How are you investing in women to accelerate progress?

In her book Man-Made, Tracey Spicer AM GAICD tells us that the bias of the past is being built into the future via artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning.

There are few women and even fewer minorities accepted in the tech space. This becomes apparent when we look at how stereotyped a lot of AI is.

For example, Alexa and Siri are female voices, ensuring the stereotypical attitude of the past about women and girls being brought up to be compliant and submissive is being embedded into the technology of the future.

Tracey asks us to consider ‘how can we rage against the machine when we can’t eliminate tech from our lives’?

As you know, today is International Women's Day.

The theme this year is “Invest in women: Accelerate progress”.

If you're looking for some ways to do this, while breaking some male bias in AI and tech, consider these:

🌟 On your devices, swap Alexa and Siri to male voices

🌟 Use Shebah not Uber

🌟 Support tech companies run by women, such as Canva

🌟 Look at the Superstars of STEM website to find more trailblazing women -

🌟 Follow more trailblazing women on social media, and like, comment on and share their content

🌟 Consume more content created by women - books, podcasts, TV/movies

🌟 When buying a car ask questions about voice controls – what’s the accuracy for female voices? For those with an accent?

🌟 Ask questions of your tech suppliers at work – what is their record on diversity and inclusion? Where does the data come from? What auditing do you do in-house?

🌟 Have women run your training programs and speak on panels at your events – and yes, you can talk to me about this 

My challenge to you is this.

Pick one of these and take action.

And if you would like to have more women in your training programs or speak at your events, please get in touch. If I’m not the right fit, I can guarantee another woman in my network will be.

What will you do to invest in women and accelerate progress?