Where the Girl Hackers Are
Cyber Security and Closing the Gender Gap in Tech
This is a story about where the girl hackers are.
Traditionally, the figure of the hacker has been almost exclusively male. Paul Taylor, a British sociologist who wrote a book called Hackers: Crime in the Digital Sublime, recalls that in doing his research, “I found it very difficult to find any female hackers whatsoever.”
Taylor — like other academics and journalists who have noted the dearth of women in the nooks and crannies of cyberspace — have been looking in the wrong place for the women. The cyber world is changing, and a new generation of women are among the next generation becoming experts in cyber security.
When many people imagine “cyber experts” — like the elite hackers at the NSA, perhaps — they are almost always white men. In Hollywood, they might look like a little more like Chris Hemsworth’s bronzed and square-jawed character in the recent film Blackhat than they do in real life, but they’re almost always guys.
But that narrative is now changing.
Last summer, Maria Mejia, Kemley Nieva, and Sophia Martinez took the stage at Miami Dade College to demo “Visiolock,” a new app they had built as part of the 7-week Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program. Beaming with confidence, Maria told the crowd, “Visiolock is the latest in cyber security and identity protection, ensuring the safety of your information through facial recognition.”
Today, more than 209,000 cyber security jobs in the U.S. are unfilled, and postings are up 74 percent over the past five years. However, the industry is just 10–15% female. Though the gender gap in technology isn’t limited to cyber security (less than 25% of all technical jobs are filled by women) this particular field presents a unique opportunity to inspire girls like Maria, Kemley, and Sophia to pursue computing.
Why is this? First of all, we know that when choosing a career, girls are motivated by public service. Unlike many of their male counterparts, they don’t go to sleep at night dreaming of billion dollar IPOs. In their “Generation STEM” report, the Girl Scouts surveyed teen girls and found that making money ranked fifth among their career motivators, trailing behind helping people; making a difference in the world; helping those who are less fortunate; and having input into how the job is done.
Not only does cyber security clearly tick the “social good” boxes, but it’s also a field that girls believe has room for improvement, where they can make a meaningful mark. Maya Shanmugam is a Girls Who Code alumna who is currently doing an independent study in cyber security, researching various bugs, common vulnerabilities, and cryptography functions. “I think cyber security is an awesome and important field because most companies don’t approach and value it in the right way,” she said. “It’s a shame because this affects the functionality and security of their products.”
Sophia Martinez, a member of the group that created “Visiolock,” has a similar interest in pursuing cyber security. “I feel as if there is always something to fix and make better,” she said. Sophia plans to study computer engineering and math in college, and then hopes to work for a big company. “Or you never know… the CIA!”
Beyond the alignment of cyber security with girls’ career interests, it also has the advantage of being up and coming and relevant, and thus constantly in the news and on the screen. This matters because when it comes to inspiring girls in technology, role models count. The high-profile nature of cyber security means girls are being exposed to the field in their everyday lives, whether it’s from reading about the recent Sony hacks or watching television shows like Scandal or Criminal Minds — both of which feature the professional and emotional lives of tough, tech-savvy women who are central characters.
The trick is to ensure the images of cyber security experts and hackers we are putting in front of them are women.
Alectra Stanley, a Girls Who Code alumna now majoring in Digital Forensics, was inspired to pursue it after meeting a woman working in the field. “I’m going into cyber security because while I was at Girls Who Code one of our lunch time speakers talked about her work with online security and how they set up their website so it’s nearly unhackable, and I fell in love. Everything about it just intrigues me from how to hack, to how to stop hacks, and everything in between.”
Not all role models have to be real. Indeed, according another alum Dianne Lee, says her interest in cyber security was piqued when she read Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress. Dianne explains, “The main character is a woman in tech who faces relatable struggles.” Brown’s protagonist, Susan Fletcher, is the NSA’s Head Cryptographer. In this case, fiction is better than truth. As Shane Harris and others have shown, the elite hackers of today’s NSA are an overwhelmingly homogeneous (white, male) bunch. But the more young women and people of color whose curiosities are aroused by strong female characters, perhaps the more diversity we’ll see in the tech and cyber worlds.
It’s not just anecdotal evidence that points to girls’ career paths in technology being shaped by real-life and on-screen models. There’s actually a growing body of research that confirms it. The so-called “CSI Effect” has transformed the gender landscape, particularly in forensics. Exposure to shows like the CSI franchise (where multiple female characters have thrived across three different shows), NCIS (whose resident forensic scientist, Pauley Perrette’s Abby Scuito, is among the most popular characters on television), and Forensic Files may account for growing popularity of forensics for girls.
Here’s an astounding comparison: today 78% of those currently pursuing degrees in forensics are women, while less than 25% of women pursuing training for other technical roles.
In the world of popular culture representations of women in forensics, cyber security is about to make a big splash. Next month, a new spinoff called CSI: Cyber will debut on CBS starring Academy Award winner (and equal pay advocate) Patricia Arquette. Her voiceover in the commercials declares: “I solve crimes that begin in the mind, live online, and play out in the real world.”
Between the rise of female role models in real-world and pop-culture cyber security and the field’s growing relevance in our everyday lives as a career that helps people, cyber security just may be next big step in cracking the girl code.
