美国新任CTO：谁将为科技业女性敞开大门？

编者注：本文摘自于威维克•瓦德瓦和法莱•奇德亚的新书《创新女性：科技的变脸》。

    我们所有人都从历史中继承了杰出的天赋、创新精神和美妙的文化，不幸的是，我们也继承了严重的偏见——不管是有意识的，还是无意识的。

    如今，绝大多数的性别歧视都是无意识的。来自于英国的平权挑战机构（Equality Challenge Unit）已经分享了大量关于偏见的性质及影响的研究。比如，我们的大脑会在无意识状态下处理大量信息，而且寻找模式的速度要比在有意识状态下快20万倍。当我们发现一些模式共同出现时（比如看见高级领导层的领导们单独出现），它就会很中性地把这些想法联系在一起。

    随着我们更加意识到、了解到这些偏见的复杂性，了解了它们是如何运作的，了解了它们给我们带来的痛苦，以及在经济、文化、政治、社会和创造力方面造成的巨大损失，我们就有责任行动起来，去扭转和改变这种局面。这些问题并不是由我们引起的，但是我们可以成为纠正这些问题的推动者之一。

    性别差异的鸿沟是千真万确存在的。简单看一看美国，我们就会发现，女性在《财富》美国500强企业的执行委员会里只占14%，在国会中的比例仅为17%。创始人或CEO是女性的企业，只占风投资助的全部美国企业的11%。在世界各国，这些数字或许不尽相同，但是在大多数国家，情况通常与美国相似或者更糟，只在极少数国家是例外。各国社会对待女性的态度也是不同的，在有些极端地区，女性基本上被视为财产一类。1848年在塞尼卡福斯召开的世界首届女权大会上发表的《感伤宣言》中所列的“16大感伤”，至今仍在很多地方合理、甚至合法地存在。（如果你没有读过《感伤宣言》，此文非常值得一读，它可以让我们检讨从19世纪中叶到现在，我们在男女平权方面到底走出了多远。）

    纵观历史的大部分年代，绝大多数人都对男尊女卑的传统安之若素。在每个年代都有一些伟人孜孜不倦地为男女同权而奋斗，其中既有男性也有女性。然而从过去到今天，斗争只是变得日益严峻。

    如今，在世界的许多地方，我们都已经达到了某种临界点，大多数人因为很多原因而越来越意识到妇女同权的必要。或许我们就要加快实现真正的、有意义的、持久的男女同权的脚步了。各地的女权倡导者、艺术家和变革者们继续进行着持续了几个世纪的奋斗，同时互联网又大大扩展了他们的受众，扩大了他们的声音。关于赋予女性更多权利的讨论不绝于耳，已经从社会边缘来到了联合国的中心舞台，成了发达国家和发展中国家都关注的议题。

    谢丽尔•桑德伯格的新书《向前一步》（Lean In）在专业领域里引起了很大的反响。麦肯锡（McKinsey）和Catalyst等咨询公司以及凯洛格（Kellogg）、哈佛（Harvard）、MIT等商学院也都纷纷开展研究，探索为什么建立男女搭配、性别平衡的团队是有其经济价值的，以及无意识的偏见是如何在各个方面阻挡男女平权的进步的。一些声名素著的推动科技领域性别平权的组织，比如全国女性与信息技术中心（National Center for Women & Information Technology）与安妮塔博格学院（Anita Borg Institute）等，已经获得了很多企业高级管理人员的关注，以教育企业改变男多女少的局面。研究表明，具有性别多样性的团队及领导层，不仅可以生产出更好的产品，甚至可以将企业、组织、家庭、社会乃至国家治理得更好。

    全世界人民都积极响应了这个理念。威维克、塔文德、法莱、尼莎和他们的团队必须合作创作这本书——数百位女性有效地为本书贡献了她们的故事。这些故事忠实记录了她们在传统偏见下的重重困难，以及她们如何克服困难，书写了新的篇章。感谢各位与我们分享了有用的故事、丰富的经验、棘手的挑战、成功的突破，以及真知灼见。

    Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology by Vivek Wadhwa and Farai Chideya.

    All of us have inherited from history great gifts, innovations, wonderful culture, and sadly, extraordinary biases — both conscious and unconscious.

    Today, the vast majority of gender bias is unconscious. The Equality Challenge Unit has shared extensive research about the nature and effect of bias; for example, our unconscious brain processes large amounts of information and looks for patterns 200,000 times faster than the conscious brain, and when it sees patterns occurring together (like seeing men alone in senior leadership), it wires those thoughts together neutrally.

    As we become much more aware of and educated about the complexities of these biases, how they operate, and the pain and extraordinary economic, cultural, political, creative, and social loss they cause for humanity, it’s our responsibility to act, to shift, to upgrade. None of us created these problems, but we can be the ones to make a huge push to fix them.

    The gender gap is very real. If we quickly look at just the United States, we know that women make up 14% of Fortune 500 Executive Committees, 17% of Congress, and 11% of CEO/founder positions of U.S. firms backed by venture capital. These numbers vary by country around the world, but in most cases they are sadly similar or worse, and only on rare exception are they better. The treatment of women varies by country, including extreme regions where women are basically treated as property, places where nearly all of the 16 points voiced in the historic Declaration of Sentiments, created at the world’s first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 at Seneca Falls, are still operating culturally and often legally. (If you haven’t already, the Declaration of Sentiments is worth reading to reflect on how far we have and have not come since the mid-1800s).

    For most of history, the vast majority of people were exposed to and became comfortable with a disparate reality for men and women. In every generation, there have been giants, both women and men, who have worked tirelessly for gender equality — but they faced, and still face, a constant uphill battle.

    Today it feels like we’re at a tipping point in many parts of the world, where a growing majority of people are conscious of the need for women’s equal rights for so many reasons — that we are perhaps about to accelerate on our path to real, meaningful, and lasting gender equality. Activists, artists, and change makers everywhere continue to build upon centuries of incredible work, now that the Internet has dramatically expanded their reach and voice. Conversations abound about the empowerment of women and girls — moved from the sidelines to the center stage at the UN, across developed and developing countries.

    Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In, has provoked greater dialogue across professional sectors, and research firms like McKinsey and Catalyst, alongside business schools like Kellogg, Harvard, and MIT, are doing the research we have long needed that shows why it’s economically valuable to have gender-inclusive and balanced teams, and how unconscious bias is operating everywhere to block progress. Long-standing groups who work for gender equality in technology fields, like the National Center for Women & Information Technology and the Anita Borg Institute, are getting much more mainstream access to senior executives and others to help educate for change. Research now proves that gender-diverse teams and leadership make better products, companies, organizations, families, communities and countries.

    People across the world responded to the idea. Vivek, Tavinder, Farai, Neesha, and their team had to collaboratively create this book — hundreds of women were able to efficiently contribute their personal stories. These are important accounts of their own difficult experiences with the real and perceptual historic biases we have inherited and how they are moving to write our next chapter. Thank you to everyone who has shared useful stories, broad experiences, deeply troubling challenges, success breakthroughs, and critical insights.