In our last blog, we explored ways to get young women more interested in STEM by increasing the representation of women in STEM-related careers in popular culture. While this is a great first step, it isn’t enough. We also need our government to help encourage the hiring and promoting of women professionals and Women-Owned Businesses (WOBs), especially Women-Owned Small Businesses (WOSBs). Currently, the federal government has programs in place to help WOSBs; however, they rarely, if ever, meet their goals for contracting WOSBs and there are virtually no repercussions for federal agencies who do not meet these goals.

​Create North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Codes for Economically Disadvantaged Women-Owned Small Businesses (EDWOSBs) in Technology:
According to the United States Census Bureau, NAICS codes are “the standard used by Federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and publishing statistical data related to the U.S. business economy.” NAICS may be a classification system, but it also helps small businesses have a better chance of being considered for big time jobs. Contracts will specify that the contract has been set aside for companies that are classified with certain codes, including WOBs, WOSBs, and EDWOSBs. The problem is that there are no NAICS codes for EDWOSBs in the technology category, meaning EDWOSBs don’t receive any more special consideration than WOSBs, even though they face even more hardships by being economically disadvantaged in addition to being women-owned.

Require a Minimum Percentage for the Female Workforce:
​Geek Sources is a WOSB whose workforce is 64% women and we are incredibly proud of that fact. Unfortunately, as a women-majority IT company, we are basically an unheard-of anomaly. Most companies don’t have a minimum threshold for hiring females, or if they do, it’s minimal. One group that does have a great track record of going above and beyond their required hiring amount for a specific demographic is Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (VOSBs). VOSBs go above and beyond their imposed requirements by employing a higher-than-average percentage of Veterans. However, VOSBs have an advantage because a lot of government contracts in recent years have required that the winning contractor have a minimum percentage of employed Veterans in order to apply for the project, encouraging contractors to team up with VOSBs.
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​Deniz Franck, our CEO at Geek Sources, states that “one way we could really see change is for the government to just nudge more business towards WOSBs that specialize in IT/Engineering.” If the government were to have the same or at least similar requirements for employing women as they do for employing Veterans, chances are we would see the number of women employed in IT rise. Franck takes this idea a step further, daring the government and the IT field to step up to the plate: “If they want to add a requirement that the workforce is 50% women, then we won't have any problem matching it.”

​​If we were to give more WOBs, WOSBs, and EDWOSBs the tools they need to compete for large and small contracts, we would see a rise in both the success of these businesses and the number of women in the workforce, especially in IT and other STEM fields. If women and young girls see that WOBs working in technology fields are getting the resources, recognition, and income they need and deserve, they’ll be more likely to enter the technology workforce themselves.

In January of 2016, the National Science Board released its biennial Science and Engineering Indicators report. While women have been showing overall progress, albeit slow progress, to being better represented in STEM fields, women still only make up about 29% of the science and engineering workforce. Additionally, as a company working specifically in tech, it is upsetting to learn that less than 11% of computer engineers are women. And it’s not because there aren’t women who are qualified – there are so many women out there with untapped potential who could help us achieve parity.
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According to the National Girls Collaborative Project’s summary of the report, when it comes to K-12 education, “female students' achievement in mathematics and science is on par with their male peers and female students participate in high level mathematics and science courses at similar rates as their male peers.” In other words, female and male students are equally successful in STEM-related courses in their formative years. So what keeps these female students from pursuing engineering degrees and careers at the same rate as their male peers? Representation. It’s hard to feel like a part of a community when you don’t see or hear about other people like you in that community. Young women need to know that there are women out there studying and working in engineering fields every day.

To help make women in STEM fields more visible, books, movies, TV shows, and news segments need to highlight these women and tell their stories. The new Ghostbusters movie may be a comedy and may focus on paranormal science, but it also shows three female physicists who speak using actual science and engineering terminology and who build the technology to save their city all by themselves. The Oscar-contender Hidden Figures takes a different approach but also tells the story of three female engineers. Based on a true story, the movie follows these women as they help NASA send the first American into space. Even more importantly, all three women are black, meaning not only women, but women of color are seeing someone who looks like them participating in STEM careers and making a difference.
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Here’s how you can make a difference: Encourage the women in your life to pursue what they’re passionate about, whether it be art, science, literature, or aerobics. And for females who show an interest and an aptitude for STEM fields, give them a little extra push. Show them examples of real and fictional women who have pursued these fields: Ada Lovelace, Katherine Johnson, and Marie Curie; Hermione Granger, Temperance “Bones” Brennan, and Scully. Let them know that both men and women can contribute to and succeed in these fields. Help them crack that glass ceiling little by little, until all that’s left is shards.

Working in IT is incredibly rewarding, but it can often make you feel distanced from real people and real life, especially if you telecommute: You sit in front of a computer for a large chunk of your day and a lot of the interaction between you and your coworkers is via the computer or phone. You work on your project, attend your scrums, and finish your work items and, unfortunately, a lot of times you end up forgetting why you love technology: Technology enriches our lives and does so in a multitude of ways.

But how can those of us working in technology remember that our tech reaches beyond ourselves? The most important thing to remember is that, as IT workers, even though nearly all our work is done through a machine for an imagined user, the technology we work on directly affects real people.

​First we have the obvious people our tech affects: The users. Whether we’re creating a program, a website, a game, an app, or simply fixing glitches in an existing item, we do so with an end user in mind. This is the person whose needs and desires we are trying to cater to. But to push past our computer screens and into the real world, we must make sure that we don’t see these users as just a means to an end or as nuisances, who we can be rid of as soon as we change this line of code or clarify this epic. End users are both our bosses and our customers: We should want to impress them, make them happy, and give them the product they want. When our end user is happy, we’ve done our job right.

​​The other people our tech affects are a little harder to envision because we haven’t necessarily interacted with them. These are the people our tech affects but who won’t actually be using our product. These people are not users, they will probably never see our product in action, and they won’t be writing us a recommendation or dropping in on an elaboration session anytime soon. And yet, our product will affect them; it will hopefully improve and enrich their lives, or at least make it a little easier at times.

Information technology is a booming industry and new contracts and customers are popping up every day. As workers in this field, our work is reaching more and more people, affecting more lives, and making an even greater difference. It is our job to not only create the product our users want, but to make sure our work is about more than the product itself – our work is about the people the product is for and the people the product will impact.