These Tech Companies Don’t Have a Lot of Female Employees. Now, They’re Doing Something About It

Since the 1990s, female representation in tech occupations has declined, according to the United States Census Bureau. Which is why some of the industry’s biggest names — Facebook, Pinterest and Box — have kicked off a pilot program to mentor women in tech.

WEST, or Women Entering and Staying in Tech, will tap women from the aforementioned companies to serve as one-on-one mentors for females — whether they’re currently interns starting their professional career or are in midlevel positions and are looking to grow or expand their employment opportunities, according to their website. The program will kickoff in early 2015 and is open to San Francisco Bay area women. It is not yet clear how many applicants WEST plans to accept.

“Mentorship can be incredibly influential in a woman’s career, and we’re excited to be tackling this challenge together,” Facebook says in a statement. “We believe that by working together and providing more direct support, advocacy, and space for community development, we can create an impactful, scalable, one-on-one mentorship program to help women build and grow meaningful careers in tech.”

Several companies, including Facebook and Pinterest, came under fire earlier this year after data released revealed many of the companies had very few women in the workplace. In fact, Facebook admitted that only 31 percent of its employes are female while Pinterest revealed that 40 percent of its workforce is female. Boil that statistic down to technical employees and a mere 15 percent of Facebook’s tech team are women and 21 percent of Pinterest’s tech are female.

That’s a far cry from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s message to empower women, but fortunately, her company along with a few others in the Silicon Valley are taking the first steps to correcting the problem.

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Why You’ll Never Use ‘Like a Girl’ As An Insult Ever Again

It’s a seemingly innocent phrase we’ve all heard—or even used—before: “You run like a girl,” “You fight like a girl,” or “You throw like a girl.”
But what does that even mean? In the video below, award-winning filmmaker Lauren Greenfield asked a group of adults to act out those exact commands, and what you see is a whole lot of flailing limbs, bouncing hair and giggling.
If you get an uncomfortable feeling in your stomach after watching it, then that’s the point. Society has ingrained “like a girl” to mean the same as weak, cutesy or clumsy.
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In the next scene, the director asks prepubescent girls to do the same actions, and what you see is athleticism, strength and power. When Greenfield asks a young subject what it means to “run like a girl,” she responds, “It means run as fast as you can.”
The video is part of the #LikeAGirl campaign from Procter & Gamble brand Always that aims to redefine the phrase, similar to Facebook COO and “Lean In” author Sheryl Sandberg’s quest to #BanBossy.
“In my work as a documentarian, I have witnessed the confidence crisis among girls and the negative impact of stereotypes first-hand,” said Greenfield. “When the words ‘like a girl’ are used to mean something bad, it is profoundly disempowering. I am proud to partner with Always to shed light on how this simple phrase can have a significant and long-lasting impact on girls and women. I am excited to be a part of the movement to redefine ‘like a girl’ into a positive affirmation.”
ALSO: Will Banning the Word “Bossy” Lead to More Women in the Boardroom?
We’ve mentioned before, there are subtle verbal cues that girls often hear from a young age that can sound discouraging. As girls get older, their conception of what it means to be a feminine changes.
“Brand-commissioned research found half of girls report a drop in confidence after their first period. We felt strongly we needed to do something about it,” said Procter’s Amanda Hill.
It seriously just takes a little bit of awareness and education to change the status quo. Case in point: When Greenfield asks the adult subjects to try again, their movements remove the gendered stigma of the phrase. As one woman tells the camera, “I am a girl, and that is not something that I should be ashamed of.”
So what does “like a girl” mean to you? You can use the hastag #LikeAGirl to participate in the conversation.
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Will Banning the Word “Bossy” Lead to More Women in the Boardroom?

Growing up, young girls are constantly told not to be bossy. It happened to Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and best-selling author of Lean In, whose younger brother and sister joke that they weren’t actually her siblings, but rather, her first employees. It also happened to Anna Maria Chávez, CEO of the Girl Scouts of USA, who recalls people saying that her mother’s run for the local school board was inappropriate. The children of the 80s even grew up with Little Miss Bossy, a character from Roger Hargreaves’ Mr. Men and Little Miss Series, who told everyone what to do, “until Wilfred the Wizard cast a spell on her.”
Is this what we should be teaching young girls? In the eyes of Sandberg, Chávez, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a growing group of powerful women, “bossy” has become another “B” word used to degrade girls and perpetuate gender stereotypes — ultimately leading to fewer females in leadership roles.
It’s time, these women say, to ban bossy. “We call girls bossy on the playground,” Sandberg told ABC News. “We then call them too aggressive or other ‘B-words’ in the workplace. They’re bossy as little girls, and then they’re aggressive, political, shrill, too ambitious as women.”
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Sandberg’s organization, Lean In, has teamed up with the Girls Scouts of USA, Lifetime, BBDO New York and other partners in a social campaign called Ban Bossy. The mission? To encourage kids, parents, teachers, colleagues and managers to strike that negative word from their vocabulary, and replace it with positive descriptors that inspire girls to stand out and be leaders. “Words matter,” Chávez told ABC. “We need to start naming girls with positive attributes like strong, confident, resilient, with grit. Not bossy.”
Research has shown that language and labels, especially in childhood, can have a lasting impact on a person’s life. And oftentimes, it’s the girls who are put down while boys are encouraged to be assertive. Even nonverbal cues can negatively affect children’s perceptions of themselves. According to the American Association of University Women, girls are often called on less and interrupted more in the classroom. Girls between the ages of 8 and 17 are also twice as likely to avoid leadership roles so as not to be labeled “bossy”, according to a 2008 survey by the Girl Scouts. In these years, more importance is placed on being liked than being heard. It’s no wonder that girls shy away from leading. “We know that by middle school, more boys than girls want to lead,” Sandberg said. “And if you ask girls why they don’t want to lead, whether it’s the school project all the way on to running for office, they don’t want to be called bossy, and they don’t want to be disliked.”
ALSO: Can a Children’s Book Persuade Girls That Coding Is Cool?
Even though women make up more than half of the U.S. population, Sandberg points out that females represent only 5 percent of Fortune 500 executives, 17 percent of the board seats, and 19 percent of Congress. Meanwhile, the pay gap between men and women still hovers around 9 percent, after accounting for certain variables. Maybe the issue of gender inequality can’t solely rest on the shoulders of one word — even if it is fully loaded, like “bossy” — but the deeper goal is to encourage girls in the same way we encourage boys in order to level the playing field, while allowing girls to be proud of being loud.
Perhaps Beyoncé said it best: “I’m not bossy. I’m the boss.”
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