Twenty-five years later, were still far from that goal.
OnWomens Equality Dayin 2020, its appropriate to revisit Borgs moonshot challenge.
But special programs and fixing women by improving their skills have not been enough.
By and large, the tech field doesnt need to fix women, it needs to fix itself.
It requires organizations to prioritize and promote material, not symbolic, change.
It requires sustained effort and shifts of power to include more diverse players.
Intentional strategies to promote openness, ensure equity, diversify leadership and measure success can work.
Ive seen it happen.
Swimming upstream
I loved math as a kid.
I loved finding elegant solutions to abstract problems.
I loved learning thatMobius stripshave only one side and that there ismore than one size of infinity.
I was a math major in college and eventually found a home in computer science in graduate school.
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In academic computer science departments, women are usually a small minority.
In most organizations I have dealt with, women rarely occupy the top job.
From 2001 to 2009, I led a National Science Foundation supercomputer center.
Ten years after moving on from that job, Im still the only woman to have occupied that position.
Several years into my term, I discovered that I was paid one-third less than others with similar positions.
Changing culture takes persistence
Culture impacts outcomes.
Supercomputer culture in those days was hyper-competitive and focused on dominance of SupercomputingsTop500 ranking.
Supercomputer centers typically involve lots of hardware like these banks of computer processors.
The fields focus on dominance was reflected in organizational culture.
My team and I set out to change that.
Improving the organizational culture also translated into a richer set of projects and collaborations.
It helped us expand our focus to infrastructure and users and embrace the data revolution early on.
Setting the stage for cultural diversity
Diverse leadership is a critical part of creating diverse cultures.
Women both lead and thrive in this community.
Having women at the table makes a difference.
To date, 50 Nobel Prize winners and many professional award winners are former Sloan Research Fellows.
Intentional strategies, prioritization and persistent commitment to cultural change can help turn the tide.
Its much better to be late than never.
