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Erasing Women in Tech: How ‘60 Minutes’ Ignored Women’s Voices, Stories, and Expertise

Reshma Saujani
OneZero
Published in
5 min readMar 6, 2019

Photo courtesy : Girls Who Code

AAlmost a year ago, 60 Minutes producers contacted Girls Who Code. The news show was working on a segment about girls and computer science and wanted to better understand what initiatives to close the gender gap in tech were proving effective.

Sunday, that segment was broadcast to the show’s weekly 11 million viewers in the U.S. and around the world — and it didn’t include a single reference to Girls Who Code or other girl-focused organizations like Black Girls Code, the National Center for Women and Information Technology, Kode With Klossy, and countless others. It was like a punch to the gut.

By omitting the expertise and experience of woman-led organizations’ pioneering efforts to bring more girls into computing, 60 Minutes is contributing to a long and ugly history of media erasing women in tech.

Girls, women, and thought leaders who tuned in Sunday instead heard about Code.org, a non-profit whose mission is not to close the gender gap in tech. (Never mind that Code.org led a partnership with the Trump administration, which has demonstrated time and time again it has no concern for the rights, well-being, and future of our girls.)…

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OneZero
OneZero

Published in OneZero

OneZero is a former publication from Medium about the impact of technology on people and the future. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Reshma Saujani
Reshma Saujani

Written by Reshma Saujani

Founder @GirlsWhoCode & Marshall Plan for Moms. Activist. NYT Best Selling Author. Mother. Daughter of Refugees.

Responses (17)

THANK YOU for writing this piece, because, and I’m sure you’ve heard this all day long today, I thought it was just me. That 60 Minutes piece did not progress the way I thought it would. When talk turned to school-age students and getting them…

I couldn’t agree with you more. I watched the segment on 60mins and didn’t understand why they only mentioned code.org. My daughter participated last Summer in Girls Who Code in Silicon Valley and she absolutely loved it. She hopes to become a…

Such utter BS. Thanks not only for all you do, but in this case very specifically, for calling out what others do that makes your job and the job of people like Kimberly Bryant and Black Girls Code or Adda Birnir from Skillcrush so much harder every…