She++ #includewomen

Last night I had the good fortune to attend an event at Pasadena City College aimed at empowering women to pursue STEM careers, specifically computer science. There were a suite of panelists from industry that presented themselves as role models:

Jillian, Lan, Waverly, Dr. Wilkinson, Brandii, and Natalia

• Brandii Grace, game developer
• Jillian Greczek, Ph.D. candidate USC robotics
• Orjeta Taka, IRobot
• Lan Dang, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), PCC Alum
• Natalia Alonso, CS B.S. (in progress) CSUN, PCC Alum

First, Dr. Paul J. Wilkinson gave a stirring introduction to the program with a quiz covering common misconceptions and little-known facts about women in computer science.  Women are 5 times less likely to pursue STEM.  U of Akron and U of Winnepeg studies show that females hold negative attitudes towards computers.  Some women do not pursue CS because they are afraid to be seen by their peers as outcasts, plain, unfeminine, or nerdy.

Second, Brandii spoke about the reasons why women are not found in CS.  Self-labeling theory is the idea that we (women) allow ourselves to be seen as "less than" by using diminuitive terms for ourselves, such as girls or gals, that keeps us out of the ranks of the "boys club."  No role model theory is that since there are so few female CEOs of tech companies that women don't see opportunity for advancement in that field.  Pretty girl theory is the idea that parents positively reinforce girls, valuing their appearance, while parents positively reinforce boys for their actions.  Differentiated criticism is the idea that boys are allowed to try things and make mistakes that they can learn from whereas girls are taught that when they do something wrong, they should have known better, which prevents them from trying new things.  She has seen this in her experience as a game developer, when girls test a first-person shooter game and they are killed, they put down the game controller and never want to play the game again, whereas boys will try repeatedly to "beat" the situation.

Brandii cited the TV program "Silicon Valley" as a poor example of Hollywood reinforcing the stereotypes of men in programmer roles and women in adversarial or "window dressing" roles.  I have a similar problem with the show "Big Bang Theory."  How about some equality?!  Differentiated learning theory is the idea that men tend to store information in a linear (procedural) fashion where women tend to store information in a story, therefore giving men an advantage in a linear profession such as CS.  She counteracts this theory by arguing that 

ANYBODY CAN LEARN ANY SKILL 

but some people have an easier road due to some innate ability (biology).  Altogether Brandii highlighted many reasons for the lack of women in CS, including also: Hiring Bias Theory, Investor Bias Theory, and Bros-Hire-Bros Theory.  She told us a personal anecdote about her own journey to startup where an investor said to her face "obviously you have no tech experience" because she is an attractive blonde woman who in fact had many years of experience working for Microsoft and other companies.

Third, Jillian gave us an overview of Robotics and described her work with socially assistive robots.  She highlighted the subdisciplines in her field: Machine Learning, Manipulation, Localization & Mapping, Computer Vision, Multirobot Systems, Remote Presence, and Human-Robot Interaction.  She told a personal story about herself as a Type I Diabetic and described how that motivated her to work on robots that could be issued to children as a "buddy" to help them through the first month of their diagnosis.  Her goals are to create robots that would withstand long-term relationships through adaptive programming and socially appropriate (not annoying) charateristics.  She encouraged the students in the audience to get into research through a DREU or REU program, which supports women and minorities specifically.

Fourth, Orjeta gave us a perspective starting in communist Albania and ending in a fulfilling career in Pasadena at iRobot.  She had a love of mathematics, and her mantra or "battle cry" was

IF YOU LOVE SOMETHING, WHY NOT?

which means that if you love math, don't hesitate to study it just because you don't see other mathematicians that look like you.  She told students that it's good to pursue your passion and experience it first without letting social roadblocks prevent you from getting into it.  Then once you're in the field, FIGURE IT OUT.  She told us that she loves her job because it's never boring.  Although working in robotics is frustrating sometimes, it feels like she's still in school because she's always learning, except she gets paid a lot.

Warrior

RP-Vita

Orjeta expressed her frustration with the way robots are portrayed in movies because the robots we have today are nowhere near as sophistocated.  With that being said, she told us that there are 100 RP-Vita robots in hospitals today that monitor stroke victims so that doctors can login remotely and monitor patients to decide if a medicine to save their life is needed.  She also told a story about the Warrior robot which was deployed to the Fukushima nuclear disaster and is also used for explosive-disposal work in Iraq and Afghanistan.  She said that sometimes robots come back to the company completely blown up and they throw a party since it means that no human soldiers were killed.  She worked on a Robotic Rodeo and a Self-Driving Car.  When she looked at photos of the event she was the only female in a team of 30, but she said "Just ignore it."

After the presentations had concluded, a panel was available to take questions, which included the three speakers and added two PCC alumna.  Brandii encouraged all CS students to stay up to date with new languages including Ruby on Rails and Objective C.  Natalia told us about her current project CSUNSAT-1 CubeSat: A Collaboration Between NASA, JPL, and CSUN to conduct experiments in space.  Lan told us that FORTRAN language is still preferred by scientists at JPL but they package the code in C afterwards.  The #1 hirer of CS grads is the US government, so jobs being outsourced is not an issue.  Natalia shared her experience of teamwork: if the problem is challenging enough, the team will rely on the strengths of every team member regardless of gender.  To break down stereotypes, make yourself available to the team and they will see your skills.

MINORITY DOES NOT MEAN NOT VALUABLE

Brandii concluded the panel discussion by reiterating the importance of networking.  There are many avenues, Women In Tech and ACM-W, and it is important to inform your network when you are looking for a job.  Rely on networks, they will be with you forever!

The event was well put-together and I found my way there by following the balloons.  Grace and the CS club did a great job and I even got a T-Shirt that I wore proudly riding up and over Colorado Blvd to my study jam today.  I got to catch up with my friend Paul at CalTech, which was great.  I hope events like this can inspire more events like this and we can form a web of women to catch more of the talent that is currently being underutilized.

No More Using Women as Window Dressing

Several items have come to my attention recently that make me cringe. Sexual objectification of women involves "reducing a woman's worth or role in society to that of an instrument for the sexual pleasure that she can produce in the mind of another." This is "taking place in the sexually oriented depictions of women in advertising and media..." The danger of sexual objectification of women is that it "can give women negative self-images because of the belief that their intelligence and competence are currently not being, nor will ever be, acknowledged by society."

First item:

http://www.salon.com/2014/10/31/happy_halloween_actual_phds_respond_to_amazons_womens_sexy_phd_costume_and_it_is_a_treat

Second item:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Grant 



To me, it is not funny or thought-provoking to have a woman's cleavage as the focal point of an advertisement or lesson.  I spend my mornings carefully selecting modest clothing that neither shows nor draws attention to my femine assets.

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/oct/26/-sp-female-academics-dont-power-dress-forget-heels-and-no-flowing-hair-allowed

People in general are "taught that power, respect, and wealth can be derived from one's outward appearance." It's not untrue. In a recent discussion in Jonathan Wolff's column, he points out that "A woman needs a different dress for each event, for fear of being spotted in the same thing twice." Perhaps this is a commonly held belief among people, particularly in Southern California where image is sometimes more important than substance. 

We claim to do science in a meritocracy, but Wolff claims that a female academic colleague of his takes "as long to decide what to wear to project her 'I don’t care' look, as it does others who dress to impress." Francesca Stavrakopoulou says in a follow-up piece that "Dressing in order to be taken seriously indicates that the spectre of older, more explicit forms of sexism still hovers over us: a woman who adopts a more feminine style is too preoccupied with pretty things to be a serious academic, because a woman can’t be both attractive and intelligent – if indeed she can be intelligent at all."

So that brings me to the Delicious Women's PhD Darling Sexy Costume and outrageous Rachel Grant as Professor Myang Li, on Brianiac asking the question: Which fruit floats?  My friend Candy Bless said "this 'sexy fill-in-the-blank' halloween costume thing has gotten out of hand." I've been as guilty as any twentysometing girl at embodying stereotypes of female sexuality as halloween costumes (self-objectification), but in my 30s I am totally over it. And I guess making a PhD sexy isn't a bad thing, but the comments about the costume by actual female PhDs were hilarous.

But when one of my students showed Rachel Grant as Professor Myang Li in a lesson about density in a Teaching Assistant Development Workshop, I went insane. Not only is Rachel Grant NOT a professor (she is an actress), but the lesson had no value in terms of explaining density.  Strangely enough, none of the other students in the class (men or women) were offended by it.  Instead they thought it was funny. I've written before about using women as window dressing, which is unacceptable and should no longer be a way of advertising products.

One bright spot in my week was the HuffPo article where images of Disney Princesses were depicted with realistic waistlines. This has the potential to reduce body anxiety in young girls who already have a hard enough time as they start to develop adult female body characteristics. "The sexual objectification and self-objectification of women is believed to influence social gender roles and inequalities between the sexes," which is interesting since EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK is becoming a campaign issue in this election cycle.

Another positive moment happened while watching America's Next Top Model season 21 (The Girl Who Says It’s Over, air date: October 11, 2014). Matthew, an aspiring model, dresses his co-contestant as a "slut." Totally offensive. “The word slut is something that should be taken out of your vocabulary,” demands Kelly Cutrone. Mirjana, an aspiring model asked to supervise a creative project involving 2 other models, didn’t want to take charge because she was afraid to look like a bitch. Tyra gave Mirjana a Beyonce-inspired lecture about how women who take charge are often called bitches. “I’m not bossy, I’m a boss,” Tyra forced Mirjana to repeat over and over. Totally empowering.

Third item:

make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif