from March/April 2008
by Bonnie Azab Powell
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A 1945 U.S. Army photograph shows programmers Ester Gerston (right) and Gloria Ruth Gorden installing "software" in the ENIAC computer. Plugging wires into different sockets, as on a telephone switchboard, they connected arithmetical circuits that enabled the machine to make calculations.
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For half a century, historians of computing ignored the World War II contributions of six women who—having answered ads for female “computers”— were instrumental in the development of the first programmable computer, the eight-foot-tall ENIAC. A new documentary film in the works, titled The Invisible Computers: The Untold Story of the ENIAC Programmers, should finally set the record straight.
The film couldn’t come at a better time. Technology companies need all the help they can get to recruit and retain women. In 2007, 13.4% of their corporate officers and 14% of their directors were women, according to the latest figures from Catalyst, a nonprofit research and advisory organization, compared with 15.4% and 14.8%, respectively, for all Fortune 500 companies. The percentages hardly changed from 2006.
A special cause of concern is that fewer women are entering the pipeline that leads to technology’s corner office. The share of computer-science bachelor’s degrees awarded to women between 1985 and 2004 dropped from 37% to just 25%, and in 2006 women accounted for a mere 13% of the electrical-, electronics-, and communications-engineering degrees. Compared with fields like biological and biomedical sciences, where female enrollment has surpassed male, “computer science has a very large image problem,” says Caroline Simard, research director of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, a research and advocacy group based in Palo Alto, California. “Women don’t see it as a field in which they’re especially welcomed, or one that gives them a chance to have a positive impact on the world.”
High-testosterone companies could start by taking a few tips from Google, which is not only famously innovative but also one of the companies in technology most committed to attracting, retaining, and promoting women. Those two attributes are related, thinks Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience and the first female engineer to be hired by the company, back in 1999. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have a rule that the percentage of female engineers at the company can never dip below 20%. “If it does, then Larry stops signing offers to men,” Mayer says, explaining that Page and Brin have read studies showing that in workforces where one gender or the other falls below 20%, inefficient, unhealthy communication patterns result. At Google, the interview committee for every engineering applicant must include at least one female engineer, to ferret out any hidden biases. The interview process acts as “a filter to make sure that not only are we hiring a lot of women, but that we’re also hiring men who are good at working with women,” says Mayer.
The company sponsors a Women@Google speaker series featuring successful women in a variety of fields, such as Hillary Clinton and Teach for America founder and CEO Wendy Kopp, as well as daily “tech talks” for both sexes. (In December, just in time for the holidays, one of these was about designing a holiday light display.) Google also runs a professional-development program for female engineers, offering continuing-education opportunities, management and employee awareness training, and social programs like the Google Women Engineers group’s Professional Development Bash. And then there’s the legendary array of perks, free breakfast, lunch, and dinner among them. Expectant mothers get special parking spaces, subsidized prenatal massage, and 18 weeks’ full-pay maternity leave, plus a $500 allowance for takeout food for the first month of parenthood. Those returning to work can avail themselves of the nursing rooms that dot every building at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California.
Yet despite all these efforts, even Google scores low on any executive-parity test. The rapidly hiring company declines to supply its exact female-executive ratio, but a recent count showed that of the 51 people listed on its website with the title vice president or higher, only eight were women.
To Helen Greiner, chairman and co-founder of iRobot, which makes robots for both consumers and the military, inclusiveness helps her company serve the majority of its customer base more effectively. “Women use a lot of technology, and they purchase more than 80% of the consumer products in the country,” she points out. That includes tech products. According to the National Center for Women & Information Technology’s 2007 scorecard, women buy 66% of all home computers. “We specifically target what we call the chief household officer,” says Greiner, “and I think it’s helpful that iRobot’s female engineers have an intrinsic understanding of what factors play in her purchasing decisions.”
Judith L. Estrin, a successful technology-industry entrepreneur who chairs the Internet traffic analyzer and optimizer Packet Design, makes a similar case for more women in boardrooms. “You wouldn’t want all your board members to be lawyers or finance people, would you?” she asks. “Diversity of perspective really helps you make better decisions.” Estrin might want to take a page from her own playbook; she is the only woman on the five-person Packet Design board.
Catalyst’s number-crunching suggests that placing women in influential spots at a company is good for the bottom line. “Our research has shown a very strong correlation between the highest proportion of women in officer positions—where at least three women serve—and higher performances financially for those companies,” says Deborah M. Soon, Catalyst’s vice president of marketing and executive leadership initiatives and a former telecommunications-company CEO herself. “The same is true for board representation.”
But before you start inviting any of the 50 women identified on the preceding pages to join your board, keep two things in mind: The demand for standouts like these far outreaches the supply, and the women themselves are picky about which boards they elect to join. It takes more than prestige and the size of a board retainer to get them to sign on, according to tech-industry veteran Ellen M. Hancock, former CEO of Internet hosting provider Exodus Communications. Instead, she says, women tend to ask themselves, “Am I going to add value so I can feel I’m doing something worthwhile? And what are they going to teach me?” Hancock has asked herself those questions each time she’s been invited onto a board. Among the invitations she has accepted: Colgate-Palmolive’s, in 1988. Her technology and manufacturing-plant experience would add value to the company, she decided, while she could learn a lot from a consumer-based outfit. She is still on that board, along with Electronic Data Systems’ and Aetna’s.
Some women with technology backgrounds also serve on the boards of nontechnology companies. Estrin, for example, is a director of FedEx, which she joined in 1989, and, since 1998, the Walt Disney Co. “Both companies are innovative, excel in their fields, and use technology, but it isn’t their primary business,” she says. “For me, it’s a great experience to get exposure to other types of businesses and a view of information-technology issues from the customer’s perspective.” Estrin chairs the information-technology oversight committee for FedEx’s board, a committee that didn’t exist when she joined.
A retiring CEO such as eBay’s Meg Whitman is sure to catch a board recruiter’s eye, and indeed she already serves on other boards. Her male counterparts are popular choices too, of course. But whatever the gender, the supply is small and boards must be open to widening their search requirements. Similarly, women with no director experience shouldn’t hesitate to put themselves forward as board candidates. “Everyone has to serve on their first board sometime,” says Hancock, who was just a vice president at IBM when Colgate-Palmolive tapped her as a director.
And for women considering whether to add one more thing to their already full plates, Hancock points out that board service can be career-enhancing. The Colgate-Palmolive experience, she says, ultimately helped her advance at IBM.