美國新任CTO 誰將爲科技業女性敞開大門

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

編者注：本文摘自於威維克·瓦德瓦和法萊o奇德亞的新書《創新女性：科技的變臉》。

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

我們所有人都從歷史中繼承了傑出的天賦、創新精神和美妙的文化，不幸的是，我們也繼承了嚴重的偏見——不管是有意識的，還是無意識的。

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.

如今，絕大多數的性別歧視都是無意識的。來自於英國的平權挑戰機構（Equality Challenge Unit）已經分享了大量關於偏見的性質及影響的研究。比如，我們的大腦會在無意識狀態下處理大量信息，而且尋找模式的速度要比在有意識狀態下快20萬倍。當我們發現一些模式共同出現時（比如看見高級領導層的領導們單獨出現），它就會很中性地把這些想法聯繫在一起。

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.

隨着我們更加意識到、瞭解到這些偏見的複雜性，瞭解了它們是如何運作的，瞭解了它們給我們帶來的痛苦，以及在經濟、文化、政治、社會和創造力方面造成的巨大損失，我們就有責任行動起來，去扭轉和改變這種局面。這些問題並不是由我們引起的，但是我們可以成爲糾正這些問題的推動者之一。

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).

性別差異的鴻溝是千真萬確存在的。簡單看一看美國，我們就會發現，女性在《財富》美國500強企業的執行委員會裏只佔14%，在國會中的比例僅爲17%。創始人或CEO是女性的企業，只佔風投資助的全部美國企業的11%。在世界各國，這些數字或許不盡相同，但是在大多數國家，情況通常與美國相似或者更糟，只在極少數國家是例外。各國社會對待女性的態度也是不同的，在有些極端地區，女性基本上被視爲財產一類。1848年在塞尼卡福斯召開的世界首屆女權大會上發表的《感傷宣言》中所列的“16大感傷”，至今仍在很多地方合理、甚至合法地存在。（如果你沒有讀過《感傷宣言》，此文非常值得一讀，它可以讓我們檢討從19世紀中葉到現在，我們在男女平權方面到底走出了多遠。）

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.

縱觀歷史的大部分年代，絕大多數人都對男尊女卑的傳統安之若素。在每個年代都有一些偉人孜孜不倦地爲男女同權而奮鬥，其中既有男性也有女性。然而從過去到今天，鬥爭只是變得日益嚴峻。

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.

如今，在世界的許多地方，我們都已經達到了某種臨界點，大多數人因爲很多原因而越來越意識到婦女同權的必要。或許我們就要加快實現真正的、有意義的、持久的男女同權的腳步了。各地的女權倡導者、藝術家和變革者們繼續進行着持續了幾個世紀的奮鬥，同時互聯網又大大擴展了他們的受衆，擴大了他們的聲音。關於賦予女性更多權利的討論不絕於耳，已經從社會邊緣來到了聯合國的中心舞臺，成了發達國家和發展中國家都關注的議題。

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.

謝麗爾o桑德伯格的新書《向前一步》（Lean In）在專業領域裏引起了很大的反響。麥肯錫（McKinsey）和Catalyst等諮詢公司以及凱洛格（Kellogg）、哈佛（Harvard）、MIT等商學院也都紛紛開展研究，探索爲什麼建立男女搭配、性別平衡的團隊是有其經濟價值的，以及無意識的偏見是如何在各個方面阻擋男女平權的進步的。一些聲名素著的推動科技領域性別平權的組織，比如全國女性與信息技術中心（National Center for Women & Information Technology）與安妮塔博格學院（Anita Borg Institute）等，已經獲得了很多企業高級管理人員的關注，以教育企業改變男多女少的局面。研究表明，具有性別多樣性的團隊及領導層，不僅可以生產出更好的產品，甚至可以將企業、組織、家庭、社會乃至國家治理得更好。

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.

全世界人民都積極響應了這個理念。威維克、塔文德、法萊、尼莎和他們的團隊必須合作創作這本書——數百位女性有效地爲本書貢獻了她們的故事。這些故事忠實記錄了她們在傳統偏見下的重重困難，以及她們如何克服困難，書寫了新的篇章。感謝各位與我們分享了有用的故事、豐富的經驗、棘手的挑戰、成功的突破，以及真知灼見。

Sharing these personal stories and so many more is a big part of the solution.

分享這些個人的故事，也是解決方案的一個重要部分。

Making these problems visible through real day-to-day experiences, both the hardship and examples of potential paths forward, show us the hopeless reality and the hopeful ways out.

通過刻畫出真正的日常經驗，既包括艱難險阻，也包括潛在的出路，可以向我們展示出現實的無助，以及充滿希望的前路。

The stories, the realities that each woman faces, are a powerful way to elicit empathy, allow us to understand much more specifically the challenges, and encourage all of us to look deeper at these issues and evolve.

這些故事，尤其是每位女性面臨的現實，都會深深地引發我們的同情，使我們更詳細地理解女性所面臨的挑戰，激勵我們所有人更深入地看待這些問題，並且改變自身。

We see two important opportunities for the future here:

我們認爲，未來有兩個重要的機會：

The first is championing and supporting organizations whose direct mission is to support women. Organizations like Astia, Women 2.0, Vital Voices, the Global Fund for Women, and UP Global are working directly to ensure more women have access to the opportunities they deserve. We both sit on the boards of some of these organizations and are fortunate to witness firsthand how tremendous leadership in action can lead to direct results.

首先，是擁護和支持那些以力挺女權爲己任的組織。比如像Astia、女性2.0（Women 2.0）、生命之音（Vital Voices）、全球婦女基金會（Global Fund for Women）和UP Global等組織，都在直接爲讓更多女性獲得她們應得的工作機會而努力。我們既是其中某些組織的理事會成員，也非常有幸地親眼見證了領導階層的有力行動可以帶來多麼直接的成果。

In June 2013, UP Global hosted the Startup Weekend Women’s Edition SF and, with 85% women, clocked in with the highest number of women ever at a startup weekend. Many shared how they had long considered participating in a startup weekend event, but once they heard that one was specifically for female entrepreneurs, they jumped at the opportunity and never looked back. UP Global is working on a new initiative with support from Google for Entrepreneurs and Blackstone Foundation called Startup Women, an effort to increase participation of women across UP Global’s programs and help 1,500 women-led startups launch this year.

2013年6月，UP Global在舊金山召開了創業週末婦女版（Startup Weekend Women’s Edition ）活動，參與者85%是女性，創下了“創業週末”有史以來女性參與人數最高的一次紀錄。許多人表示，她們一直想參加一次創業週末活動，一聽說這次活動是專門爲女性企業家舉辦的，她們立刻毫不猶豫地抓住了這次機會。UP Global還在谷歌創業支援團隊（Google For Entrepreneurs）和黑石基金會（Blackstone Foundation）的支持下，發起了一個叫做“創業女性”（Startup Women）的項目，旨在提高女性對UP Global項目的參與度，並計劃在今年幫助成立1500家由女性領導的創業公司。

The second layer is thinking about increasing diversity as a thin underlay across all the work we do globally. We saw this with Manos Accelerator, a new tech accelerator for Latino startup founders; they made a conscious decision to ensure they filled their pipeline with both male and female founders, and subsequently their first class of startups featured five of the seven teams with a female founder. Google for Entrepreneurs launched the global #40Forward effort this year to increase representation of women in 40 startup communities with 40 partners. Organizations did everything from simply tweak the time of day of their events to launch women-focused accelerators. It’s not just about one organization or one community — the ideas is to shift the way we think about inclusion across the board.

第二，在全球範圍內，我們在所有工作中，都要注意提高女性的比例，以此作爲開展所有工作的基礎之一。我們發現瑪諾斯加速器（Manos Accelerator）已經在這樣做了。瑪諾斯加速器是面向拉美創業家的一個科技加速器。他們有意識地確保同時扶持男性和女性創業家，因此他們扶持的最優秀的七個創業團隊中，有五個團隊都是由女性創業家領導的。谷歌創業支援團隊也於今年推出了一個叫做#40Forward的全球項目，與40個合作伙伴一道，推進女性在40個創業社區所佔的比例。可以說各個組織都使出了渾身解數，從簡單地調整活動的時間，到推出以女性爲重點的創業加速器等。這不僅僅是一個組織或一個社區的事，而是要全面轉變我們的觀念。

There is enormous potential to tackle the world’s toughest challenges with women and men working together on solutions, tremendous opportunity to improve our communities and our countries and together to elevate our global human condition through entrepreneurship and “10X thinking.” It requires courage, rolling up our sleeves, and moving outside of our comfort zone and our traditional ways of thinking.

如果男性與女性一道，共同思考解決方案，我們就會有巨大的潛力來解決世界上一些最棘手的挑戰，同時有大量的機會來改善我們的社會、我們的國家，通過創業和“10倍的思考”來共同提升全球人類處境。它需要勇氣，也需要我們挽起袖子，勇敢地衝出我們的“舒適區域”，突破傳統的思維方式。

Gloria Steinem said, “Don’t think about making women fit the world — think about making the world fit women.” As an industry, we are just at the start of understanding this insight and how we might change and adapt our tech culture to better accommodate so many more innovators.

美國著名女權主義者葛羅莉亞o斯坦能曾說過：“不要想讓女人適應世界——想想如何改造世界來適合女人。”作爲一個行業，我們纔剛剛開始理解她的這個觀點，同時我們也纔剛剛開始理解我們應該如何變革自身、調整科技文化，才能更好地適應這麼多新涌現的創新者。

If not now, when? If not us, who? Take action.

此時不做，更待何時？如非我等，捨我其誰？趕快行動吧！

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

我們一直等待的人正是我們自己。

Mary Grove is Google’s director of global entrepreneurship outreach where she leads Google for Entrepreneurs, the company’s programs and partnerships to support start-ups and entrepreneurs in more than 100 countries around the world. Megan Smith is the newly named U.S. chief technology officer. She is a former Google executive with a background in entrepreneurship and engineering.

瑪莉o格魯夫是谷歌全球創業拓展部主任，她領導谷歌創業支援團隊以及谷歌的各種項目和合作項目，在全球100多個國家對創業活動和企業家進行支持。梅根o史密斯是美國新任命的首席技術官。她曾在谷歌公司任高管，並有創業和工程領域的背景。