For this week’s play I decided to shift my focus to a cause I’m very passionate about, women in tech. There is so much to explore with this subject, workplace environment, job opportunities, discoveries and advancements in the field, sexism, and implicit bias to name a few. I created a comic for my play that addresses the possibility of implicit bias when hiring employees.
Social psychologist Corinne Moss-Racusin created a study to see if faculty at academic institutions held implicit biases toward women who were pursuing careers in STEM. The study showed that even when two applicants had the exact same experience and credentials, the resume displaying a traditionally female-sounding name was perceived as less qualified and was less likely to be hired by scientists than the applicant with a traditional male-sounding name.
Considering the fact that females are already outnumbered 2-1 in STEM careers, implicit gender bias in the workplace is harmful not only to women currently in STEM fields, but also women who are thinking about pursuing a career in the field.
I made this comic through Pixton and it took much longer than I imaged I would be spending on it. It may have been incompatible with my browser, but the website was not very responsive nor intuitive to create comics. I had to go through the guided tours in order to figure out what every icon was responsible for, how to orient props, and how to manipulate any object in a comic.
https://gender.stanford.edu/news-publications/gender-news/why-does-john-get-stem-job-rather-jennifer
Digital Get Down 
That’s too bad that the process for making the comic was so difficult. Overall, the comic looks really good and you did a nice job conveying your message about implicit bias and how it affects women in tech. I’m curious, do you think there is any progress being made? I know there have been greater efforts at encouraging women to go into STEM majors/jobs but I am not sure that this is translating to more jobs. Furthermore, there still seems to be work in regards to the workplace culture in tech.
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At the moment I think that companies are realizing it’s a problem but aren’t sure exactly how to recruit more women into the fields and careers. In short, I think a big step toward progress is placing more women into leadership positions at these companies and hopefully that would help reduce hidden biases or stigmas. But it would also give girls who are interested in going into STEM more role models to look up to and model themselves after as encouragement through their pursuit.
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Encouraging women to venture into STEM professions is difficult when they’re already biased against! It’s ridiculous how so many places would rather hire men than women when they both have the same exact credentials! As a woman with a male-sounding name, I feel extremely lucky because I probably face less bias in the resume process than most women out there. (Thanks, Mom!) Unfortunately, this situation makes me wonder if it would benefit my future children to name them using gender-ambiguous names…
Also, I’ve never heard of Pixton before! It looks like a really neat concept for quick comics! I’ll need to remember this site in the future!
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I like gender-ambiguous names! Besides hidden gender biases, I think the hiring practices have to do with the fact that men outnumber women in leadership roles at companies, and when you hire people you most likely gravitate towards people who look and act similar to you! If I want to hire someone.. I want someone who is like me because I know my work ethic and I know we’ll get along and have similar interests. That’s a problem in tech and STEM overall because men outnumber women in the fields as it stands, and if men are in charge of hiring they’re going to (whether subconsciously or consciously) lean towards hiring other men.
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Great comic. How did you choose Pixton?
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I thought of you when this came through my Twitter feed: https://logicmag.io/05-how-to-kill-your-tech-industry/
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That was an interesting post, thank you! I’m familiar with women being referred to as the original “computers” and it’s what always comes to mind when I have conversations with people in tech who stick by the claim that there aren’t as many women in computer science because it’s not interesting to them and they like to work with people better.. Besides the fact that women were the original “computers” and got pushed out of the industry, if people think computer science doesn’t involve working with people and thinking about people then I feel concerned! Computer science is all about solving problems, having empathy for the people involved in those problems, and working with teams to solve them. I could go on forever about this..
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