace and especially in the technology field. There are many qualified people fit for the job but are overlooked so many times.
Ann Quiroz Gates, chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas in El Paso knows that her students have the talents to go far in their careers but with such a heavy workload being full time students, they do not have time outside of school for extracurricular activities to gain skills companies are looking for. Working together with different companies, she has started to set up paid positions for her students to obtain those outside the classroom extra-curricular skills. With extra help and mentoring more women and those of color can get the motivation they need to pursue their degrees in Computer Science. As Juan Gilbert says “Diverse minds will give us the best solutions to problems”.
