READ

Increasing diversity in tech with this one weird trick

Why are there so few women working in tech? And what can we do about it? The answer might come from an unexpected place.
Increasing diversity in tech with this one weird trick
Image credit: Hubud

Since the mid-1980s, the number of women studying computer science has been on the decline. While women make up about 50% of gamers, only 10 – 20% of those actually creating games are female.

It’s a complicated problem and there have been numerous wonderful initiatives to turn the trend around. But we still seem a bit stuck.

Playup Perth

I run an event series called Playup Perth. This event showcases and provides a testing ground for local games and interactive experiences currently in development, including VR. It regularly draws up to 80 people from all backgrounds, including investors, artists, educators and politicians, such as Scott Ludlam, then Senator for Western Australia.

It’s been going since 2013, and while we actively promote a diverse, safe space and the team who run it with me are all women (save our token male, Nick), the vast majority of people showing off their games are men.

But something happened recently that caught me by surprise—something that gave me a glimpse of a diverse future.

From Perth to Bali

For the first time ever, we expanded Playup Perth beyond Western Australia. We went international and partnered with Hubud, a coworking space in Bali (who I have written about previously) to run the first ever Playup Bali.

Now here’s the surprise. For the first time ever, all the games featured that night were entirely created or cocreated by women. In Perth, I’m lucky to have just one game that had a woman significantly involved in its creation. It’s the dream of all diversity initiatives to have an outcome like this.

Juliana Halko, who showed off Fourzy at Playup Bali, noticed quite a different vibe at Playup Bali and Hubud itself. It wasn’t “just tech people” she noted.

View Larger

Mind Isle’s Fourzy

Image credit: Hubud
Mind Isle’s Fourzy

Originally from Columbia and having worked in the tech scene in Seattle and San Francisco, Juliana said she found Playup Bali less intimidating and “easier for those new to the game development scene to participate”.

Diversity breeds diversity

As I have written about previously, Hubud attracts a pretty diverse crowd—not just digital nomads from around the world, but people interested in yoga, meditation, health and art as well as business, innovation and technology.

Hubud’s diversity was a huge part of the draw for Janet Keating, who teaches remotely at Curtin University from Hubud.

“You’re not meeting people just in your profession,” she told me.

“You’re meeting people doing all sorts of things from around the world.”

And the things people are creating are diverse as well.

For example, while it might be unusual to see analogue games at technology events and spaces, it’s not at Hubud. Sofia Color showed off her Chromatic Memory Game where players have to match pieces of wood that have very slight variations in colour painted on them.

“It was interesting to present a game [at Playup Bali] that was not digital,” she said.

“I didn’t even think about that until I saw some people were surprised.”

View Larger

Sofia Color’s Chromatic Memory Game

Image credit: Hubud
Sofia Color’s Chromatic Memory Game

Sofia tells me she will often paint or do other creative activities at Hubud. She says she doesn’t feel comfortable doing this at more tech-focused coworking spaces, where she feel she’s being judged.

Not only is it more diverse, Keating adds, but “people are coming here because they have an interest in work/life balance”.

Hubud’s focus on balance immediately sets Hubud apart from the usual workaholic culture seen in the tech industry, which presents a major barrier for many who aren’t young, single and male.

The result is that usually tech-focused events, like Playup Bali, also end up being much more diverse as well.

And as lots of research is now showing, diversity is strongly tied to creativity and innovation.

So, if we want to increase diversity in the tech space, we need to go beyond convincing more women and other unrepresented groups to go into the industry. It’s the culture of the industry that needs to change.

The result will be a more balanced, innovative and creative industry. I know, because I’ve already seen it.

Dr Kate Raynes-Goldie
About the author
Dr Kate Raynes-Goldie
In an age when disruption is the new normal, curiosity is the becomes the key 21st century skill. This is why Dr. Kate is an advocate for curiosity, through her work as a designer, speaker, writer and researcher. She’s written for variety of publications in Canada and Australia and is an innovation columnist for the Business News. She’s also a Certified Facilitator of LEGO® Serious Play®. As a globally recognised thought leader on innovation, Kate has been the recipient of numerous international awards and has spoken at conferences around the globe, including SXSW (Austin), NXNE (Toronto), REMIX Academy, Pecha Kucha, PAX AUS and TEDxPerth.
View articles
In an age when disruption is the new normal, curiosity is the becomes the key 21st century skill. This is why Dr. Kate is an advocate for curiosity, through her work as a designer, speaker, writer and researcher. She’s written for variety of publications in Canada and Australia and is an innovation columnist for the Business News. She’s also a Certified Facilitator of LEGO® Serious Play®. As a globally recognised thought leader on innovation, Kate has been the recipient of numerous international awards and has spoken at conferences around the globe, including SXSW (Austin), NXNE (Toronto), REMIX Academy, Pecha Kucha, PAX AUS and TEDxPerth.
View articles

NEXT ARTICLE

We've got chemistry, let's take it to the next level!

Get the latest WA science news delivered to your inbox, every fortnight.

Republish

Creative Commons Logo

Republishing our content

We want our stories to be shared and seen by as many people as possible.

Therefore, unless it says otherwise, copyright on the stories on Particle belongs to Scitech and they are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This allows you to republish our articles online or in print for free. You just need to credit us and link to us, and you can’t edit our material or sell it separately.

Using the ‘republish’ button on our website is the easiest way to meet our guidelines.

Guidelines

You cannot edit the article.

When republishing, you have to credit our authors, ideally in the byline. You have to credit Particle with a link back to the original publication on Particle.

If you’re republishing online, you must use our pageview counter, link to us and include links from our story. Our page view counter is a small pixel-ping (invisible to the eye) that allows us to know when our content is republished. It’s a condition of our guidelines that you include our counter. If you use the ‘republish’ then you’ll capture our page counter.

If you’re republishing in print, please email us to let us so we know about it (we get very proud to see our work republished) and you must include the Particle logo next to the credits. Download logo here.

If you wish to republish all our stories, please contact us directly to discuss this opportunity.

Images

Most of the images used on Particle are copyright of the photographer who made them.

It is your responsibility to confirm that you’re licensed to republish images in our articles.

Video

All Particle videos can be accessed through YouTube under the Standard YouTube Licence.

The Standard YouTube licence

  1. This licence is ‘All Rights Reserved’, granting provisions for YouTube to display the content, and YouTube’s visitors to stream the content. This means that the content may be streamed from YouTube but specifically forbids downloading, adaptation, and redistribution, except where otherwise licensed. When uploading your content to YouTube it will automatically use the Standard YouTube licence. You can check this by clicking on Advanced Settings and looking at the dropdown box ‘License and rights ownership’.
  2. When a user is uploading a video he has license options that he can choose from. The first option is “standard YouTube License” which means that you grant the broadcasting rights to YouTube. This essentially means that your video can only be accessed from YouTube for watching purpose and cannot be reproduced or distributed in any other form without your consent.

Contact

For more information about using our content, email us: particle@scitech.org.au

Copy this HTML into your CMS
Press Ctrl+C to copy