Women in Tech: Learn to 'work out loud' to combat gender bias, urges Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon

Co-founder of Stemettes offers strategic advice at the Women in Tech Festival

Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon bought a message of proactivity and a can-do spirit to her keynote at Computing and CRN's inaugural Women In IT festival in London today.

"I always loved to understand how things work," she said, telling a tale of how as a very small child she had dismantled the family's VCR. This natural curiosity led to her passing two CGSEs at the age of 10 and then on to a Maths and Computer Science Masters at Oxford University.

During her educational career she realised that the people credited with major scientific breakthroughs were very often not the same ones who had done most of the work or even had the original inspiration. The culture of science and technology are often hidebound by hierarchy, and people who don't fit the mould can find it hard to progress or to achieve the recognition they deserve, which in turn leads to a lack of role models for the next generation.

The barriers placed in front of women led Dr Imafidon to co-found Stemettes, a social enterprise working to inspire and support young women into science, technology, engineering and maths careers.

"We want to help them to see they should be part of it," said Dr Imafidon. "We want them to see they can be creative and altruistic in this field".

Developers of technologies tend to assume that the end user will be more or less like them. If they are well-educated males from an relatively affluent background, as most are, this inevitably leads to unconscious (and occasionally conscious) biases finding their way into the products they create, hence the well-known glitches from recruitment algorithms that ignore women, to AI that fails to recognise black faces, to Siri's problems with ‘regional' accents. Recently, Fitbit released a failed menstruation tracker, that was apparently unaware of how varied the cycle can be between different women.

Biases can also be life threatening. Early airbags were designed to protect a 50^th quartile male, which sadly led to the deaths of a number of women and children. Will the same mistake be made by driverless car manufacturers?

A ship in a port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for - Grace Hopper

"It's a matter of life and death who's involved, who's driving the technology," said Dr Imafidon, but it's no good just expecting things to change, she went on. To counter biases and under-representation in STEM, women need to make themselves more visible and be willing to take risks. She quoted Grace Hopper, inventor of Cobol. "A ship in a port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for."

There are a number of approaches and techniques that women can use to gain influence, she said. The first of those is simply to get noticed.

"Find a comfortable way to be visible. Work out loud. Get into habit of sharing ideas and expertise," she advised, launching into an anecdote about at time when her then-employee expected her to buy her own air fare to attend a tech conference in the US, something here male colleague had not been asked to do. Because she had spent time building her internal network, Anne-Marie was able to quickly raise the fare via crowdfunding, which drew the attention of senior management who not only covered the expenses but also admonished her managers for their decision.

"Without working out loud, I could never have done that," she said.

Find a comfortable way to be visible. Work out loud. Get into habit of sharing ideas and expertise - Anne-Marie Imafidon

Another piece of advice is to have a growth mindset. "Don't just learn about IoT so you can be an expert, learn so you can be better at it," she said. Adding: "There's no such thing as a bad career decision, unless you end up dead. Make sure you're always growing. Embrace failure and look for scary challenges - there's always plenty of opportunities in tech to fail!"

Her third recommendation was to "find mentors, seek sponsors, build your tribe." Sponsors will only come if you're visible, she pointed out, meanwhile there's always someone below you who you can help out by becoming a mentor to them.

Finally she suggested that scientists and technologists should find the courage to break out of their comfort zone. "Engaging with the arts can make you a better scientist," she said. And women should step forward to join panels at tech events, to bring diversity to the familiar ‘manels' which just end up perpetuating the status quo.