Societal Influence on Gender Imbalance in Technology

I am very passionate about advocating for minorities and women in tech. One way that I champion this cause is by volunteering with organizations such as TechGirlz, which is a non-profit dedicated to reducing the gender gap in technology by targeting middle school girls and exposing them to hands-on tech workshops. TechGirlz was featured in the newspaper, News & Observer, and Durham Technical Community College saw my interview there. The college reached out to me and invited me to speak at their Social Sciences and Humanity Series on any topic that I’d like. Being that the audience would not be technical per se, and what sparked the college’s interest in me was my volunteer work with TechGirlz, I decided to speak on why this is even a cause in the first place.

I wanted to touch on social sciences and humanity as well, so I decided to speak on the Societal Influence on Gender Imbalance in Technology. I took the NPR study on When Women Stopped Coding and brought it to life with a flashback trip to the 1980’s, the period where there was a sharp decline in the number of women entering Computer Science. I brought the audience to that time period and immersed them in the culture of the time so that they can see for themselves just how we got to this point. The talk was fascinating! The audience was filled with people from all types of professions, but they all left wanting to know how do we solve this problem!