- My linked article under “biases can infiltrate the process” is about the lack of women in tech. Along with Wynn, other researchers attended several introductory sessions a few years ago at West Coast University, and the observations were astronomical. These sessions provided women with uncomfortable settings, as the females received sexist jokes and imagery, geeky references, and a super competitive environment. Most women were seen setting up the venue with refreshments or raffling off tickets, while the actual presenters happened to be male. If a female engineer was invited by a company, she often did not speak or if she did, would get cut off. Wynn and a research partner Correll described “one session in which men asked 19 questions and women asked none.” This article is extremely valuable as it highlights the gender stereotype within the tech field, specifically among recruiters. For example, the article explains that “presenters often made comments that disparaged women or depicted them as sexualized objects rather than talented technical colleagues.” This Stanford research proves that first are impressions are essential in bringing success to a company, and in order to attract a more diverse workforce, companies must present themselves as diverse communities of professionals, which adds to Wynn’s larger article.
- I think “Why Are There Few Women in Tech? Watch a Recruiting Session” would be most beneficial to engineer recruiters of companies in the tech industry who host/attend these sessions. She talks a lot about recruiters and people within tech firms because that’s what the article focuses on, so they are meant to be the target audience. Broad and dramastic change, like having more women in tech, cannot happen through one individual person’s actions. A few sentences from this article that I believe would work well in capturing the point that is being made here for this group of readers is “Wynn says she has presented this research to recruiters and people within tech firms. ‘They’re astonished. They often just don’t know what’s going on in their recruiting sessions,’ she says. Another quote is “The paper also describes recruiters using gender stereotypes. One online gaming company showed a slide of a woman wearing a red, skin-tight dress and holding a burning poker card to represent its product. Another company, which makes software to help construct computer graphics, only showed pictures of men—astronauts, computer technicians, soldiers.” Creating a problem like this one and adding onto a stereotype that’s already existed for so long does not solve anything. Instead, it adds fuel to the fire and promotes this kind of humiliating representation of women in the workforce. Gender stereotypes are used so commonly now without the creators (in this case tech engineers) even recognizing them.
Writing and organizational cultures