What occurred during the same time as the beginning of the decline of women in computer science?
The share of women in computer science started falling at roughly the same moment when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers. These early personal computers weren’t much more than toys. You could play pong or simple shooting games, maybe do some word processing. And these toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys.
Why does it matter that males had been playing on computers growing up? It established a narrative/standard for who used computers and who they were marketed to, which lead to a difference in exposure and familiarity to computers creating another hurdle for women and anyone else outside of that group.
When are diversity efforts most successful?
Diversity efforts are most successful when they’re driven by a commitment from company leaders. And meaningful commitment requires leaders to understand why diversity matters.
Why do diverse companies perform better?
According to Scott E. Page, professor of complex systems, political science and economics at the University of Michigan: “Diverse groups of people bring to organizations more and different ways of seeing a problem and, thus, faster/better ways of solving it.”
Give an example of how a diverse company can serve a diverse user base or vise-versa.
When the employees of an organization better represent their users and desired users, they will build more effectively for those groups. When YouTube’s almost entirely right-handed developer team built the iOS app without considering how left-handed people would use it, for example, 5% to 10% of videos were uploaded upside down as a result. This factor may be especially relevant for leaders of consumer tech companies.