Diversity in the tech industry Claire Thomas, Hitachi Vantara’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer

At this years Dublin Tech Summit one of the main themes and topics of discussion was diversity and inclusion. One of the panels at Dublin Tech Summit discussed how AI and other technologies are helping to advance Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the workplace, with a focus on how companies can best avoid tokenistic gestures when hiring. Claire Thomas, Hitachi Vantara’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer was on this panel and I caught up with her after the panel discussion.

I asked Claire why she believes in diversity in tech and she replied saying “That its essential to making sure that all the tech we have out in the world represents the society that it serves. If we have homogeneous groups of people building technology or applications or now working on AI models then there is the potential for missing out the needs and use cases from a huge part of society. There is so many cases out there of technologies and applications that have been built where nobody in a group was part of the testing process.

“I heard an example the other day of a hand drier which was built and didn’t recognise a black hand underneath the hand drier because nobody in the team had been from the black and African American community, so there was no testing and because the people who built it were not part of that community they just didn’t realise. So it’s really important we have representation in the people who are building the technology, who are testing it and therefore we represent the communities that will actually be using these products.”

I then mentioned how it used to be in tech where a male guy was developing and designing for a male audience. Claire replied stating “We have many similarities yet we are fundamentally different, we have different needs, different use cases for technology, gender is one side and then there is a whole load of other diversity issues. “

We all know that men and women’s brains are different and for example women can multitask and men can read maps. So I asked “Why don’t we develop products that recognise this and that are not male centric?”  Claire responded  “I think that products should be designed for the end users. So firstly companies need to know who their end users are as these and they should ask the people they are trying to serve who will be the people buying these products and services and make sure they are represented in terms of the development process.”

I wondered why when a product is developed, the developers soon realise it was not tested on certain demographics, especially the ones that are going to make them the most money. Claire explained that research showed that economic buying power and what is bought in a household tend to be done by women as they are the people traditionally at home more than men. It is largely females making buying decisions and that is an important demographic to consider.

Thinking back to years gone by when men were out at work and women stayed at home. Women were the ones who went out and did all the shopping but had no say in what products work best for them and bought what was there. Claire mentioned a great book The Gender Data Gap by Caroline Criado-Perez. “The book talks about a load of different use cases where women have not been involved or consulted in the process of things like rebuilding towns, cities, transport, infrastructure, transport, not consulting or asking female opinion.  

“Crash test dummies in cars being designed on the average male bodies, rather than the differences between men and women, and that’s starting to change slowly. There is so many use cases where fifty percent of the population have not been included in the process which is why its really important to get more diversity of all forms into the technology industry.

“Because it’s such a dominant industry, it has so much influence over our day to day lives, and its an amazing industry to be part of. There’s nothing about your gender, or your race, or your ability, or your ethnicity, or your age, or your sexual orientation that impacts your ability to an amazing contributor to the technology industry.”

Claire then agreed with me when I asked why can’t we develop three products, one for males, one for females and one for children instead of one for all. “At the end of the day know your audience, know your customers. Try as best as you can that the people within your business building your technologies or products represent those people. You are more likely to have better outcomes, you’re more likely to build better products, you’re more likely to make more money, and you’re more likely to attract the customers you want. It’s a win win for everybody.”

Ending the interview I said forty years ago we would not be having this conversation and in forty years time we will be wondering why we did not do this sooner. Claire agreed “I hope there is massive progress over the next forty years. There is some pretty stark statistics out there about how long it’s going to take us to close gender and ethnicity pay gaps. 

“For example in the tech industry is one of those industries that has larger gaps and there is so much room for people to join this industry. We as a company are very focused on trying to bring as much diversity into our organisation and then having the culture that makes them feel included. “       

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