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FEATURE
she says. “It’s almost easier to disregard people who are
doing something malicious because they’re trying to get
to you, than to work with someone who you like, and try
to tell them that something they intrinsically believe is
messed up.”
In computer science culture, women who wear makeup
or seem “pretty” can be perceived as being less serious
about their work—including among other women. “Even
when women feel comfortable being feminine, the extra
attention they get for looking different than the norm is still
a reminder of that feeling they don’t belong,” Marcu says.
“It’s nice when people compliment me on my appearance,
but it makes me feel like an alien sometimes. It’s like you
put on a decent set of heels and a skirt and everyone’s like,
‘Holy cow.’”
building on the positives
As important as it may be to identify and root out gender
or racial disparities, students say it’s also important not
to spend too much time looking for negatives. Marcu
attended one conference for women in computer science
in which participants told horror stories about sexual
harassment, pay inequities and mistreatment. “It was just
lots of negativity,” Marcu says. “It felt like they were trying
to scare women out of going into computer science.”
Women@SCS “is not a support group for people to
complain about sexism in computer science,” Quispe says,
“but it is definitely an outlet for me to feel better about
being a woman in computer science.”
Word about Women@SCS has spread, says Frieze, who
has shared material developed at CMU with universities
throughout the United States and around the world. “CMU
has a reputation for paying attention to gender balance, but
one of the things I have to always convince them of is that
we don’t do anything special for women,” she says. That
philosophy drew Marcu into the group in the first place.
“I believe so strongly in what Carol is doing,” says Marcu,
who served as coordinator of SCS’s Graduate Women’s
Mentoring Program and currently speaks at Women@
SCS roadshows. “Networking benefits women, not so that
we can get together and talk about ‘women’s issues,’ but
because seeing people who look like you is very important.”
Hearing prominent female computer scientists talk about
their experiences is important as well, she says: “It helps me
envision someday being in their place.”
For Schervish, Women@SCS is not just her link to female
faculty and students—it’s her link to her college and to the
university. “There are so many people in SCS that I don’t
know, but I feel so connected to it because of Women@
SCS,” she says. “It’s made me feel like I’m not an outsider.”
Marcu says that through the activities promoted by
Women@SCS, the group practices the inclusiveness it
preaches. “Men are involved in Women@SCS—highly
involved—in things we do,” she says. “I’m not interested in
having ‘more women’ in computer science, I’m interested
in diversifying it overall.”
What’s the payoff
Does diversity in both gender and race lead to smarter
technologies and computing products It’s hard to say,
although there’s anecdotal evidence that the myopia caused
by lack of diversity can lead to product flops. Some of the
e-commerce shopping sites that went bust during the early
2000s dot-com boom were designed from the perspective
of male engineers, Ensmenger says. “They were focused
on creating the least difficult means possible of acquiring
something, and that’s not what shopping is for most people.
It can be fun, it can be social. People wanted more out of
(e-commerce) than just what a male engineer might want.”
There are more recent examples: In 2009, reports circulated
that cameras with face-detection technology were having
a hard time detecting the faces of dark-skinned people.
Last year, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, co-creator
of the Mosaic browser and co-founder of Netscape, told
Fortune Magazine that he ignored the potential of Pinterest
until a female researcher urged him to spend some time
with the site. His firm then invested $27 million. Too many
computer technologies, Andreessen noted ruefully, have
been “initially aimed primarily at men.”
“If you’re going to have successful social networking
technologies, e-commerce, medical diagnostics, then we
need to have systems designed for a broader perspective,”
Ensmenger says. “If we have systems designed not only by
males, but by a particular kind of white male who defines
himself in terms of his ‘nerdiness,’ we’re going to have
problems.”
Computer scientists often talk of the potential of their
work to change the world. If that’s true, then, logically
speaking, changing the population of computer scientists
will eventually have a multiplier effect that will ripple
through society. Women “need not only to be a part of
the culture, but contribute to shaping the culture,” Frieze
says. “The idea is not simply diversity for diversity’s sake or
diversity for women’s sake. It’s become clear that diversity is
important to the industry.”
—Jason Togyer (DC’96) is editor of The Link.
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