Asian Women in Tech
I always wanted to acknowledge the technological aspect of Asia, being a part of it. In today’s competitive age where, almost all human potential and attention are grabbed by science and technology with the common motive of making the world a best and perfect to humankind, somewhere I realized my duty in this movement. Actually, it’s not me only, it is my country, my continent too but exactly when I was claiming it, there was a big unseen or might be unspoken part related. I went through the status of Asian people in science and technology and decided to figure out the women participation in tech field till date. I went through the FORBES most powerful 100 women 2017 list and tried to catch out the first one from Asia in the tech field. Luckily, I found Jean Liu, from China listed at 40th rank. She is currently the president of Didi Chuxing, China’s answer to Uber.
Although women in Asia are flexing towards entrepreneur skills and even if most of the today’s startup are emerging with women and girls, there are an unheralded minority of Asian women in tech. While on one side we don’t need any evidence for the awareness regarding the unequal opportunity distribution in either Silicon Valley or other reputed tech companies, another side is also equally supportive in the sense, we just get left out, competing to fight in either racism or feminism but not with the system. In 2015, the study found, there is one Asian women executive for every 287 Asian women professional jobs. This might one day in the near future leave Asian women as silent martyrs in tech workforce.
But it doesn’t mean that we are at the low point, some women are growing up being the epicenter of this movement. Some women leaders in the tech field are emerging with their own companies. The best example to it can be Ellen Pao, widely known for filing a gender discrimination suit against former employer Kleiner Perkins in 2012, Pao has expressed vocal criticism of the hiring and promotion practices in Silicon Valley. Despite all these efforts, although ideas evolve inside Asian women, still they are facing an Epic Bamboo ceilings with the issue of Leadership. Major leadership positions in the popular tech companies are beaten mostly by American women.
Apart from all these what we now require is to break this mold either by today’s tech women or we might wait for next generation for the revolution to occur, well it’s all up to us.
Aditi Gajurel
