Cyber safety

Our game gives people an opportunity to practice training on how to accurately report phishing emails. Phishing refers to malicious emails that try to trick people into clicking on links or otherwise give away sensitive information. Many workplaces provide some cyber security training on phishing and other attacks, however, much of it follows a traditional model. That is, people are presented with education about cyber safety, and they are then asked to answer questions about the training. This model measures immediate comprehension, but does not tell us much about whether people’s behaviour has changed as a result of the training.

Cyber attacks are on the rise globally, and have increased since COVID-19 pushed many businesses to work from home or go online. Cyber attackers prey on our behavioural biases. Unfortunately, most training does little to address this pattern. For example:

• Training is hard to remember and the perception of risk fades over time. You might do cyber training in January. By June, when you receive a phishing email, you may have forgotten what to look for and fall prey to a cyber attacker (availability bias)
• People lack time and mental bandwidth to respond to phishing. The average worker receives over 100 emails a day. We are busy and respond quickly. We may therefore overlook clues in a phishing email (scarcity)
• There are too many unfamiliar rules. Cyber security training introduces many ideas that most people are not used to thinking about, such as how to spot illegitimate domain addresses. Training therefore tends to overwhelm novices who are less engaged with technology (information overload)
• People don’t know how to report and therefore take no action when they see a suspicious email. Reporting functions also vary across each email platform. The button to report on Outlook that you use at work may be different than your personal email client, such as Gmail (the latter emphasises spam, not phishing). When people see an email they mistrust they are more likely to ignore it or delete it. This means that other people in your organisation may fall for the phishing, because it was not reported by others who received the email earlier (default bias)
• People don’t know what happens when they report a suspected phishing email. Do you recall the last time you reported a suspected phishing email? It is often an anti-climax. The email usually disappears into the ether and you get no reinforcement for your good deed. Nor do you receive feedback as to whether you were right to report it. Our research shows that people prefer not to report because they fear they may get it wrong, or that it’s not worth the hassle. People prefer to avoid what is unfamiliar (ambiguity bias)
• People don’t see reporting as their primary responsibility. We are used to seeing our computers and software automatically update. We are often prompted to change our passwords periodically by machines. Generally speaking, unless they work on cyber security, most individuals don’t think that cyber security is part of their remit. They trust that other experts, or their latest software, offer enough protection (motivation)

For these reasons and more, phishing reporting is not at the top of people’s minds.

Our game

We used the principle of gamification to build our cyber security training game. Gamification uses game design principles to solve problems. The goal of gamification is to break down complex and unfamiliar rules into a fun activity. The process involves building behavioural science prompts into an immersive learning environment. People are drawn into an interesting story or quest, where they are given positive reinforcement to learn. This might be points or other rewards when they apply learning correctly. The narrative challenges people to apply learning in an interactive way. Most importantly, gamification gives people an opportunity to practice what they learn in a timely way, rather than simply expecting them to remember facts.

As we’ve seen, many people find the topic of cyber security daunting or overly technical, and often switch off. Gamification has been shown to increase the likelihood that users will distinguish cyber safe emails from illegitimate emails. Most phishing training games provide people with positive motivation to apply training. Gamification has been shown to enhance self-efficacy, making individuals more confident about cyber security.

Our game has players taking the role of a cyclist playing for their team in a competition, Tour de Phish (based on what else – the Tour de France!). Through the game, we give players opportunities to exercise their phish-spotting skills in various scenarios. This includes messages resembling phishing emails, other riders making nefarious phishing offers along the route, and other obstacles in the course. Critically, learners also have to respond correctly to genuine requests, just as they would at work. The game has timed levels, so users practice phishing tips under pressure, to distinguish legitimate and illegitimate information requests.

Players receive tips and feedback. There are various rewards and penalties throughout the game. Players see a real-time podium where their score is compared to others in the organisation and their points count towards their team. This is all designed to tap into personal motivations to improve, as well as a social desire to help their team win.

Gamification makes learning more salient. Rather than simply being quizzed at the end of an online module (standard fodder in most training), people are sent a link to our training game, where there is an interactive story that prompts them to apply their training. Behavioural research shows that people are more likely to act when information is presented in a novel way. Our user testing shows that 89 percent of people who played our game prefer to learn via an online game compared to an online course or a face-to-face workshop. Additionally, 92 percent of people enjoyed playing our game, and 100 per cent of people felt more confident in identifying phishing emails after completing Tour de Phish.

The game was built in close consultation with people with disability to make it accessible to people who are blind or have low vision. I also designed the characters to represent diversity. I am grateful to the graphic design team, game developers, and our team who overcame many hurdles in building an inclusive game.

Read more about the behavioural science on our website.

References

Gokul, C. J., Pandit, S., Vaddepalli, S., Tupsamudre, H., Banahatti, V., & Lodha, S. (2018). Phishy – A serious game to train enterprise users on phishing awareness. CHI PLAY 2018 – Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts, 169–181. https://doi.org/10.1145/3270316.3273042

INTERPOL. (2020, August 4). INTERPOL report shows alarming rate of cyberattacks during COVID-19. https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2020/INTERPOL-report-shows-alarming-rate-of-cyberattacks-during-COVID-19

Tchakounté, F., Wabo, L. K., & Atemkeng, M. (2020). A Review of Gamification Applied to Phishing. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/PREPRINTS202003.0139.V1

Weanquoi, P., Johnson, J., & Zhang, J. (2017). Using a game to teach about phishing. SIGITE 2017 – Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education, 75. https://doi.org/10.1145/3125659.3125669

I would like to acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. It is upon their ancestral lands on which we meet. I pay my respects to any elders, past, present and emerging. As we celebrate the courage and resilience of women and gender minorities on this International Women’s Day, may we also pay respect to the traditional gender balance, leadership and innovation of Aboriginal people, embedded forever within their Custodianship of Country.

Today I’m going to start of by setting the scene with a quick snapshot of women in the tech sector, which I’m sure you’re all well aware of. I’m going to focus a little more on the solutions that come from the empirical evidence about what works in lifting up women in the workplace. I won’t talk too long, so we can have a bit more a discussion about what initiatives have worked well here or in other places where you’ve worked, or if there’s anything else you want to dive into.

Women in tech

While the number of women in other sciences has equalised at the junior levels, the number of women in senior roles remains under 20% for all science, technology and maths – or STEM – areas. Some disciplines do better than others. Engineering and computer science degrees have actually become worse since the 1980s, despite the boom in these industries. While women make up around 60% of women undergraduate students in the life sciences, women make up only 16% of Bachelor-level students in information technology degrees.

When we’re thinking about the academic workforce, at the postgraduate levels, it gets slightly more promising, with 27% of IT students completing a PhD being women, but this still pales in comparison to their male counterparts. The proportion drops again amongst senior IT academics, with only 16% of professors being women (34 women, compared to 174 men).

Thinking about the situation outside academia, women make up around 46% of the entire Australian workforce, but less than one third of employees in technology roles. To be more concrete, computer system design was the top industry employing men in 2016 (122,500 men), but women only make up a quarter of this same industry (40,348 women or 24.8%) (see ABS 2017.0, Table 6). The gender paygap in tech is improving incrementally, however the disparity is still alarming, and the lack of diversity in tech is seen by industry leaders as a ‘crisis.’

You know the situation is not great, so I won’t dwell too much on these figures. I do want to focus on solutions.

End ‘fix the women’ approaches

Many initiatives to support women in the workforce focus on individual-level solutions (Zevallos 2018 forthcoming). Many of these can be very powerful where they help women feel better supported. But many of these approaches miss the fact that asking individual women to do most of the work on equality doesn’t really change the system. Many women are already doing lots of daily things to challenge the status quo.

For example, there is a lot of effort on mentoring programs, as well as other initiatives which I call, “fix the women.” For example, training on how to ask for promotions; being told to be more confident in meetings; and other similar strategies that make gender equality women’s responsibility. Many of these programs have been a hangover from the 1960s and 1970s. Newer focus on manager training, such as on unconscious bias, are not necessarily pitched at the right level.

Nationally representative data show that these initiatives have limited capacity to transform gender imbalance. If they worked, our workplaces would already look more equitable and diverse.

The work of Professors Alexandra Kalev, Frank Dobbin and Erin Kelly show longitudinal trends over the past 30 years. These data tell us that the old training aimed at the people who are experiencing inequality do little to fix the systemic issues that minority women experience. A lot of programs aim to increase the hiring of women, but they are not as concerned with promotion and retention. This means that people with decision-making power has changed relatively little over time.

Where a few women do manage to make it to the top, they are still largely expected to model masculine ways of managing, and they are conditioned in other ways to stop women operating at their best. For example, being punished for their style of leadership where they are seen as too collaborative (that is, too focused on team building and support for staff). 

Structual reform

Initiatives that work more effectively are focused on changing institutions, not individual women. In particular, the culprit of inequality is workplace culture. Solutions that work for women’s equity and diversity include not simply a gender equity committee that meets to discuss issues and reports upwards. But instead being more proactive, such as creating a diversity task force that includes executives and managers who have clear goals that they are examined against, or bias interruptors that involve continually measuring, addressing and evaluating proactive steps to battle inequality.

Targets and quotas are also important because they work to increase diversity, and, in turn, lead to greater profit and productivity. The old myths that these strategies are unfair towards men presumes that the current model of meritocracy is value-neutral. It is not. The type of work that is seen, recognised and rewarded is the work that men do, or that men have greater access to. The work that women are often tasked with, especially administrative duties, committees that aren’t recognised during promotions rounds – including gender equity and diversity committees – as well as all the additional mentoring that women do informally is not properly remunerated by workplaces.

An equity and diversity task force would be not just collecting data about the number of men, women and gender minorities at different levels, but instead evaluate more meaningful data about what is working and not working in terms of career satisfaction; not just collecting data on workplace culture, but acting on this regularly. Questions to ensure inclusion of White women and minorities might include:

• Do people from underrepresented backgrounds feel welcome?
• Is the culture hostile to White women and minorities?
• What concrete steps will companies take to do things differently based on staff feedback?

Policies that promote equity and diversity are good, but they only meet the bare minimum of legal requirements. Sometimes companies can become complacent, thinking that if no one has made any complaints, there must not be a problem. Policies that are routinely reviewed are more effective. Organisations should ask themselves:

Do our policies work for the people they’re intended to help?

Transparency is a key tool to women’s empowerment in tech and in other industries. We need managers and executives to walk the talk. It’s not enough to simply say they believe in equality. How will they actively work towards it? Well, as I’ve noted, research shows that having key performance indicators for managers that have clear and measurable goals for equity and diversity make a big difference.

Equity and diversity training is important because this provides all workers and managers with a basic level of awareness about our individual rights and responsibilities. Unconscious bias training is a useful framework for people to unpack their biases and belief systems which they may not be aware of, as they may be unwittingly contributing towards a hostile work environment for White women and minorities. But evidence shows the effects of attending these courses can be fleeting, particularly when courses and training don’t give people clear actions they can work on. It’s not enough to know we all hold internal prejudices. We need to know how to counter these in positive, every day ways in the workplace. As Joanne Lipman puts it:

For men as well as women, it doesn’t matter how sincere companies are in embracing diversity if their own policies work against it–and in particular if they make it impossible to balance work with family.

The other flawed aspect of training-centric approaches is that men are not part of the solution. Women must change themselves: be more confident, be more assertive. But research shows us that managers are more likely to react negatively when women are assertive. An assertive man is seen as a go-getter. An assertive women is a trouble maker, she’s rude, she’s aggressive. In short, women are often trained up to exhibit some masculine traits, presuming that these traits are normal and best for the organisation. This is simply not true.

Valuing women’s diversity

Research shows that managers undervalue women’s focus on team work. This is often seen as a weakness. Women are more likely to use the pronoun, “We achieved this outcome,” whereas men say, “I achieved this outcome.” The presumption is that men are more confident. But this undervalues the importance of team harmony and the skills involved in making teams work productively.

Where mentoring is the default strategy to help women, this is only useful to a small number of White middle class women who are more readily poised to get along with the types of mentors they are matched with: namely, other White middle class women. Mentoring can be fraught for minorities, especially when mentors are not culturally aware of how to best support minority women.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and other minority women of colour need sponsors. They need advocates who can link them in with extensive job networks, and who will actively make introductions that might lead to new career opportunities. Sponsors make minority women’s success at work their personal and professional mission.

There are other useful tips for making workplaces more supportive of women that benefit other people with caring responsibilities. For example, actively promoting flexibility and work/life balance. Does the workplace have core hours that are useful for carers? For example, a standing rule that no important meetings happen before 9.30am or after 3.30pm. This is especially useful for women who do the bulk of childcare, so they are not constantly rushing after dropping off and picking up dependents. Of course this also benefits men and other gender minorities who also have caring responsibilites.

Research shows that simple changes, such as greying out calendars outside of core hours, is an effective technique to discourage meetings at unfriendly times, and thus entices people to be more flexible in their start and end times. Making sure that all calendar time spots before 9am and after 5pm are greyed out has been shown to significantly reduce people scheduling unnecessary meetings and working overly long hours.

Finally, let’s think about how organisations value the work that White women and minorities often take on to make their workplaces and the world a better place. Many companies might encourage or expect women to join diversity committees, and these are seen as corporate roles. But they are not rewarded come promotion time. They are not resourced properly – these committees are done on volunteers’ time without a budget. What’s more, equity and diversity work is like ‘banging your head against a brick wall,’ as Professor Sara Ahmed shows. It can zap women’s emotional energy, by undermining their authority to act on inequalities they witness. Women are left ‘scratching the surface,’ but with little power to make real change.

Innovation requires investment. Equity and diversity initiatives that recognise the talents, professional needs and career satisfaction of White women and minorities require a similar level of investment. Organisations eagerly invest in the latest technologies and regularly update their systems to stay ahead of the game. Why don’t they invest in women’s potential in the same way?

Note: I gave this talk at the Readify offices in Sydney on 8 March 2018.

My overview of the conference starts with the panel discussion that I took part in. I then reflect on the other presentations. (Note: click on images for further detail)

What are we going to do?

Our panel was titled, “We’ve got a time machine, now what are we going to do with it?” UX designer Danya Azzopardi and I were in conversation with our host, UX lead designer for ANZ, Cory-Ann Joseph.  Cory set up the panel with the idea that growing up in Australia, we thought we needed to catch up to the USA in terms of technical innovation. Having worked abroad in Ireland for almost two decades, Cory returned to Australia to find the same issues of exclusion were happening in Australia as in the USA. Equity and diversity efforts still focus on White cisgender, middle class women (such as Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’ ideals). This is exclusionary to minority women.

Maybe we shouldn’t be playing catch up and should instead find our own unique ways to address intersectionality and inclusion in Australia.

https://twitter.com/OtherSociology/status/963233121876426752

Cory began by asking us how we felt about the current state of diversity and inclusion in Australia and what we might do to improve these practices.

I noted that while people want to be positive about progress, the numbers tell a less optimistic story. At the senior level there are few women, and even less are from minority groups, with especially few women of colour. The empirical evidence documents several potential solutions to the lack of diversity that continue to be ignored for more individual-level responses. I call these programs that focus on individual mentoring and confidence building, “fix the women” initiatives. These approaches require that individuals seek change upwards as opposed to organisations committing to tackling structural problems systematically.

I discussed how the types of institutional programs that we really need across the sector should focus on transparency of policies; measuring outcomes; publishing data about what’s working and not working (not just a gender breakdown); and key performance indicators for managers that address hiring and promoting minorities in the workplace.

As a woman of colour working in equity and diversity, my approach is very different to White women. Any time women of colour point out how issues of racial exclusion impact gender equity, we are labelled aggressive. We become the problem because we are calling attention to the complexity of equity and diversity issues, beyond simple differences between cisgender men and women.

https://twitter.com/battle_elf/status/963236371048493056

https://twitter.com/chloesweatherly/status/963236422810349568

Danya noted that organisations are savvy enough to understand that diversity and inclusion are important to their business. They can’t ignore these issues, so they appear to be addressing them in superficial ways. These approaches do not necessarily make work culture more inclusive. Women of colour are constantly punching upward, as if we’re discovering problems. She notes that while it’s uncomfortable to White people to have issues of inclusion pointed out, this discomfort pales in comparison to being marginalised on a daily basis. White people in particular need to unpack their discomfort, and people in dominant positions need to address these lessons.

Cory discussed how companies usually unveil equity and diversity initiatives as separate endeavours – gender equity versus inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA) people, versus accessibility. She asks us about the barriers to adoption of inclusive practices.

I said that equity and diversity initiatives that are done right, with intersectionality at their heart, disrupt business as usual. In reality, current equity and diversity initiatives are undertaken by minorities in their spare time, with extra workload, but without any additional time, pay or other resources.

https://twitter.com/Karentton/status/963235246421377024

I discussed how most people don’t want to contribute towards discrimination. They don’t want to be seen as racist or homophobic or transphobic or ableist. But when push comes to shove people in dominant social positions aren’t ready to sacrifice their creature comforts or any of their privilege in order to show true solidarity to minorities. For example, they will not think to give up a speaking position at a prestigious conference; they will not nominate women of colour for awards; they will not recommend minorities be given grants over other White people.

People who belong to multiple minority groups will experience multiple forms of exclusion. The barriers they come up against are systemic. Inequality is embedded in the ways we think about leadership, how we reward people, and how people make daily decisions without taking the time to truly reflect on our own biases.

Danya added that people don’t unpack their own privilege. People think it’s enough that they don’t actively set out to harm others, as if this is enough to curtail inequality. It isn’t. You need to give up some of your privilege, otherwise you are still complicit in the problems we see in the sector and in society.

Cory asked us what has worked to create structural change.

I said that structural change begins when leaders walk the talk, not just talk about diversity. This includes wrestling with tough concepts like colonialism and making other meaningful change. Institutions that contribute to structural change also hold themselves publicly accountable to meet quotas and to stand firm and invest in the promotion of minority staff. Unfortunately, resources continue to be diverted from diversity by funding programs that exclusively benefit White cisgender middle class women.

Danya said that there are boundless resources to help individuals better understand their own biases. White men should be stepping aside from panels and giving women of colour and other underrepresented people these opportunities.

Cory asked how we might move past performative allyship to make meaningful impact on inclusion. (This term grows from the work of Princess Harmony Rodriguez, who showed how well-meaning people will put on a show, or a performance, to call attention to the support they give to minorities. This is done on social media to get, “kudos, likes, faves, shares, and even career opportunities.”)

I said that we should take notice of small details as well as bigger cues, such as who you sit with every day, who talks in meetings you attend, and whose voices are silenced. It’s not good enough to point to equity and diversity policies, which basically meet legal requirements. We need to advance equity and diversity with real investment in people and resources. We can’t continue to have this important work being led by minorities in their spare time. For the tech sector, I hoped the conversation at the Tech Inclusion conference would be the start of collective change. We should be able to leverage the lessons by working together towards real change. Finally, we must continue to hold each other accountable for making progress that includes minorities moving ahead.

Danya concluded by saying that we all need to get comfortable with our discomfort. Success shouldn’t be viewed from the point of view of people who have power and privilege.

Cory put together a reading list for the audience to follow-up on. She also asked people not to approach the panellists to simply ask for personal advice or to vent about privilege. She asked that people be mindful of the ways marginalised people are often punished for raising these issues. So rather than approach us to absolve them of this discomfort, Cory suggested the audience might reflect on what they heard. She directed comments that required additional emotional labour to a White male colleague (Rohan Irvine – below). 

https://twitter.com/fox/status/963238432309825536

https://twitter.com/chloesweatherly/status/963239996839755777

https://twitter.com/fox/status/963240112917159936

https://twitter.com/mcrae_georgia/status/963240302357041157

https://twitter.com/coryannj/status/963244244868595713

Below I detail the other talks, which started with reflections on gender inequality at the beginning of the day.

Gender inequality

Dr Kate Cornick CEO of LaunchVic discussed a survey of 1,100 start-ups, showing that the diversity of Australian society does not match the tech sector. We need to change this.

The co-founders of Change Catalyst, who run the Tech Inclusion conference all over the world are Melinda Briana Epler and Wayne Sutton. They spoke about underrepresentation of minorities in tech. Aiming for “50/50” gender balance is not true inclusion, as it leaves out transgender people and gender non-binary people in tech. Other groups like disabled people, Indigenous people, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA) people are also left out of tech’s success.

Globally women make up 35% of start-up founders but receive less than 2% venture capital. Women of colour get 0.2% funding. Black people and Latins make up 19% of computer science graduates but represent less than 3% of tech workers. LGBTQIA people leave tech due to harassment.

Indigenous Inclusion

Leigh Harris (Ingeous Studios), Professor Kerry Arabena , Richard Young, Jasmin Herro, and panel host John Chambers discuss that wherever Indigenous people have access, they are early adopters of tech.

Richard Young had a White advisor because he didn’t understand White culture. (Note that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are often asked to be cultural advisors to organisations that don’t actually hire Indigenous people but who want to reach or service Indigenous communities.) Young speaks 13 languages. He is highly culturally capable – and so are other Aboriginal people. Young says we need true exposure of tech for mob to lead the next revolution of change.

The Queensland Government implemented an initiative where kids brought their own computers to school. Leigh Harris has nieces and nephews who can’t afford computers.  Robotics is great, but there are communities in regional and remote areas who lack access.

If the education system was different, we’d all be taught about David Unaipon, proud Ngarrindjeri man known as “Australia’s Leonardo da Vinci,” who is also on the $50 note. Aboriginal people would be viewed differently in tech if we knew this history.

Migrants and refugees

Annie Parker (Global Head of Startups for Microsoft) hosted the discussion by Aiman Hamdouna (co-founder and Director of Hatch Quarter), Zione Walker (lawyer and social entrepreneur) and Arie Moses (Thrive Refugee Enterprise). They discussed the experience of being one of the “new and few” who are always viewed through a deficit lens.

When migrants first arrive in Australia, we view ourselves though a prism of opportunity. We arrive with a blank canvas, eager to make the most of a new adventure in Australia.

Refugees arrive in Australia having already lived in at least three other continents. They think globally – which is exactly what tech start-ups aspire to be.

Over one-third of small businesses in Australia are founded by migrants and refugees. They arrive here with a huge reservoir of skills and knowledge, as they often reinvent tech to survive.

Disability and access

Tim Noonan spoke about how disability and voice inclusion are both important in design. Even sites you might think are geared for disabled people are, in reality, exclusive in their use of the tech. For example, Audible is inaccessible because it uses captcha, while hearing aid companies will use inaccessible apps.

Tools for software development and testing are also inaccessible. For example, they use voice to do coding.

Tech is also exclusive by ignoring the intersection of disability and sexual minorities. For example, dating apps are mostly visual.

Noonan ends by asking us to not just focus on tech for able-bodied people.

“Make things possible rather than just easier.”

Ageism

Bambi Price, Co-Founder of Seniorpreneurs Foundation, talked about how age is a big factor of discrimination in tech start-ups. One third of Australians experience age discrimination in the workplace from age 45 onward.

There have been rapid changes in tech since 2008. Age means a wealth of experience that didn’t exist a few years ago. “Your best assets are your people – make sure they are representative of the population.” She says it’s time to end age discrimination in tech.

How to hire for diversity

Lina Pael and Grace O’Hara from Code for Australia provided a case study of their hiring initiatives. All of their core managers are migrants. Of their 60 staff, half are born outside of Australia, from non-English-speaking majority countries. They purposefully seek to hire people with diverse life experiences.

The lack of diversity in tech is self-imposed.

Code for Australia hired three all-women teams. Here’s how they did it:

• don’t blame the women or the market;
• start with your level of influence (from hiring to policies, to meet-ups);
• don’t be afraid to make (and fix!) mistakes; and
• share your power.

What Silicon Valley still gets wrong

Leslie Miley is Director of Engineering at Slack, and formerly worked in engineering leadership roles at Twitter, Apple, and Google.  He notes that tech companies based in Silicon Valley have spent over $1 billion on diversity and nothing has changed.

“To do this on accident is almost impossible.”

He says something we might have suspected about the leadership: “Most people in tech are arseholes.” He says this is due to the cult of the tech founder, which he argues could also be called “the cult of the arsehole.” It perpetuates White male-dominated culture in Silicon Valley.

(If you’re interested in the ‘no arseholes rule’ adapted for science, technology and maths in academia, see Professor Jenny Martin. She argues we must stop rewarding bad behaviour amongst colleagues with selective metrics that don’t address equity.)

Miley says that “arsehole culture” in tech attracts other terrible values. They don’t really want diversity. They only people who will follow them.

Structural inequality

Entrepreneur, engineer, and angel investor Susan Wu was in conversation with Wayne Sutton. She argues that while the langauge used about tech alludes to equality and optimism (for example, ‘democratising the net’), little has changed. Tech entrenches income inequality because tech leaders are largely White men.

She also argues that tech is not neutral. It is not truly innovative because it does not lead to structural innovation. For example, the sector does not tackle structural inequality.

Companies fail on equity and diversity because they often bring in an expert that does not represent diversity of the population, so they continue with a colonial approach (including focusing on White women) that does not make true change. We need to think more about intersectionality and helping the success of the most marginalised groups. She says truly innovative leaders are, “continually earning the right to be leaders.”

Youth, education and allyship

Marian Zizzo hosted the discussion by Hope Perkins (Indigenous Engagement Coordinator for the Melbourne School of Engineering), Shona McPherson (media manager of Foundation for Young Australians), Vanessa Doake (co-founder of Code Like a Girl) & Wayne Denning. Wayne Denning said that minorities are very interested in STEM, but too much focus is on them being consumers, rather than creators. The problem is about language and how it’s sold, especially to Aboriginal children who aren’t aware of the opportunities available.

Hope Perkins said that it’s vital to value STEM teachers in engaging young children in STEM education and careers. Perkins also said a major problem is the lack of trust among communities, despite good intentions. What will be different as a result of investing in STEM? What will make meaningful change? Many schools have bad experiences with “do gooders who swan in” and don’t contribute towards positive change. We need to make tech learning and tech skills more relevant, especially to young people from Aboriginal communities.

Perkins reports that drone technology was useful in getting Aboriginal girls interested in tech. This technology allowed them to explore the habitats of koalas, other animals and Country. They learned maths and other engineering skills in a way that resonated with their interests.

Denning said it was best to use positive stories and social media to help the potential of tech education better connect with Aboriginal children. Mainstream stories leave them out and underestimate their abilities. Companies need to work with parents and additionally should seek to make tech more relatable, such as through ranger tracking or football or other interests. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in remote areas or disadvantaged areas, getting to school is a challenge. We need to get more creative. This includes going into communities and making technology more relatable to youth and their communities.

In the next session, panellists discussed how we might create a feedback loop to hear about young people’s concerns, such as on environmental degradation. Nilla Kumaran, Emily Tan and Holly Ranson said companies should go to young people, rather than expecting them to come to you. This might include industries going to university to talk with students.

Karolina Szczur, developer, designer and advisor to tech companies, talked about allyship as a process of “unlearning, re-evaluating and challenging the oppressive status quo.”

On another panel about creating an inclusive tech future in Melbourne, Dhakshy Sooriyakumaran, Director of YLab, said that following her appointment as a woman of colour into an Executive role, the company saw an increased number of applications from other women of colour.

There was an important question from the floor that was, lamentably, not well addressed. Transgender people have a relatively high completion of tech degrees, but they experience high rates of  unemployment. How can we make the tech sector recognise these skills? This conversation deserves urgent attention, but unfortunately the speakers did not address this topic.

Lessons and actions

The day ended with an open mic, for audience members to share reflections on the lessons and actions they will take away from the talks.  Here’s a summary what was shared by other people:

• Whatever you think you know about inclusion, there’s always more to learn.
• I want to partner with Indigenous people.
• I’m going back to work to start disruptive conversations.
• Diversity is more than gender issues.
• I previously hesitated calling out people at work because I don’t want to be the person always going on about inclusion. After today, I’m going to do this more!
• My organisation has gender and sexual diversity but not ethnic diversity.

That’s it! It was a wonderful conference. My sincere thanks to Cory for inviting Danya and I to attend her courageous panel on intersectionality. A big takeaway from our discussion was to reflect on discomfort and take concrete action to steer change.

https://twitter.com/OtherSociology/status/963311924724170753

The Wikipedia page for #YesAllWomen, a record of an anti-sexism online protest movement, is being edited to make it “less misandrist.” This Wiki page documents the Twitter hashtag that is being used internationally by women to share their experiences of sexual harassment, abuse and discrimination following the Isla Vista mass shooting in America. Some men are using this tag to listen and support women, but predictably, others are abusing it to hurt women and argue that the hashtag is “sexist against men.” The Wiki edits matter because Wikipedia has a massive problem with sexism. These edits reflect the very issues of gender violence, intimidation and power that the #YesAllWomen hashtag is trying to address.

Gender Bias in Wikipedia

Between 8% to 13% of Wikipedia editors are women. The Wikipedia Foundation recognises the public encyclopaedia is skewed towards men. It seeks new ways to entice newcomers, because both recruitment and retention of women is an ongoing challenge. Specifically, its surveys reveal “systemic bias” in the “average Wikipedian,” who is an English-speaking male form a Christian-majority country, in a developed nation in the Western hemisphere, technically inclined, well educated, aged 15–49 and employed as a white-collar worker or they are otherwise a student. For a universal open access project, Wikipedia fails on every measure of diversity: geographic, linguistic, racial, sexuality, economic, and of course gender. There are projects set up to address these short-comings, but the problems are very far from being resolved. The issues are socio-cultural, rather than technical.

Many of Wiki women have spoken out about how their entries are often edited by men in malicious ways, using sexist, racist, homophobic and violent language (trigger warning). Wikipedia finds this is driven by its “conflict-oriented culture” which forces women to leave as they are treated aggressively by male editors. A Wiki study reports:

“Unexpectedly, we find that female editors are more concentrated in areas with high controversy… and are more likely than males to draw corrective actions from fellow editors… In summary, the available data indicate that female editors experience more adversity than male editors in all the areas that we studied.” [My emphasis]

Sexism

Sue Gardner, the former Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation (she left the position last month), has written several times on Wikipedia’s lack of gender diversity. In 2011, she noted that various studies and articles have found that registered women editors tend not to contribute much writing. Some of them say it’s due to Wiki’s interface, but overwhelmingly, it is due to Wikipedia’s sexist culture, specifically, feeling “intimidated by the tone of the discussions.” Women editors are put off by having to muster the energy to get “into fights with dudes.” Women don’t want to invest the little leisure time they have only to have their work undone by sexist men. One woman editor says:

“I used to contribute to Wikipedia, but finally quit because I grew tired of the “king of the mountain” attitude they have. You work your tail off on an entry for several YEARS only to have some pimply faced college kid knock it off by putting all manner of crazy stuff on there such as need for “reliable” sources when if they’d taken a moment to actually look at the reference they’d see they were perfectly reliable! I’m done with Wikipedia. It’s not only sexist but agist as well.”

Another woman reflects on her experience writing about gender violence:

“the Wikipedia entries on the Violence Against Women Movement and Act were very misleading, incorrect in some cases, and slightly sarcastic and minimizing to the work of women rights advocates. Every time an advocate would try to make corrections and update the entries, it would be removed and edited back to it’s original misleading version. I think many advocates felt like it was pointless to try and change it-or didn’t have the same kind of time and energy around it that these majority male editors have to maintain sexist and incorrect posts.”

Under-representation of Women

Wikipedia sexism is also reflected in the lack of entries on women professionals and historical figures, including women scientists. STEM Women, which I am a part of, supported the Royal Society’s Wikipedia hack-a-thon. The annual event highlights the lack of Wikipedia articles about notable women scientists.

The issue is not just about editing – it is about the basic topics that women want to cover on Wikipedia which relate to women’s issues broadly defined: prominent women figures, women’s interests, and women’s knowledge. To be blunt, the gender inequality on Wikipedia is about a power struggle over gendered knowledge.

Knowledge and Power

In sociology, we see that the acquisition, communication, reproduction and debates about information are influenced by socio-economics, including gender. On Wikipedia, the very act of writing about women or women-related themes is seen as political (“controversial”) and this automatically attracts hostility and excessive-editing. While men will argue with other men on Wikipedia pages, the pages written by women about women draw relentless negative attention.

As male views are dominant, they are not seen as gendered. Being male is the default. As it is seen as normal, and men’s presence is nothing out of the ordinary, male writing is perceived to be value-free. When a woman writes about women, it is contentious simply because her gender makes her knowledge and presence conspicuous. If a woman writes about women’s issues, she must automatically be biased – or so goes the sexist argument. When a man writes about other men, men’s issues, interests and topics, he is presumed to be objective by virtue of his gender.

Women’s knowledge on Wikipedia is Other; that is, it is different and therefore suspect and it invites furious edits and deletions simply because the average Wikipedian male sees that women don’t belong in their space. Women are threatening merely because they want their knowledge to be represented in a male field, Wikipedia, which is actually supposed to represent humanity. A loud and busy segment of Wikipedia men want women erased, silent and otherwise passive. They position women as merely observers of history, even when it involves them. This is how history has largely constructed women’s knowledge, as Other and subservient to men’s perspective, as Simone de Beauvoir famously argued in The Second Sex:

The issue with this latest edit frenzy on the #YesAllWomen Wiki page is further evidence of the misguided move to support so-called “reverse sexism,” a nonsensical term I wrote about recently in reference to the “not all man” defence” (see below). Women speaking out about sexism is not an act of sexism. Sexism describes institutional inequality that benefits some groups over Others. It requires social power, which men collectively hold, even if they don’t want to acknowledge these structural benefits.

#YesAllWomen is about creating safe spaces for women. Some men understand this; unfortunately many do not. Astronomer Phil Plait argues that this hashtag is an opportunity for men to reflect about the problems with masculinity, violence and entitlement. It symbolises the need for men to listen to women, not react defensively. He argues: “We men need to do better”:

Even though we may not be the direct problem, we still participate in the cultural problem. If we’re quiet, we’re part of the problem. If we don’t listen, if we don’t help, if we let things slide for whatever reason, then we’re part of the problem, too.

The Wikipedia page on the #YesAllWomen movement documents this global conversation about women’s experiences of masculine violence. Acts of gender violence reflect institutional problems with the way gender is constructed,enacted and socially enforced. Men who are editing this page say they want to use “more neutral” language. In actuality, they are simply defending their own social privilege on a platform that already favours men. In so doing, they contribute to more of the same gender violence that the #YesAllWomen dialogue was set up to explore and tear down.

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Notes

Image 2 text: What’s wrong with this picture? Professor Julia Slingo is Chief Scientist at the Met Office in Britain. Yet she merits only a few paragrpahs on Wikipedia. Support The Royal Society’s Wikipedia Edit-a-thon 4 March 14. Help spread Awareness of Women Scientists.

Image 3 text: [White male cartoon angry points to a blackboard with writing, saying, “OMG! This is totally unfair TO ME!” Text reads] “Times people cared about White men’s feelings [many] versus times people didn’t care about men’s feelings [once].”

Image 4 text: “Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being… She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other.” Simone de Beauvoir.

By Zuleyka Zevallos

Last month, The New York Times gave a disheartening insight into Google’s Executive hiring practices. Google is predominantly staffed with young men,* and they have trouble hiring and retaining women. Google turned to its “famous algorithms” to work out why this was the case, developing spreadsheets to help address the matter. In Google Executive land, it seems, engineers and computer scientists are characterised as “guys” who are proactive in advancing their careers, while women are seen as failed “business” people who don’t ask for promotions. Google has taken some measures to address their hiring practices, but its Executives seem to accept that their gender imbalance (30% women to 70% men) is unlikely to change much. While I focus on Google as a case study, my analysis deconstructs the flaws in the gender logic that large companies have about workplace inequality. Studies find that it is not the fact that women do not ask for promotions that impede their career progression; nor is it simply the decision to exit the workplace to have children. Instead, empirical data show that when employers are faced with equally qualified and experienced candidates who put in the same amount of work and who have the same outcomes, they are more likely to hire, promote and remunerate men over women. I argue that there is a resistance in workplaces to understand how their organisational practices are structured in ways that impede women from thriving professionally.

Gender imbalance and inequality are not inevitable. These are the outcome of daily interactions, organisational practices, policies, and unexamined norms and values. Sociology can help workplaces address gender inequalities by taking an organisational approach to gender. Such a framework makes gender biases visible and involves everyone in addressing inequality – not just women, but people of all genders, as well as the Executives who hold ultimate power in organisational change.

Case study: Gender imbalance amongst Google Executives 

Google prides itself on celebrating and supporting difference and it sees itself as an “equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer.” Google is frequently cited as the best place to work. It topped Fortune’s 2012 List, with New York employees raving about the culture, mission and perks of their job, which include great food, “bocce courts, a bowling alley, eyebrow shaping (for a fee).” Google also featured as the top employer in Australia according to Business Review Weekly’s list in 2011, which surveyed 207 companies and 55,400 employees. Google sits in the third spot for 2012. Google may well be a sweet gig – but it seems to be less advantages for women employees.

Journalist Claire Caine Miller, reporting for The New York Times, finds that only one third of Google’s 34,300 employees are women. CEO Larry Page has removed the already-noticeably-few women Executives from his “inner circle.” The previous CEO, Eric E. Schmidt, had an Exec committee of 15 people, four of whom were women. Page has an Exec of 11, only one of whom is a woman – Susan Wojcicki, who leads Google’s advertising. Gender bias had no influence in the Exec reshuffle, says Laszlo Bock, head of people operations at Google: “Larry focused on certain products, and the people who happened to lead those products and became his direct reports were men.” So, gender did not influence this decision, it just so happens that the work women were leading in the company was not valued. According to Google Executives, Page is simply more comfortable around Engineering people “like himself”, which actually translates to engineering “men.” The Times writes:

…the dearth of women at the top of Google reflects what is, over all, a male-driven engineering culture. Mr. Page values product people like himself over business people, they say, and at Google, as at many technology companies, product engineers tend to be men.  “Part of the issue is who Larry wants around him, and those are the guys he’s most comfortable with because he knows their whole engineering and computer science background,” said a former longtime senior Google employee. Another former Google executive said, “I don’t think there’s a gender bias per se, but I think the c-suite at Google is going to belong to product owners, not business people. People witness it as a demotion of women. I don’t view it as that. I view it as a demotion of business.”

Google launched algorithms and spreadsheets to find that its recruitment process is discriminatory and its attrition of women is woeful due to female staff leaving to have children or to forge their careers in smaller companies. Google is taking steps to rectify the situation: it has found that women applicants go further if they are interviewed by other women for positions within the company. It is also offering information to women staff about how to ask for promotions. Individual and interpersonal dynamics are seen as the source of the hiring bias. At first glance, it would seem that women can’t get past Google’s “glass ceiling” because of their individual circumstance and personal ambition: their family responsibilities or personalities supposedly make them reticent to ask for promotions. Sociology would shift this focus away from individuals and put Google’s organisational culture into critical evaluation.

All individuals make decisions about their family and career paths, but sociology shows how life opportunities are constrained by social forces. In Google World, “guys” get promoted because they ask for it and women aren’t assertive enough and instead they take time off to have children and then suffer the consequences. How can we view Google’s organisational culture into broader sociological context?

Social construction of engineering as “guy’s” work

In the aforementioned New York Times article, the Google Executives quoted seem to accept as fact that its company gender ratio will never be equal. One Exec tells The Times that even though only a minority of Goggle’s employees are women, he argues this is better than the American average. Average of what? Hard to say as no actual statistics are cited.  Alan Eustace, senior vice president for knowledge says:

We get incredible women into the company, and we work hard at getting incredible women… I wish we could say we’re amazingly successful and closing in on 50 percent women, but it’s not true.

The body of research known as the sociology of knowledge shows how science and knowledge are valued according to historical and cultural interests of elite groups. While Google is trying to address its gender gap, its organisation is structured around a gendered construction of science: “guys” produce the type of science that fits in comfortably with its upper management chain. Engineering and computer science are male dominated fields – doesn’t it stand to reason therefore that more men would be hired? The reality is that women don’t simply leave these professions of their own accord. Women are not inferior scientists; they do not produce less innovative products than men. Instead, in male dominated fields, men’s knowledge and research outputs are rewarded while women’s scientific endeavours are not.

An American sociology study published last year showed that women tend not to finish their engineering degrees because they lack “self confidence” in their professional abilities. At first glance, this finding might be seen to support the idea that women are not exhibiting the personal qualities and drive expected of engineers – but this is misleading. The lead researcher says that this lack of confidence is due to the fact that engineering careers are not communicated to students as something that fits in with women’s lives or knowledge:

Women engineering students go to the same classes, take the same tests, and get the same GPAs as men, sometimes even higher… But, what we found is that the women in our study developed less confidence in their engineering expertise than men did and they also developed less confidence that engineering is the career that fits them best, even though they went through the same preparation process as men… [This] stems from very subtle differences in the way that men and women are treated in engineering programs and from cultural ideologies about what it means to be a competent engineer… Often, competence in engineering is associated in people’s minds with men and masculinity more than it is with women and femininity. So, there are these micro-biases that happen, and when they add up, they result in women being less confident in their expertise and their career fit.

A big part of the problem is that engineering programs do not demonstrate how women might navigate their engineering careers. There are not enough women engineers being brought into their classroom to demonstrate that women can be successful in this field. Providing women engineering students with internships would help them gain practical skills to bolster their career planning. For the past few years, I have been advocating that people of all genders gain such practical experience during their degrees, including sociology students. The issue in engineering is that there is a mutually reinforcing set of gender biases related to the way in which this discipline is taught and practised. Student placements within industry are more likely to go to men than women. Perhaps this fits in with the logic of common sense – if there are more male engineer students, doesn’t it stand to reason that there would be more placements going to male engineering students? Only if you’re a technical organisation that accepts the established gender order. Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, hired only men for his first round of interns at his new start-up, Square. Like Google, Dorsey is seemingly oblivious to the fact that more than a handful of capable, ingenious women engineers exist. Science is not always the meritocracy it should be; instead, many scientific fields have gender tunnel vision.

What about the idea that ladies don’t do well in prestigious tech companies because they are too shy to put themselves forward for a promotion? This explanation is blind to the structural forces limiting women’s career progression. Otherwise known as good old fashioned sexism at work.

Why the “women don’t get promoted because they don’t ask for it” theory is sexist nonsense

Studies find that women scientists don’t get paid as much as men, irrespective of the amount of time and effort they put into their jobs. For example, see the Journal of American Medical Association, which finds that male physician researchers receive $12,200 more than their women counterparts, even when other factors are taken into consideration, including “speciality, institutional characteristics, academic productivity, academic rank, work hours, and other factors. A recent experiment finds that academic faculty members are more likely to hire men over women even when their credentials are identical. They are also more likely to give men a higher starting wage than women who have the same qualifications. We are supposed to celebrate the women who find this sexism “motivating” to try harder to succeed. If promotions are based on merit, and men and women are producing at the same level, why should it be a special case of triumph for women to be rewarded for their work when they achieve the same as men?  Ilana Yurkiewicz argues in Scientific American that this experiment shows a deep-seated cultural bias against women that is not necessarily conscious. Scientists are unlikely to openly support sexism. In this study, they rationalised that women are simply not as “competent” as men, even when their skills, experience and qualifications are identical. Yurkiewicz argues: “We are not talking about equality of outcomes here; this result shows bias thwarts equality of opportunity.”

So the idea that women are not paid and promoted as highly as men because they are too meek in asking for a raise does not wash. Professional advancement is not simply about women not being as “aggressive” or convincing as men when they negotiate pay increases. It is not that women are not as committed to their careers; it is not that they put in less time; it is not that they are less capable. The problem lies with the cultural biases that organisations allow to be perpetuated in their offices, by not recognising the practices, language and erroneous assumptions about gender that prevent women from fulfilling their professional potential.

So what about those working mums leaving to have babies? No wonder they aren’t paid the same, their priorities are different. Right? Wrong. Social policies determine the type of leave parents of both genders take. Progressive policies facilitate men and women taking equal time off and improve their rate of return. Poor policies narrow the work-life choices that families make. In English-speaking Western contexts, women’s career progression tends to suffer, but in Scandinavian countries, women’s career paths are better supported.

Parental leave and gender equality in cultural context

According to the New York Times, Google offers women up to five months off for maternity leave and seven weeks for men. Offering parental leave is an important step towards gender equality, but what are the informal and formal mechanisms that determine what this time off means to the careers of men and women? Parental leave has been a strong driver for progressive family policies in Scandanavian countries, but the outcomes are mediated by cultural expectations of femininity, masculinity and care giving. That is, whether men or women decide to take time off, and whether they return to the same job, is a response to the social policies and social norms in any given society and workplace. In Sweden, offering paternal leave as a “reserve” of time off is more likely to encourage men to take paternal leave than offering them cash bonuses. This supports women’s transition back to work, as parental leave is shared more equitably between parents. The number of children a family has also impacts on this process, as does the level of education of parents and the type of work they do. One study finds that Swedish and Norwegian women are more likely to return to work if they have only one or two children, but they are less likely to return if they have more than two children. Another study finds that in Germany, men are more likely to take paternal leave if their partner is more educated, older or if they work in the public service.

Even as societies generally accept that men and women should be equal in the workplace and take equal responsibility as caregivers, they tend to not apply this logic to their individual circumstance. In Estonia, a study finds that fathers support gender equality and recognise that society advocates this equality, but they find in practice that they are stigmatised for wanting to take time off to look after their children. Compounding the problem is that men still ultimately believe that women are “natural” caregivers, whereas men have to work harder to develop their parenting skills. Such ideas about parenting are social constructions, but the consequences are concrete: women are more likely to sacrifice their career progression while men sacrifice spending as much time with their children as they’d ideally like. Social pressure and gendered ideas about paid and unpaid work shape the decision about which parent takes time off to look after young children. What seems like a personal choice made by individual women or between couples is actually affected by organisations and social forces.

Sociological questions about Google’s “glass ceiling” that its algorithms can’t answer

An organisation that is serious about addressing gender inequality in the workplace would ensure that productive employees are not penalised for their gender and family choices. What are the management dynamics in a given workplace that might facilitate and reward men’s careers over women’s professional advancement? What is expected of Executives that makes women more likely to step away from higher positions of power in big companies in favour of smaller firms? Despite the ideals that societies hold about gender equality, policies and social practices in particular organisations ensure that parents who take parental leave have their careers penalised. This need not be the case.

Instead of acknowledging and addressing sexism, it is easier to view men as “more competent” than women, even when the evidence shows that they are similarly matched. Seeing women’s lack of advancement as an individual deficit (too meek in asking for a promotion) or as an individual choice (leaves to have babies and never returns) ensures that institutional practices go unexamined. Scientists and other professionals in many countries support the ideal of gender inequality, but they are not always aware of how their gender biases affect how they judge men and women’s professionalism. Women who study and work in science-dominated fields such as engineering require institutional support to further their careers. Google found that when they started to invite women into the interviewing panel, women applicants were more likely to progress into employment than previously, when men made hiring decisions. Inequality of opportunity is ensured through workplace policies that limit women’s choices.

Algorithms and spreadsheets have identified patterns that Google is attempting to address. Google and other organisations need sociology, not just algorithms, to address the underlying values, practices and unspoken rules that guide patterns of inequality. Google prides itself on diversity, creativity and affirmative action. It is clearly interested in gender equality because they are putting new programs in place to hire women. Providing individual mentors for women is positive but it does not go far enough. Google Executive’ comments suggest that gender and power remain unexamined. Their CEO is not biased against women; he just happened to demote all but one of his top female Execs because their work wasn’t up to scratch. Their CEO is simply more comfortable with “guys”  like himself – men, not women. Google hopes that by having women help to recruit and mentor women, women will fare better in navigating their way upwards. How far will these women get if the organisation pretends that gender issues in the workplace involve particular individuals (women specifically), rather than the entire corporation and its leaders?

Google stands as a microcosm of a broader pattern of workplace inequality that stems from the way engineering is taught and practised. Beyond, other fields of science are not immune to gender bias, as academic researchers are more likely to hire men over women and men are also paid more than women even when they do the same work. Sociology shows that these patterns are not simply about individual choices that can be addressed at the interpersonal level. Workplaces need to open up dialogue that makes employees aware of how their gender assumptions and practices limit innovation. This process needs to involve workers of all genders and at all levels of management.

Notes

* Patricia Barnes reports that in January 2012 Google was battling a lawsuit from a former employee who said he was forced out of his job because of his age (54 years at the time of dismissal). The lawsuit states that his Google colleagues routinely made derogatory comments about his age (“slow,” “sluggish,” “lethargic,” “an old fuddy-duddy” who “lacked energy”). This lawsuit suggests that Google’s culture may not simply about a male engineers, but perhaps about young, male engineers.

Top image adapted from The Bush Center, via Flickr, CC 2.0

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• Black Girls Code encourages girls of colour to become involved in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Read more from Colorlines.

This is the third and final post in a series covering the lead up to the 10^th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. This one focuses on news coverage; technology and social media issues; and media discourses about the so-called ‘Decade 9/11’ and ‘Gen 9/11’.

Most of the news focused on the heroism of the survivors and the rescuers. For example, The 7pm Project ran daily segments filmed in America such as this story about the New York Fire fighters. ABC News America interviewed Shelia Moody who survived the Pentagon attack. USA Today interviewed Lauren Manning who survived the attack at one of the Twin Towers. The View featured Marcy Borders who worked on the North Tower and whose dust-covered image was beamed around the world immediately after the attacks.

I read a lot of material from SBS World News Australia and ABC News Australia. Both hosted a series of special reports on the lead up to September 11 anniversary. I’ve blogged about one of the SBS features on the effects of September 11 on Australian-Muslims already. Abroad, Al Jazeera, the BBC, and CNN hosted specials on the ‘9-11 Decade’. I will briefly mention a couple of the reports that stood for me and which I’m still thinking about.

Lessons Learned: Metered Political Responses

On the 9^th of September, Michael Crowley from Time magazine argues that a decade after the September 11 attacks, terrorism does not play a ‘central’ part in American politics. He writes: ‘Residents of New York and Washington are fretting over reports that al-Qaeda may want to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, in its own deranged fashion. But our political system remains calm. And it’s worth pausing to reflect on that’. I don’t really agree that terrorism is not a central part of American politics, but the point about the Obama Administration not using September 11 Anniversary as political currency is indeed a good one to reflect upon.

Lessons Still Not Learned: First Responders in New York Have ‘primitive’ communication technology compared to teenagers with smart phones

On the 12^th of September, Anderson Cooper 360  reported that New York City first responders continue to struggle with poor communications tools. This was a major impediment to the efforts of rescue workers when the September 11 attacks first happened. Ten years later, the technology available to first responders ‘is still primitive’. Comm. Raymond Kelly from the New York City Police Department testified before a Senate Committee in February that: ‘a 16 year old with a smart phone has a more advanced communications capability than a police officer or a deputy carrying a radio. Given the technology that is available and the complexity of the threat that we face this is unacceptable’. The USA Senate Committee on Commerce is still struggling to secure a unified modern communication system for first responders.

Social Media Coverage: ‘Still Learning’

Also on the 12^th of September, The Buffer Blog shared the efforts of American Twitter user, Brian Austin, who tweeted the timeline of events from the September 11th Terrorist Attacks in a series of real-time tweets. TweetSmarter relayed author Martin Bryant’s analysis on a similar theme gone wrong for The Guardian newspaper in the UK. Writing on The Next Web, Bryant reported that The Guardian set up a separate Twitter account to tweet the events of the terrorist attacks in real time; a move that was heavily criticised by the Twitter community. The Twitter feeds for this account consequently stopped abruptly and there was no further tweets from that account.

The biggest difference between Austin’s and The Guardian’s similar idea is that The Guardian is a respected news service that people trust to deliver up to the minute reports on current events. People were offended by the motivations behind the Guardian’s separate account. By tweeting events from September 11 2001 in real time as if they were happening in 2011 seemed exploitative. The public backlash reinforces that the practices between traditional media services and social media are still being negotiated. ‘The Guardian may have made a mistake yesterday, but it shows that we’re still discovering all the nuances in context and timing that can affect the way we “read” Twitter’. They also featured media commentator Iain Hepburn’s blog, which offers good analysis about the importance of providing emotion and context to news tweets.

Behind the buzzwords: ‘Decade 9-11’ and ‘Generation 9-11’

Most of the major news outlets named their special reports commemorating the September 11 anniversary ‘Decade 9-11’ or ‘The 9/11 Decade’. This includes ABC News Australia; Al Jazeera; The Interpreter; The Guardian; The Atlantic; Reuters Global News Journal; and New York magazine, which posed a somewhat enigmatic question: ‘The 9/11 decade is now over. The terrorists lost. But who won?’. The ‘Decade 9/11’ catch phrase may seem an appropriate way of classifying American politics, given the 9-11 attacks were one of the most significant political events in recent American history, but it got me thinking about whether or not this term is useful sociologically. I would argue probably not, since it silences other major events such as the global financial crisis that led to a recession in the USA (and elsewhere), as well as other major public events, like Hurricane Katrina, which highlighted deficiencies in political planning for natural disasters.

Professor Tim Dunne and Dr Matt McDonald, two senior International Relations academics from The University of Queensland, have a forthcoming publication: ‘Remembering and Forgetting the 9/11 Decade’. It will be published in the Australian Literary Review. I hope they take a critical look at this discourse. In a press release advertising a recent roundtable discussion on the same topic Professor Dunne says: ‘The War on Terror has defined the first decade of this century… Its catalyst, 9/11, did not have to happen, nor did the character of the responses… While future 9/11s are possible, so is a more just and law-governed world’. Although I hate the use of the phrase ‘future 9/11s’, I look forward to reading more.

Several news outlets also ran with Andrea Elliott’s ‘Generation 9-11’ article published in the the New York Times on the 8^th of September. The story examined the impact of the September 11 attacks on the lives, religious identities and life choices of young American Muslims. Elliott reports that the increased negative scrutiny on Muslims since the September 11 attacks has led some young Muslims to turn away from their religion, while others experienced a ‘spiritual and civic awakening’. One American-Muslim filmmaker says that Muslim youths ‘were already accustomed to being ambassadors “of all things Muslim”’, but, Elliott argues, after of the terrorist attacks, ‘the children of Muslim immigrants became the first line of defence against a stream of queries by non-Muslims’. The findings of two sociologists, Lori Peek, from the Colorado State University and Louise Cainkar, from Marquette University, are cited in the report. Their research finds that many younger Muslims changed their career paths in response to the anti-Muslim backlash. Rather than pursuing engineering and medicine as their parents had done, they went on to study journalism and political science.

A similar topic came up again on the 12^th of September on SBS World News Australia Television. Reporter Katrina Yu covered the ‘Youth Support Network Q&A Session: 9/11 – Ten Years On’, held in Auburn, New South Wales. A group of young Muslims shared their experiences growing up in Australia under the shadow of the September 11 attacks. Yu says these youths represent ‘A whole generation growing up with what they say is anti-Islamic sentiment’. Yu reports that the discussions were not ‘all negative’, with the youth saying that the events of September 11 prompted them to ‘ask more questions about the world, [and] engage with politics and religion’. You can watch the video below.

Another SBS report from the 8^th of September,  which I blogged about earlier, covered a similar theme. The SBS vox pop featured Australian-Muslims saying that one of the positive outcomes of September 11 attacks was that it forced some Muslims to become more politically aware about their religion. One man says that since the events of September 11, Muslims have been more explicit in showing other Australians that Islam is a religion that advocates peace. He says: ‘We couldn’t hide our beliefs… Among so many bad things [that happened since 9/11], for me this was a good thing that happened. It really cleared us of who we are’.   Another woman said: ‘It gave us a bit more of a push. It made us to go and to meet more people and to show that this is not Islam. That Islam doesn’t teach us the kind of violence that has taken place here. And we are peaceful people’.

Numerous studies show that some young Muslims have chosen to take up the role of educating non-Muslims about their religion since the September 11 attacks. For example, I interviewed a group of young, well-educated Muslim women in 2001 who saw the Muslim headscarf (hijab) as a ‘flag for Islam’, also in response to the negative stereotypes about Islam which had intensified since the September 11 terrorist attacks.[i] These women believed that wearing the hijab meant they literally wore the responsibility to educate other Australians that their religion is peaceful and to dispel myths and stereotypes about Islam. This can be seen as a very positive exercise that supports the spirit of multicultural respect of other religions and cultures. Then again, members from other religious groups, such as Christians, are not held publicly accountable as individual ambassadors of their religion in Australia. The symbolic practice of expecting individual Muslims to be public educators about their faith exemplifies the extent to which Muslims are constructed as outsiders, or as ‘the Other’ of mainstream Australia.

10^th anniversary of September 11 Media Coverage: The Wrap Up

The Australian and international English-language coverage in remembrance of the September 11 attacks focused on themes of survival and heroism. Time magazine highlighted that the Obama administration’s political discourse on terrorism was relatively restrained despite the high terrorism threat alert leading up to the anniversary. Ten years after the attack, technological advances exemplify that communication problems persist for first responders, while traditional media still has much to learn about how to use social media meaningfully when covering public tragedies. The ‘Decade 9-11’ and ‘Generation 9-11’ discussions lend ongoing support to idea that the September 11 attacks continue to define the social and political identifications of Muslims in Australia and America. At the same time, these terms are not being used in a critical manner that deconstructs this narrative, and so they are likely to exacerbate the social marginalisation of Muslims.

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