On Monday, I had the chance to view a private screening of the newish
documentary
“Code: Debugging the Gender Gap”.
The premise of the documentary,
lifted straight from IMDB:
CODE documentary exposes the dearth of female and minority software
engineers and explores the reasons for this gender gap and digital divide.
The film highlights breakthrough efforts that are producing more diverse
programmers and shows how this critical gap can be closed. CODE asks: what
would society gain from having more women and people of color code, and how
do we get there?
Going into the screening, I was already relatively well-informed about most
of the social issues and controversies highlighted in the documentary. What I
was hoping to see was a stab at answering the question posed above, namely,
“… What would society gain from having more women… code,
and how do we get there?”
Unfortunately, the documentary did not make any claims about how to solve this
issue, other than observing that many people are trying to promote the entry
of girls and women into computer programming and computer science. I’m not sure
it’s so simple to solve the issue – to my knowledge, there are women
entering programming who want to make it their field, but who feel pushed
out by the rampant problems which exist in it. I was hoping to see some stab at
a true solution, but none was provided. Maybe none exists, other than just
changing cultural norms organically.
I’d say that the film has a reasonable depiction of the industry,
and covers its material in decent form.
Many people outside the programming industry aren’t aware of the nature and
depth of the problems within it; to them, programming is just another growing
technology field that young people are increasingly entering. For them,
this film spans the gamut of issues nicely. It’s also nice for those in the
industry who don’t necessarily have the cross-cutting view of the profession
to see all of the problems (especially because most programmers are men
not from ethnic minorities, and can be unaware of these issues).
I don’t think it has any big answers,
but sometimes, asking questions is good enough.