The Dangers of Keeping Women Out of Tech

In 1978 a young woman named Maria Klawe arrived at the University of Toronto to pursue a doctorate in computer science. She had never used a computer--much less written a line of code--but she had a PhD in math and a drive to succeed in a male-dominated field. She was so good that, nine months later, the university asked her to be a professor. Today, however, computer science is one of the few STEM fields in which the number of women has been steadily decreasing since the '80s. In the tech industry, women hold only around one-fifth of technical roles.