Maria Klawe on increasing Women in Technology
I talk a lot about the importance of data in enabling us to bring the scientific method to bear on information security. There’s a reason for that: more data will let us know the falsehoods, and knowing the falsehoods will set us free. But discovering what claims don’t stand up to scrutiny is a matter of understanding systems. And to understand systems, we need diverse perspectives. And that’s really hard. At my book reading at Ada’s, I decided to include the section of the book that talks about diversity. Jacob Appelbaum asked me what we can do about the problem, and I was forced to admit that my best answer is to raise awareness that there’s a real issue here, and hope that someone with a different perspective can offer up better answers. (It’s a nicely recursive solution to the issue.)
And fortunately, Maria Klawe (President of Harvey Mudd College, ACM Fellow, Microsoft board member) has some answers, which are subtle, simple, and likely incredibly difficult to implement:
Via “Harvey Mudd President Klawe on Women in Technology “.
[Update: See also “How Harvey Mudd brings women into Computer Science.”]