How Female Software Engineers Break Gender Stereotyping

Do you dream to become one of the few female software engineers? Read on and learn as CIIT, a software engineering college, uncovers how female developers break gender stereotyping in their industry.

Gender Divide Is Still Wide in Tech

Walking into any tech company, you can easily notice how male software engineers dominate and outnumber their female colleagues. Experts name gender stereotyping as one of the reasons for this gender imbalance in the tech field. Deeply seated in most cultures, the concept that links masculinity to technology is still rampant and hard to overcome.

U.S. News recently wrote an article on this topic citing a study published on Peerj.com. PeerJ is a publishing firm that features works or researches related to Biology and Computer Science.

In the said study, a team of U.S. researchers tried to check whether men and women get their coding suggestions or “pull requests” equally accepted through GitHub, an open source software community. U.S. News says that over 12 million users go to GitHub to seek help from fellow developers in reviewing their codes and in puzzling out the problems in the software they are building.

As GitHub does not provide gender details on their users’ profiles, the researchers used social networks and Google to find out the identity of about 1.4 million GitHub users. After analyzing the data they acquired, they found out that users were more likely to accept coding suggestions from women versus men. Overall, women actually have their requests accepted at a higher rate (78.6% of the time) compared to men (74.6% of the time).

Women’s acceptance rates were also greater than men for some programming language in the top 10.

Researchers, however, found major gender bias when women make pull request to “outsiders,” or users who are neither owners nor coworkers of their projects. In their study, when gender was not readily available on user profiles, outsiders accepted pull requests from women 71.8% of the time. But when female coders made the requests using a profile that identified them as women, the acceptance rate dropped to 62.5%.

Overall, despite the proven expertise of women in open source, gender bias still exists in the field. Users only see females as better coders if they do not reveal their femininity.

Inspirations for Enrolling in a Software Engineering School

Obviously, women do not lack skills. They, in fact, tend to surpass male engineers in terms of efficiency and merit. If the previous study does not seem realistic; then, check out below some of today’s successful female software engineers as published on BusinessInsider.com.

1. Kamilah Taylor

A senior software engineer at LinkedIn, Taylor was one of those who rewrote the company’s major app and messaging. She also worked with her peers in developing the LinkedIn Learning iOS app. Besides co-authoring “Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories,” she is also an advocate for women and people of color in the tech industry.

2. Casey Edgeton

Edgeton works as a senior product designer at Forward, a promising health care startup. In this venture, she aims to “reinvent healthcare,” by providing users with an artificially intelligent app that can do body scans and DNA tests among others. She was likewise one of Uber’s first designers who helped develop the app’s interface.

3. Raylene Yung

She leads the team that supports the API and dashboard of Stripe, a payment processor for business of all sizes. She started her career at Facebook and worked her way up to a director’s position, focusing on areas such as privacy, sharing, and news feed.

4. Natalia Burina

The director of product management at Salesforce’s Community Cloud business, Burina helps to build Einstein, an AI technology that the firm is embedding into nearly all of its products. Prior to this, she built and founded Parable and served as a mentor for Stanford Society of Women Engineers.

5. Anne Aaron

As the director of Video Algorithms at Netflix, Aaron leads a team of software engineers and research scientists in enabling its millions of members to stream movies and TV episodes in the best possible quality. She is a PhD holder in Electrical Engineering and distributed video coding working her way up from senior engineer since 2011.

6. Raji Arasu

Arasu works as Intuit’s senior vice president of Platform and Services. She supports developers and third parties who build products that tie into the firm’s core products. She was StubHub’s former CTO, Code.org’s advisory board member, and a board member of NIC, a federal tech service provider.

7. Deb Liu

As vice president of Platform and Marketplace at Facebook, Liu runs product management and engineering for a unit that allows third parties and apps to make money on the site. She also serves on the board of Expanding Your Horizons Network, a nonprofit that encourages girls to enter STEM careers.

8. Melody Meckfessel

She works as a senior engineering director at Google’s Cloud Platform. In 2013, Wired named her as “the woman who was at the heart of everything Google builds”. It was also at this time that the company promoted her and asked her to lead the Developer Tools and Signals for Google’s Cloud Platform and its engineering teams.

9. Myra Haggerty

Haggerty is Apple’s vice president for sensor software and UX prototyping. She and her team are the people behind an Apple device’s response to touch input, from the fingerprint sensor to multi-touch controls. She has been working for Apple for the past 23 years and part of various patents that shaped everything from Mac to iPhone.

10. Marianna Tessel

She is the present senior vice president of engineering at Docker, the company who created the “containers,” a new category of software development tools. Prior to this, she worked as a VP of engineering at Ariba and VMware.

Tips for Career Advancement

So how can a software engineering college like CIIT-Philippines help you confront gender gap and create your own inspiring story? Below are some tips for your career growth.

1. Build confidence.

Seek a group that can foster a great environment of inspired confidence. Do not let internal doubts sidetrack your career and surround yourself with people that can encourage and inspire you.

2. Do not be afraid to ask for what you want.

Do not fear asking for something you believe you deserve. Nobody would give what you want just because you’re thinking about it. You need to open your mouth and ask.

3. Know your prospective employer.

In addition to knowing the job, you should also learn about the company’s culture. Firms that have programs in place to boost sponsorship of women offer flexible work arrangements and use quantifiable goals in performance reviews.

4. Find a mentor or a sponsor.

Find a mentor or sponsor that you can emulate and lean on but don’t settle for just anyone, seek someone that appreciates you and your skills and who is in a position to support you. He or she should be a well-respected senior who can offer you advice that carries a lot of weight.

5. Be yourself.

Resist the urge to blend in and ask questions when you don’t know something. Wear, state, and pursue what you want without worrying too much about the fallout. Be yourself and don’t let fear hold you back from achieving your full potential.

Don’t let the stats and stereotypes stall your future as a female software engineer. Enroll in a software engineering college that supports gender equality like CIIT Philippines. Our computer science degree includes software engineering and other relevant subjects that will help hone your skills to thrive in this career.

Call or email us to inquire about this degree and CIIT’s other bachelor’s degree courses.