With the advent of data analytics, visualization, machine learning, and thus #AI, our lives will be guided more and more by data. Those in our 6-week Data Analytics course are learning about the omnipresence of decision-making. Structured data, unstructured data, data lakes, continuous data as well as predictive data analytics are uncovered in detail. This is more jargon that will unknowingly grow critical to our day-to-day lives, if it hasn't already. As we delve into the key aspect of data integrity, there is one thing lacking in historical data. What is it?
The visibility of women.
One of Untapped Potential's objectives is to help #womenreturners become more visible.
Whether that be a lack of visibility in the job board system as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) filter them out as highlighted in Harvard Business Review or lack of visibility due to a lost professional network or lastly a lack of visibility due to the fact that high caliber resources that paused their career for caregiving lack today's jargon and brand names of hot saas tools in an elevator pitch, interviews, and resume.
What I am learning from a book recommended by Shona Bradford Kidd, Author in Residence as well as Untapped Potential Alumni and Community Member is data on women is lacking in general - in health, education, language, history, the arts, in the workplace and in job board requisitions. That lack of data or the Data Gap, has made women invisible.
The Bestselling Book Titled "Invisible Women. Data Bias in a World Designed for Men" written by Caroline Criado Perez is eye-opening right from the Preface. While we highlight the wage gap, entrepreneurs speak of an investment gap, STEM proponents work to overcome the education gap, Perez calls this a "Data Gap". Actually, she refers to it as a "Big Data" Gap. One that started as early as history was recorded noting the period titled 'Man the Hunter'. The invisibility of women not recorded from a data perspective she refers to as silences. Silences with real consequences.
As we rely on data more and more for decisions in many aspects of our future life such as designing new products, funding projects, configuring educatio systems, and more, it is so important that all are included when making critical resource allocations. If we are missing data, the decision process is flawed.
Even just last month, Harvard professor Claudia Goldin was the third woman to be awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize for advancing the world's understanding of women's progress in the workforce. The highlights gleaned from the news were, that there was no data, so the esteemed PhD Professor of Harvard had to create it from 1st had research and her research concluded - that there is a problem.
We knew there was a problem. It seemed to be better but now that we have the data, and visualization of the data, now we all can easily see - there is a problem.
Untapped Potential Community Members enrolled in Data Analytics this season with our Partner, Our Second Innings may find a fruitful capstone project hidden in both the works of Perez and Goldin.
As there is still a problem.