It is true we think of tech as the domain of the hoodie wearing coder in a Silicon Valley garage which is mostly men. But go into any tech hub today in Lagos or London and you will see a different story play out. Women are not just entering the field, but also redefining its core from AI ethics to control panels, venture capital and beyond. We are not talking about meeting numbers here, we are seeing a quiet revolution that is making tech more human, inclusive, and innovative.
The Unseen Architects: A Legacy Revived
Tech’s “founding mothers” have always been present; we just didn’t include them in the story. Take Ada Lovelace which at the turn of the last century put forth concepts of computer programming which the first computers did not see. Or Grace Hopper which developed the first compiler that in turn became the base for today’s programming languages. Today’s women are standing on their shoulders to restore a lost history.
Dr. Fei-Fei Li who is the co-director of Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) lives this rebirth. Her work in computer vision which made machines see what she did also put the issue of bias in facial recognition in the fore. “Tech without humanity is dangerous” is what she says. This is what is in the process of transforming Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” into “build thoughtfully and repair inequities.
Breaking the Binary: Where women are leading change
Startup Culture: From Small shop to public forum
Women founders are breaking the lone genius mold. Take Arlan Hamilton who built Backstage Capital, a VC firm which she put together while homeless. She did it this way: “we bet on the underdogs”. Also, Anne Wojcicki at 23andMe which she founded to put genetic testing in the hands of the people and which is very much a user owned model. What these startups do is they put collaboration over competition, they create ecosystems which foster mentorship and access.
Impact Highlight: Female founded startups see a 78% higher ROI (Boston Consulting Group) but only get 2% of VC funding. The gap is out there but women are going around traditional gatekeepers via crowdfunding, community rounds and incubators like Ada Ventures.
Innovation Labs: Solving What is Overlooked
While in the male dominated fields of metaverse real estate we see, at the same time women led teams are focused on issues which are not getting attention.
- Dr. Rana El Kaliouby of Affectiva broke into the field of emotion AI which aims to humanize digital interactions.
- Trishneet Arora at TAC Security is serving small businesses in India’s unserved markets from cyber-attacks.
- Juliet Anammah at Jumia grew e-commerce in Africa which also saw heavy investment in local logistics and cash on delivery options.
Their innovations share a thread: Technology as a tool, not a roadblock
Ethical Tech: The Humanitarians’ Action Group
As technology seeps into every aspect of life, women are at the forefront of putting in place ethical checks:
- Timnit Gebru brought to light issues of racial bias in algorithms which in turn set off a firestorm of industry wide accountability.
- Meredith Whittaker (CEO of Signal) is a champion of encryption as a human right.
- Tracy Chou (Block Party) develops anti-harassment tools for social platforms.
Ethics is not a women’s issue it is a survival issue — reports Gebru. They have put pressure on Google, Microsoft, and the EU to develop AI and Machine Learning Integration.
Culture Shift: Reconfiguring Tech’s Social Code
Inclusive Design: Beyond “Dink Small and Pink
Exclusion is at the core of failure. Her team’s work inspired Xbox Adaptive Controllers and AI which describes images for the visually impaired.
At Salesforce Chief Equality Officer Tony Prophet (with a team of female engineers) put inclusion into the tech stack:
- Gender-neutral pronouns in code
- Accessibility audits for all products
- Biased language in job ads detected by algorithms.
Leadership: Empathy’s Edge
Women in tech leadership (as seen with Ginni Rometty at former IBM and Susan Wojcicki at former YouTube) report that they foster psychological safety which in turn fuels innovation. At Slack Chief Product Officer Tamar Yehoshua reports that her team’s game changing ideas come from “blameless post mortems” which we conduct without judgment.
- Data Point: Teams that have gender diverse leadership see 19% increase in innovation revenue (Boston Consulting Group).
- The Ripple Effect: Mentoring for the next generation.
- Passing the Mic: When Visibility Opens Up Possibility.
Reshma Saujani of Girls Who Code didn’t just teach coding, she went after the “imposter syndrome pipeline”. Her secret? That she put out imperfect code for girls. “We celebrate debugging over genius,” she says. The result? Since 2012 they have trained 450,000 girls with alumni at Apple, NASA, and OpenAI.
Also in that vein Dr. Ayanna Howard (who is the Dean of Engineering at Ohio State and a former NASA roboticist) runs robotics camps for girls with disabilities. “If she can’t hold a screwdriver, we re-design the robot” reports Howard.
Venture Capital: Funding for the Future
Women including Aileen Lee from Cowboy Ventures, Mary Meeker from Bond Capital, and Sarah Guo from Conviction Partners are not just writing checks they are behind missions:
- In 8 out of 10 cases our female VC friends are putting money into health tech, edtech and hosting backup for them (as opposed to 3 out of 10 for male VCs).
- Portfolio companies are seeing a 2.5x growth in women in technical roles.
- Guo puts it plainly: We are creating what companies required 20 years ago.
The Unfinished Code: Forward progress and what’s to come
Despite progress women still only make up 26% of tech jobs and 11% of executive roles. We see burn out rates at twice that of men. But the model for change is taking shape.
Pump three buttons for success:
- Flexible by Default: Remote first strategies and focus on results (which GitLab and others have put forward).
- Sponsorship over Mentorship: Male advocates for women’s promotions (Adobe’s “Step Up” program).
- Early Exposure: In grade school which is at the time when interest often does (Black Girls CODE, Techbridge Girls).
The Future is Cooperative (Beyond Black and White)
In issues of rare diseases which see our AI at work that includes the case of fintech apps for the unbanked women in Nairobi and also that of maternal health wearables which were developed by mothers who weren’t satisfied with good enough.