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That's Odo.com. Hi, I'm Karis Swisher, Editor at Large of Recode. You may know me as the woman who wishes you could code like a girl, but in my spare time I talk tech and you're listening to Recode Decode from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today in the Red Chair is Reshma Sajani, the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, a nonprofit that's working to close the gender gap in technology.
It offers after-school programs, summer classes, a series of books and more. Reshma, welcome to Recode Decode. Thank you for having me here. We've talked before.
We talked quite a bit before on lots of stuff. And the reason we're starting to talk is under some controversy. There was a 60 minutes to explain how you got here. Because we've talked many times more.
Yes. Along with all the other groups that are doing coding. Yeah. So 60 minutes had done a story about girls encoding.
And I had actually spoken to Leslie Slaw years ago about doing an episode on this because she had actually done this incredible episode about girls in science. We had talked, talked, talked. We had gotten an email from a producer finally being like, we're doing a story. And they're like, this is amazing.
Turns out we ended up getting cut out of the story. And actually all of the women who were doing work in this got cut out. And the story was done on Code.org, an organization whose mission is not to close a gender gap in computer science, but whose mission is to teach all kids to code. And what was problematic was about also the episode was really that this is not a pipeline problem, right?
That there are women who are going into this. We're just not starting young enough. So 60 minutes really got it wrong. I think I watched it's not quite.
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. But this happens with TV in case you're interested.
It happens when you don't talk to the people who are living in breathing this work because it's more complicated than that. It's more complex than that. And it felt like a little bit of an infomercial for both Code.org and Microsoft. And then weeks later you have women who are walking out of Microsoft because of allegations of sexual harassment.
So we know that it's much more complicated than simply, let's get more girls to code. Right. So let's talk about that because I think I don't want to hear intra-coding fights. I mean, I get it.
I think this was some of the work code. It's been great. There's all kinds of groups. And each of them has their own role to play.
It's part of an overall role. And it's been helpful in raising the idea. All of you have been helped over raising the concept of it. You all sort of came into being, and again, you all hit it from different spots.
Explain what your group does. Yeah. I mean, Girls Who Code is our mission is to close a gender gap in computer science through technology jobs. So getting more girls to declare CS as a major and go into the field.
We've taught over 185,000 girls to code. We have 6,000 clubs across the country and all 50 states work, expanding internationally. So, you know, we're one of the largest organizations in this space. And our mission is to, you know, we run these free summer version programs inside technology companies, which help us then hopefully change the culture of those technology companies.
And we make sure that every girl that has the Girls Who Go Through Our program are under the poverty line and half of them are black and Latina. And it's working. So our black and Latina students are majoring at computer science at a rate of 16 times the national average. We have 30,000 of new computer science graduates.
I want to be clear. It's a low bar. It's a low bar. But we have 30,000 new computer science graduates that are girls who code alumni on college campuses right now.
And so we believe at our growth, at the rate that we are growing, we can close a gender gap in technology jobs by 2027. And there's lots of different Black Girls Code. There's no kind of organization. Talk about the code 2040.
Talk about the explosion of the idea. It was an interesting talk yesterday with Steve Case and Mark Cuban about jobs and where they're going. And they were talking about AI replacing coding. I want to get to that later.
But talk about why there was this explosion in all these groups from yours to code 2040 to Black Girls Code. Yeah. And I think a lot of us started similarly around the same time. I think we saw that we were living at a time where women were the majority college, right?
45% of America's breadwinners. And there were all these jobs and technology that paid really well, right? Right. 120,000.
And lacking in people. And in particular, lacking in women and people of color. And then in 2012, when you looked at the landscape and you looked at whether there were interventions, there just really weren't. And I think a lot of us experimented at different points in the pipeline through different interventions.
What I mean is Black Girls Code, they start very young. And they do incredible work in actually kind of organizing and shaping parents and community organizers and activists. We intervene inside technology companies and embed these classrooms in technologies. And we run after school programs.
Coach 2040 is doing incredible work, you know, a little bit upwards in the pipeline and really reaching out to minority engineers that are already in technology and helping support them and again helping shape cultures. You know, NCWIT has done incredible work, right? And their aspirations award, you know, the Grace Hopper Conference. So there's all these amazing women and people of color that are trying to basically get at the problem in different places and in different points in the pipeline because we know it's leaky all throughout.
And so you all started this in 2012. A lot of them all came on the ones. It was the idea that here and the Obama administration got behind it. This was very push very hard.
And the concept was that it was it was a diverse enough and secondly there weren't enough coders. But all in general and then in general, which other groups did, which like Code.org, which was that there weren't enough coders period and that they didn't teach them in lots of schools. Yep. Where do you think it is now in that idea in that in the concept?
Where do you how do you assess it after that amount of time with all these various efforts to try to get people coding more and different people coming from our work, right? So what we have learned that access is not enough, right? And this is maybe my one contention with Code.org. It's not enough just to have a coding program in the school because when you do, you'll still find that 80% of girls and 20% are boys that we need to expose girls to role models.
So we've been launching these kind of women in tech pilots where we embed stories about eight of the love ways the Eniac women graze hopper. So you know, you can't be what you cannot see, right? And it's also the way you teach coding needs to be attractive to girls and we need to really understand why they're dropping out. And the third part of that is like what isn't measured isn't managed.
And so oftentimes CS for all initiatives, they actually don't look and analyze what's the percentage of people of color? What's the percentage of women? Like how are we tracking? We just announced the first ever access bill in Washington state to mandate that every single school and every single district has to actually tell you how many women, how many people of color so that we can track how the progress that we are making or quite frankly, not making.
Right, right. To talk about that progress because in lots of, I had one of some research done by some people work for me, but things have gone up since you all launched is that people of color, women have increased in numbers in terms of getting them there. And it's through, I would assume the work of all the groups and focus on it. So there are increases among students, correct?
There are increases among girls, African-American girls especially, and some others. How staying is this? How important is this? I mean, they're saying access is in and out, meaning people have gotten to the courses.
What next? Well, and see what did a great post about this. Yes, there's more in raw numbers. There's more rates of women people of color, but there's a lot more rates of men too.
Right. So the percentage of numbers of men are actually increasing. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, so like somebody's initiatives do a great job of, you know, when you see Mark Zuckerberg doing a video inspiring you to code, who does that appeal to?
Right. And so when you're watching these movements and fold, a lot more men are like, great, I want to be a coder. Right. And so when people of color get the least amount of resources, the least amount of attention, the least amount of platforms I use 60 minutes to talk about our work.
And so it's not reaching the demographics that we know is possible. The other thing here that I'm really focused on now, because now we've taught a lot of girls. And I get really frustrated when people say, what's a pipeline problem? I can't find them.
Right. It's simply not true. And we're going to be releasing data on this. But year after year after year, I get emails from my students saying, I applied to Google, I applied to Microsoft, I applied to Facebook.
I'm a 4.0 MIT student Berkeley Stanford, you name it, can't get my foot through the door. And so what's happening now is that, and I've started forming a list, and many of us are the same thing, is that you still have all white male panels. You still have serious bouts of sexual harassment discrimination happening in these companies. You still have a culture, right, that is not welcoming to women and people.
So even if we teach them, if we are not simultaneously changing that culture, not only if they're not going to hire them, but women are not going to stay. Why wouldn't we give them a lack of people for the jobs that are available? Why do they not do that? What is in their way?
Well, you had a great interview with Frida Kabor about this. Right. Right. Excellent.
Right. And I think she raised a lot of these issues. It's most of these cultures have been created with kind of all white and Asian men. And we have to ask ourselves, can these big technology companies actually change and welcome?
I mean, we're talking about power. You know, people don't give up power easily. And I think the problem with the tech industry is it sees itself as this very kind of libertarian meritocracy. Like not us.
Right. And you almost have to actually present this. Right. That's my line.
Right. What are my lines? You have to kind of present the data and say, well, if it's a pipeline problem, how many have applied last year? Let's look at that data before you tell me that you can't actually hire them.
No one offers that. Right. Who's going to work here? Right.
To me, it's really interesting. Again, when I get this interview, which was I was ironic to white guys telling me about it, I'm not sure they were quite because they've been investing across the country. And one of the most interesting parts that I think Steve Case pointed out was that the original internet was dispersed. This is just geographic, discriminating.
Like I think 80% of all venture capital goes to three states, 50% goes to California, 60% of that goes just to Northern California. And most of it goes to white guys. It's really interesting. He was just like saying, here's what it happens.
So the original internet was widely dispersed. IBM was here, somewhere in Boston, somewhere in Kentucky, somewhere they were all over the place. And then when it became about software, it all moved right to Silicon Valley and largely white, and largely male, largely the same people who've gathered there in large groups essentially. And what he said is that both he and Cuba have been investing all over the country.
And you get a much more diverse group of people there because they're not all concentrated. You also get more diversity of entrepreneurs and you identify them. And also you get more expertise people like AgTech people in agriculture areas or health tech, which is dispersed all over the country essentially. So it was a really interesting thing.
And he said he thought that it would become, most of their investments actually, I was looking at them were more diverse. Right. They were significantly more diverse because it wasn't this concentration problem. Talk a little bit about that.
But I think they were saying the opportunities are elsewhere. And not anything Mark was saying, Silicon Valley is finished. Yeah. Essentially, which was kind of interesting.
And he did not start his company in Silicon Valley. Right. I mean, some of them, you just needed them to actually. Right.
So most VC companies just have rules that they wouldn't invest unless you were located like 50 miles from where they were. So, and I think the valley is a bubble. Like a lot of them don't actually leave and it's a very under-versed bubble. And I think that a lot of more, I'm seeing a lot more women and people of color saying, you know what, like these cultures are not going to change.
I'm going to leave and go start my own company. And I have to ask myself, as a CEO of Girls Who Co. Should I keep encouraging my students to actually go into these companies when they're simply going to spit them back out? And so we have to kind of, I think, really encourage a culture of entrepreneurship and find those businesses.
You know, my husband and I, you know, as a family do these kind of side investments in women and people of color. We see tremendous people. That's what they were saying. And I think everyone should do that.
Right. And there are a lot of people with a lot of incredible ideas. And I think that a lot of these folks that really just have a very siloed vision of who deserves who's worthy of their ideas being funded are simply going to miss out on the innovation of the future. Meaning that they're not going to have the investments.
Correct. Does it get a question of capital and how it's deployed? Correct. I realize this, but Mark has given Arlen Hamilton a million dollars.
Like it was bad. I didn't know that. I had to know that, which was actually had trouble raising money because lots of reasons. But you know, he's trying to, he's like, I'm trying to train her and help her and figure it out.
It was a really, because he'd read about it. Yeah. So given that, do we need to encourage people to code more? Do you think you guys have all got the message through or is that just an ongoing?
Yeah. I mean, I think we need to still, I care about equity. And I still think that there are so many parts of the country. And this is kind of, I think a lot of why Trump got elected, right?
Where people feel like their kids are not going to have the same opportunity that they have. And their jobs are being automated, right? They're being families broken by the opioid crisis. To me, those are the places where we need to be, right?
We need to be in places where kids don't have a lot of opportunity. The other place I'm really focused on is, you know, my new book Brave Not Perfect. I still think as women, we hold ourselves back because we've been raised to be perfectionists. You know, Clive Thompson had done this great story about why you saw this precipitous decline of women in technology in computer science classrooms from the 80s on down.
And what had happened in the 80s was the personal computer came out. And so a lot of women were walking into these classrooms where all these men had these, had tinkered with these computers. And they thought that suddenly they were smarter than them. It wasn't about their ability, but their perceived ability.
We often just went right counter-selfs out. Okay, we're going to talk about that book when we get back. We're here with Reshma's Sajani. She's the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code.
We're going to take a quick break now and we'll be back after this. This week on Network In Chill, I'm joined by tanks and Atra, the meme king with over 50 million followers across tanks, good news, influencers in the wild, and his personal account. Tank is breaking down what the meme economy really is, how much a single sponsored post pays, why major brands are throwing serious money at jokes and how meme culture, think preparation, age, starter packs, and a perfectly timed screenshot is actually reshaping how we think about money and value. Get ready for a conversation that'll change the way you scroll, make you rethink what going viral is really worth and prove that sometimes the most serious money moves are wrapped in the silliest of jokes.
Listen, wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash your rich BFF. We're here with Reshma Sajani, the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, which is an organization that helps high school go. They're to middle screen up. On up to code and move into this in college and things like that.
The idea is you guys are providing the pipeline, this beginning part, the part where people go in. And then the difficulty you're now seeing is you can train all you want or get tried to get as many people and there's lots of efforts going on going by lots of different groups to do this, especially over the last couple of years. But it doesn't matter because it comes up against the hard wall of the companies themselves. I think it even starts before that because I think the programs too, the colleges, is there what has to happen in colleges?
I mean, we've started 300, we're about to launch 300 college loops on college campuses because of the critical mass. So I think two things are happening there. One, you have these cultures that are very male dominated that frankly make women feel like they don't belong. Right.
And other people, not just women, but like certain men, people, scholars, like that. Correct. Like if you are not the norm. And I think secondly, sometimes when you are not the part of the majority, you underestimate your ability.
And so you feel like other people are actually more prepared, smarter than you are. And so I'm on a mission to kind of break perfectionism and also create community amongst women and people of color. So we've launched these Girls Who Code loops and they've been tremendous. So when is the loop?
A loop is basically a group of Girls Who Code alumni and other women in computer science where they can sit and ask questions and fail together. Oh, you just went to Twitter to interview. What questions did they ask you? Oh, you just took the CS class.
I heard some weed out class. What should I be thinking about? Oftentimes we don't share knowledge and information with each other because we don't want to feel like we're dumb. Right.
And so it's also, and the third part of that is really starting to change cultures in computer science departments, which I think is really incredible. I met a parent yesterday whose daughter majored in computer science at Harvard. And last year they switched from doing in-person classes to online classes. And her daughter dropped out because she didn't have that sense of community.
I want Harvard to measure what was the impact on that decision on women and people of color and understanding. Meaning like being in the. Yeah, a place where she can ask questions and it wasn't enough for her to just, how to be staring at a screen just asking questions. So I think again, that's really important to keep our eye on administrations on colleges and see what are they doing to make sure that this diversity quickly happens.
Rochester Institute of Technology is doing incredible work on closing the gender gap in tech. One of the reasons why they've been so successful is they've started these men who support women in computing clubs. So they're so smart. So they're the ones who stand up against microaggressions.
They're the ones who share internship advice. They're the ones who speak up when there's a sexist comment made. They're exercising bravery and using their power and their voice as a man to help change things. And I think that's critical.
So once you pass the college one, it's the job. It's the job market. And obviously right now a lot of the jobs are the big companies, more than the startups. And women do startups as quickly as men do at all by massive numbers actually, which is interesting.
Talk a little bit about that shift when you go into a big company and the idea to start a startup or to do that right out of the gate. Well, I think for a lot of women, it's that stability, right? It's that name brand. Like, you know, you want to go to a Facebook or Microsoft or Google.
And I think the problem I think that we're seeing is that these cultures are slow to change. I would have expected the diversity numbers to look. They are. They don't change.
They're not changing at all. And maybe I was a little naive when I started Girls with Code, but I'm like, oh, these companies are created oftentimes by men that were raised by progressive women, right? They're probably are self-disciplined feminist. You know, in a moment in time where we have a lot more knowledge about why diversity is important and a nerd is a nerd.
Well, nerds welcome. And that isn't what we were seeing happen with companies. And I think we're falling back on two excuses. One, the pipeline.
And there's just not enough of them. I can't find them. Right. And I think both of those are false.
And we have to really, really hold their feet to the fire to say, hey, like, if you think that this is happening, prove it. Because then nothing will change if we don't talk about the qualification. That's something you hear a lot that it's they do a lot. What I go to theory to me is when it's on boards, when there's plenty of people for boards, there's plenty in that area.
I'm like, there's plenty of qualified women. I can think of 20, 60, 30, 100. But in working, that is one of the arguments is that they, how do you change that? I mean, various people have talked about, you know, there's obviously testing that people do, there's all kinds of things.
But a lot of it does still come down to this idea of culture fit. Yeah. I will solve that because we will be able to sort people via AI. Yeah.
Talk about that. Well, one, I think there's a lot of elitism in terms of where we recruit from. And what I have found, especially after the student loan crisis, is that I have a lot of students who got into MIT or Stanford, but they're going to CUNY or Hunter because I can't afford it. Yeah.
And so we really have to change where we're looking for talent. Right. Because I think we'll find a lot of women and people of color under some minorities and places that we're not looking at. One.
You know, I think second, it does matter when you have all male white panels that are interviewing who are making the decision of who's qualified, who's not qualified because they're looking for a judge in the eye. Yeah. I didn't get a chance to believe. Oh, it was all.
I was sort of like, whoa, now even one, you can not drag one woman in. Wow. Because they're not looking for them, right? I mean, the other thing is that I wish that computer science departments and technology companies would think about talent the way colleges think about football teams.
They go out and find them. They have recruiters that are out there looking for them. Trust me, if Google really wanted to get to parity in the next five years, they could figure that out. Right.
But that would mean that they would have to actively get up, go out in the country in the world and find them. It's always hard when it's something that's not hard. But here's the thing. I think millennials care about this.
And I think that Google and Microsoft have a potential becoming like Goldman Sachs, where a lot of people just don't want to work there because they want to be affiliated with that brand. And I was surprised when I read that Google had filed something with the National Labor Relations Board to say that people can't organize on their emails. I mean, that's the kind of thing that millennials are like, what? And so they got to shift because they're going to have a huge problem finding talent among different people.
Yes. Yeah. So what do you advise them? So then there's that going to the big companies which are stubbornly continue to have the same diversity numbers.
What else could they do? What could they actually do? Not that you should tell them exactly what to me because they have plenty of resources around. But what would be one thing that you would have the big companies do?
And then I want to move on to entrepreneurs. Well, I think we have to be honest in the fact that there's a lot of micro-gressions and sexual harassment happening at these companies. And they're engineering, don't know how to behave. And they almost need to have training to how to interact with women quite frankly.
Because Silicon Valley can't be like Hollywood, right? Where it feels like, listen, if you're somebody's bringing in a lot of money and you're going to let you do whatever you want. Right. Like that seems to be like the attitude there and that has to change.
And I honestly feel like, and I've been at some of these events and I've been at some of these conferences, it's like the basics. Like basics. It's not to me. Impact or not?
I mean, here we are. Post that. Post. Well, sort of post that in the middle post of it.
I think it's not as, it's not as, have had as much of an impact as I would like, listen, for all the women who are listening here that we're technology companies, keep protesting, keep fighting, keep walking out. And for all the male allies, when you walk out to, like, we just have to start organizing technology companies in a way that you see other companies be organized so that these cultures change, they have to feel the pressure. Do you think it's out of ignorance or just? I don't think they want to deal with it.
I think it's, again, a lot of what they consider high performers, talented people who engage in these behaviors. And they don't want to risk them walking away or having to fire them, but they need All right, so you train these people up and then they run flat into this wall of sexism, et cetera, et cetera. What about starting your own company? Because that's one way of doing it.
That's one way of actually starting to see the field for later. Yeah, I am highly thinking about creating an incubator because that's kind of the conclusion I'm potentially coming to is that maybe it culture only happens from inception, that you have to start a company out with a diverse team and to build a culture where actually you want to have diverse talent. And that means that we have to support women, people of color, under the groups to start their own companies. And how does that happen from a capital point of view?
I mean, I think you need to have more people actually writing checks. I mean, what was the number fewer than 20 black women in the history of our country have gotten more than $1 million in capital. Right. And so I do think that a lot of us in this space need to think about how we're supporting that work too.
So how do you do it? Saying it is one thing. So I think that female founders fund, right, all raised is thinking about this. BBG Ventures, there are a lot of different kind of funds now being created around women around diversity.
We need more. All right, but then subjects people to being pushed to the side, those are the diverse funds versus here's the game. If I'm saying that I don't even know if I can change the culture of Facebook, I don't know if I can change the culture of Sequoia. I don't know.
You know, I have not seen the type of change that I'd like. And so we may have to just throw our hands up and say instead of continuing to try to change the establishment, let's make our own establishment. That's always been my theory in life. Like, except that's where the money is.
It is, but it doesn't have to be, does it? I mean, I still think that like you can have, I believe that there are very, I think about Brian O'Kellley, one of our first supporters of, you know, just made a lot of money out of AppNexis. He believes in this. Like I can, there are men who have a lot of money who are thinking about diversity in very different ways.
I'm not saying that there have been a clinic for the past 40 years. So maybe there's a new generation of investors who are going to think about this differently and I encourage you to. Okay. When you think about the creation of these companies, you obviously have to have an entrepreneurship angle with young women, people of color.
You're teaching code, but don't you need to teach more than that on your entrepreneurship? We are teaching more than that. All of our lessons essentially end with an impact project where we encourage our girls to build something, to get into a team and create something. One of my students, you know, afterwards built a microchip where you put into a gun and it alerts you when it goes off in an area like a school, the youngest woman to get a patent and a station at the University of Pennsylvania.
You know, we have students who build, you know, build an algorithm to help detect whether a cancer is benign or malignant. You know, I had a student who built a tool called Rethink, which if you're about to say, something negative on a group text, it asks you, should you say that? She was on Shark Tank. Yeah.
So like we are inspiring and build things like that, you should go a drug thing and breathe into it and then you're not allowed to text if you're a real drunk. Oh, that's, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, we are inspiring them to be entrepreneurs and to think entrepreneurial.
And that also means like being able to present your idea. Like, every man I know has like a billion dollar slide in his business idea, even if he's like selling ice cream. Most women will not tell you how their company is going to be a billion dollars because we think we have to prove every single little number. So part of it is like, how do I present?
Like, how do I talk about the thing that I believe in? And how do I work with a team to create it? When you're doing that, what are some of the challenges you face in pushing girls out like that now after getting them, you know, moving the ball forward on coding itself? Yeah.
I mean, I think I told my undo story, how girls are afraid to write a line of code and then ask somebody for help because they don't want to show that they've made a mistake. I think once they get through that, I'm like, wow, I can actually create something that I didn't think that I could. I think the next stage is really having belief in their idea, you know, knowing how to work with a team to actually create it and then asking somebody for money. You know, I tell people all the time, like, you know, have your daughters like sell girls, you know, cookies because this idea of asking someone to invest in you is something that sometimes is a challenge for us as women because it's not what we've been raised to do.
Right. And to also be able to stand up and speak in like, you know, present your idea. I can't tell you, you know, after my book tour, how many times during Q&A, I'll watch the first 10 hands raised so our men. Yeah.
And the women are like furiously like scrolling down their questions, trying to perfect them. It is true. The other day, I wouldn't ask. I wouldn't answer questions.
I don't really care. Anyway, we're going to take another break now. We'll be back after this with Rashma Sujani, the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code. We're here with Rashma Sujani.
She is the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code. Do you ever think of calling it women who code? I'm not being... No, no.
It's just it's got to move people along. Well, there's an amazing organization called Women Who Code. But I think it's important as an entrepreneur to stay in my lane. And I feel like there are still millions of girls that I want to teach.
I mean, I was just on the phone with a team in Jordan today because I really want to start teaching Girls Who Code and refugee camps. So I still feel like there's a lot like I need, I want to do in this age demographic. In this age demographic. Yeah.
And what are some of the changes you see as you've done it over the past couple of years since when 2011, right? It's becoming cooler, right? I think we've made coding cooler because part of it is that, right? When you change a girl's mind, a lot of this is like, ugh, that's not for me.
That's like a dorky guy in the basement somewhere. Sure. I think that we have shifted the way that we talk about it. Girls want to solve problems.
They don't want to have a theoretical conversation about computational thinking. It's like, hey, teach me how to code so I can build this website to do something about climate change. I think the third thing is really about changing the mindset of parents. I still think that we encourage our boys to get dirty and be technical and to build and create things and we're still pushing dolls and princesses to our girls.
Not me. Of course not you. My voice is cooking. My voice does build and create.
But you know, it's just like, we're hardwired. Parents are hardwired and sometimes like toughen up their boys and insulate their girls. And that often, I remember when one parent came up to me after her daughter had been through a girls program and we were encouraging her to start a club at her school and she was like, well, my daughter's really popular and she's like that at the cheerleading team. I'm like, ugh.
But I still hear this from parents. I still hear this from parents. Right. From the parents you teach.
Yeah. All right. So when you're teaching them, let's finish up talking about where the next things are going. Obviously, it's not going to just be coding as me, all kinds of things.
Yeah. I do think in the future, having more humanities background, having more other things as you've seen through some of these problems at Facebook and other companies, one of the reasons is that people making these products have no conception of either their users or anything else. I could not agree more. I think that they also don't, I think girls really care about the impact of technology on humanity.
You know, one of my students was telling me how, you know, a data sets are so important because she was reading how Google and Alexa are being used by perpetrators of domestic violence to lock women out to turn the music up or all that. And you don't have people on those teams who have experienced that to say, hey, you know, hey, wait a minute here. Like, this could happen. Right.
So I do think that having that mixture, right? Because gender studies major in also majoring in computer science is incredible. We have to encourage that. I think that where this is going is I think that this generation of young people want to change the world.
They're not thinking about making money, right? That great article today in New York Times where you have to think about like these CEOs, it's almost like too much capitalism, right? They're too much thinking about the bottom line and how they can use adverbs to make another dollar and not thinking about the impact on humanity. It's like, where are you going to be at this moment in history?
But where are you going to stand? And I know where women and people of color and underserved groups are going to stand on the right side. No, all not necessarily. All there's some more of that.
Yes. The only way to change is to get the whole culture to think like that. Or to have more people to have more people like that in the larger business culture. To do that.
Absolutely. And I think we've lost that, right? What we call compassionate capitalism. I think we've lost a sense of, and you really see this I think in the past couple of years of Trump's administration.
I mean, I think part of the reason why we haven't really turned his business is really still by him. They won't maybe admit it publicly, but they absolutely are. Yeah, they like the economy. Yeah, they want to make more money.
Right. And while people are hurting every single day, and the fact that we're lacking babies, that should be enough to say enough is enough. And also the culture of violation. I was just talking to Scott Galli about this.
You see an interest on Harris earlier this week is even if you don't feel like you're locked into online stuff, for example, social media or other things, you get impacted by it anyway because of what dribbles down into the culture. You may not follow anti-vaxxers on Facebook, but it has an impact on you. You may not sit on Twitter and yell at each other, but it has an impact on the society at large. And Scott was making the point that now top basketball players are screaming at refs.
Right. And everybody feels that it's leaking out into the culture at large. I don't think it's a male thing. I do think it's a culture of not thinking about safety.
Absolutely. And I think it's a lot of silos. We think that whatever is my Instagram feed is what life looks like. And it doesn't.
And I think it's making us less compassionate, making us less able to love. I mean, there was a huge attack on Syria yesterday. Most of us didn't even know that that happened. Hundreds of thousands of kids got displaced and are not going to go to school and that most kids haven't gone to school in Syria for the past nine years and 15-year-olds can't read.
We are so detached from what is happening in the rest of the world. And I think a lot of that has to do with what we see on our social media feeds. And it's really, really problematic. And I think that having a diverse set of innovators and creators and entrepreneurs would change some of this.
Do you see any role models, when you talk about, I want to finish up talking about the idea of role models. Everyone talks about that. Where do you see the role models though? I mean, I think that they're, I actually do think that they're everywhere.
And they're just not on the front page of the New York Times about the fold. Right. I think that we are still reading about when we think about technology, these CEOs. And I don't think that people are looking to them necessarily as role models.
And we need to know. No, they're on the side of that. You know, I am, you know, I'm speaking at Bill Gates' summit next week. And one of the things I want to say is that listen, people look up to you as CEOs.
And so you actually could make a lot of difference. One, somebody thinking about who's a woman I'm going to highlight on my team. Who's a woman that I'm going to tweet about and say, hey, learn about her. Like don't always operate from gender and race or replace a defensiveness.
Use your power for good. Use your voice for good. Use your platform for good. And we often don't think about it.
I sometimes be like, I don't hear from these CEOs unless there's a walkout having or protest having or sexual harassment allegation. Like I want to hear about what you think about gender equity on a weekly basis because you come from a place where you are loudly proclaiming that you are a feminist. And it's something that you don't know. I want, I know what I want them to.
Like I want them to, I want to see a different type of leadership from these men. And I think it's possible. I know them. I don't think so.
I mean, I mean, I don't think about it. I think it's not, it's not necessarily hostility with all of them. And it's some of them. It's hostility for sure.
Or defensiveness. Like, you know, not my fault kind of thing. And then the second part is they don't think about it. And it's priority number 26 on a list of 27.
Or it's, you know, it's lowest, no one up down. So they never get to it. And definitely growth growth grows at the top of it and all kinds of different things. But it's never, you can't even make a financial argument to them, which is that to me is really interesting when you look at all the various studies that show that a diverse workforce is a more profitable one.
And you have one study after next. And by the way, you don't have to believe studies. Lots of studies are crazy. They're not saying, but it probably will make you more money and you can't even appeal to their greed.
And that's what I find interesting. So then, you know, forget about them. But I do think that the men won level below or two levels below. Like I had a lot of very senior Uber engineers after that went down men because 40% of girls were quotes teachers are men.
Say, I can't stay here. Say, I think I'm going to go up and say, I think I'm going to go up and say, I think I'm going to go up and say, I think I'm going to go up and say, I think I'm going to go up and say, I'm going to go up and tell you're going to go up, and you will go up and tell you what I want to do. I think that the men who have talent and who are brilliant and smart, but who are feminists who are going to put up with this. You need to leave when those things happen.
And what would you like to do in the next version of girls. I mean, the next couple of years. You've got people talking about doing code. You have people thinking about code and it's all across the country.
Every state is talking about the idea of coding education. Even though there is all these issues around education and that's like that. It is a priority. It's one of the priorities.
Definitely a priority through all these various efforts. What is next? What do you think are the key things next? You've got people attention.
It still has a pipeline, I mean, has a pipeline from all throughout, right? Less than 25% of the workforce is female and what less than 5% at the top level is, is when people color, I mean, it's a less than 1%, right? It's horrendous. And so we have a unique opportunity.
It's almost like it's like the 1900s and we're looking at the law profession or the medical profession. We have a unique opportunity to learn from what didn't happen in other industries and to do it differently in tech. I'm not telling you that I have all the answers, but I am telling you that I'm thinking about it every single day. So what areas should they go into of tech?
What are you encouraging? Well, we're encouraging them to continue to stay being technical. And this is, again, wise. But what, particularly?
We want them to go into the software programmer, go into product development, right? Go into kind of places where they can actually- Okay, AI, robotics, automation. All of the above, right? I mean, I think every week people have a different opinion about where the industry is actually going.
But our mission right now is to simply just teach computational thinking. So you actually feel comfortable with the languages that are coming at you. And that's really our goal. Like, it's not like we want everyone to go into robotics or into AI or into being data scientists.
I want you to feel comfortable understanding technology and computational thinking in terms of like, I can go in and solve the problem. Like that's my goal. And then what would you like from the media? I'm not getting back to that.
Oh my God, like I am on a shameless effort to like stalker on the rhymes with your next show and like a female coder. Listen, it's all about culture. Like this is all about culture. Is it work?
It works? Hopefully we're listening right now to mean care. But look, I think that culture can actually shape this and change this very quickly. And you've seen this in other ways.
We see this with medicine in law, right? I mean, scandal, LA law. And so- Scandalin, not really the way we want to be here. Right.
But you sure what I'm saying? I need to know that LA law. I get your point. But like, that's how I decided to be a once going to be a lawyer.
LA law. Not on the LA McPill. That was a different show. And we're quirky and- And Kelly McPill is going to be accused.
To me, like a super cool show about like, you know, female coders that go on and like, you know, take Facebook down. Like, that's inspiring. And so showing more of this on television, in magazines, you know, in children's shows and really shifting, you know, not having Barbie dolls that say I hate math, not having teachers that say I'm allergic to algebra, right? Not celebrating this culture where girls are not quote good at math.
And also like inspiring bravery, right? Which is what my book Break Not Perfect is about. Like, I think that we have to show women a different way and not be stuck in the way that we have been actually raising young girls. And we as women have felt like that we actually can't take risks.
You know, we- And look, I do think that there is a higher cost for failure. You know, I was reading how women in finance are 20% more likely to be fired, you know, after a violation. Women in the bar are, you know, twice the rate are disbarred for the same exact thing. And so, and we see this in tech.
So we have to change kind of the culture of failure. And a failure can't be a privilege just for white and Asian men. It's got to be a privilege for quite frankly for all. Everybody fail.
Everybody fail. But we got to raise our kids differently. Yeah, that is absolutely true. Rest in mind.
Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks, Kelly. Thanks to you all for listening. Let me go.
Let me go. Let me go. You can follow me on Twitter at KerrisWisher. My executive producer, Erica Anderson, is it Erica America?
My producer, Eric Johnson, is at Hey, Hey, ESJ. Where can people follow you online? You can follow me at rasmusajani on Twitter and Instagram. I say UJ and I.
Right. Okay. If you like this episode and what is Girls with Code? Girls with Code.com.
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Just search for them on your podcasting app of choice. Thanks also to our editor, Joel Ravi. Thanks for listening to this episode of Recode Decode. I'll be back here on Wednesday.
Tune in then.