In the computing and technology industry, many see diversity as an issue in the computing and technology community. But what does diversity mean, what does perfect diversity look like? After giving it some thought, diversity, in my opinion, is the equal representation of all groups in a community such that there is no majority or minority. Obviously, achieving such a state of diversity is almost an impossible task, but we can still make efforts to pursue it. While striving for diversity is good for helping out the underrepresented groups in a community, we shouldn’t mindlessly follow it without first understanding its purpose. The point of diversity is to make minority groups feel more comfortable with other members in the community. It isn’t that we need more diversity, but we need to better pursue the goal of diversity, which is to make everyone feel welcome. In order to make everyone feel truly welcomed in a community, it requires effort from everyone, even from those in underrepresented groups. If everyone looks beyond the race, ethnicity, and gender of each individual in the community and see these individuals as just fellow programmers, then perhaps the situation would change. Minorities wouldn’t be so dependent on needing more members of their own kind to feel welcome, and maybe the lack of diversity wouldn’t be such a big deal.
Everyone knows that the computing and technology community is dominated by males. In my opinion, the reason that women are lacking in number is not because men are better than women but rather due to the strong inclusive image of the computing and technology community. When a Facebook recruiter visited Notre Dame, one comment that I remember him saying is that even if Facebook accepted all the female candidates who applied, there still wouldn’t be enough female employees to balance out the gender ratio in the company. His comment suggested to me that the problem lies with the male stereotype that defines the engineering community, which, in turn, dissuades women to want to participate in such a community. In order to build a more welcoming and diverse community, the first step is to break down the male dominant image that currently reflects the people in computing and technology. One such idea would be to introduce programming or technology in general to children early in school, emphasizing that it’s for anyone and not just geniuses or even guys. My sister, who was not interested in engineering before, joined Girls Who Code last year and was able to find her passion for coding after joining the club. Clubs like these may be small steps towards diversity, but they are slowly breaking down the stereotypical, male image that has discouraged women and even minorities to pursue a career in computing and technology.
Ultimately, the lack of diversity still remains a problem, but perhaps diversity is not the primary barrier to building a good community. Rather than solely focusing on improving underrepresentation according to demographics, everyone should strive to adopt a good mind and treat others not by their race, ethnicity, or gender but as another programmer like ourselves. Furthermore, with the help of early coding exposure to school students, we can gradually erase the exclusive image of computing and technology communities and welcome anyone who’s interested in joining a one big, happy coding family.
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