Data needs diversity too

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Rachel Salmon spoke to Yodit Stanton, founder of a new organisation supporting women who work with numbers.

Stanton, a computer programmer, founded Women in Data earlier this year after she saw that the conferences she attended were very male dominated.

“You are lucky if you get three women,” she said.

“A lot of men are going into data, it was a realisation that history was repeating itself.

“It’s not that women aren’t there, it’s that they are not visible.

"It’s about getting them published, getting them speaking at conferences and getting change at a higher level.”

“Once an industry is established it is very difficult to change that, but If you catch it early it’s easier to change things."

'Women in Data' was launched ahead of Open Data day on 22 February.

'Open data' is about democratising decision-making like the internet democratised communication and information exchange.

Stanton hopes that open data will change the structures and concentration of power from the few to the crowd and fundamentally change the dynamics of interaction between citizens and organisations.

Stanton also hopes that Women in Data will give women more confidence to speak about their work, which, in turn, will help more women take senior roles in the industry and influence working patterns.

“When you speak to men who organise conferences, they tend to recruit speakers from within their own social groups.  They tend to go with the status quo so they don’t have to think about it much.

“Women are there at graduate level, but we need more decision makers,” she said.

Stanton believes that women bring their own experiences to bear when interpreting data, giving it added context and meaning.

“When you are looking at population level data you can make a lot of assumptions based on your own perspective.

“For example, there is a lot of talk about making better decisions about aid, but if you don’t understand how families are structured it makes a massive difference to how data is interpreted and how decisions are made.

“You get MIT educated men who are interpreting data, but you need to understand how everyday life is, because you can’t make your own assumptions about it.

Stanton has been amazed at how well the new organisation has been received.

It has already held a networking event at the Open Data Institute, and is planning a training day for data specialists who want to set up their own businesses in partnership with NESTA.

“We also want to get female engineers to talk about what they are working on, get people connected.

“Lots of our members are working on very interesting projects, so hopefully they will share what they are doing, they will get the confidence to talk about what they are working on and share that with the wider world.

"Hopefully they will be a bit more vocal about what they are doing.”

Stanton believes this is vital in overcoming what researchers from Yale called the subtle gender bias against women at all levels in science.

“These are intellectual heavyweights, these are not dinosaurs, but they would rate candidates with male names higher than females, and there was a tendency to mentor them towards leadership.

“It’s an unconscious thing, but it’s positive to know that there is this bias so we can overcome it.

“My theory is that if we get more women out there and see them as leading then change will happen.  People will see it as normal.

“If more women are heads of companies and have more buying power they will make decisions that are beneficial to the company as well as themselves."

Stanton now works freelance, but she used to work for Leman Brothers.

She had her first child around the time they went bust.

“I faced a choice to work in the presenteeism culture of a bank and miss out on my child,” she said.

She now fits her work around her children.

“My clients don’t mind when I work.  If you work in an organisation you are expected to be there nine to five.

“Now I have set up my own company I have never been so skilled. I have the motivation to learn new skills I am managing my own career and I am able to meet new people.

“I have never been so in demand, it’s ironic really,” she aid.

Stanton is currently setting up a company called Atomic Data Labs, to develop computer programmes to process data.

She intends to use her experiences to create a more flexible working environment for the people she employs.

“We will have a loose structure that gives workers autonomy to choose their hours. We will not dictate, as long as we can work together and do the work. It doesn’t matter how that is done.

“We will see what difference that makes to productivity.

"I find without the structures I am a lot more productive, I can work six hours instead of eight and walk away,” she said.

Story published on Women's Views on News, Thursday, 14 March, 2013.