By Fatima Sarah Khalid
For decades, the technology industry has been under fire for its lack of diversity. Despite strides forward in recent years, data from the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (U.S. EEOC) reveals that the technology industry still is not as diverse, both racially and when it comes to gender, as the broader workforce.
We’re all responsible for the diversity of our teams and for ensuring inclusion and belonging. This is particularly important in the technology industry because it wields so much power in driving the economy, influencing social change, and sparking innovation.
However, many of the usual suggestions to self-advocate for promotions and communicate assertively simply aren’t good enough to facilitate inclusion and belonging. Systemic injustices compounded over decades can make it challenging for individuals from historically marginalized communities to feel comfortable asserting themselves.
This is where allyship comes in. Whether it’s challenging a microaggression, eliminating favoritism, or making space for voices that have historically been silenced, allyship is critical for enabling diversity and inclusion in our workplaces.
Allyship involves advocating for those with less power than us and putting actions behind our words and commitments-even in situations that may be uncomfortable.
Creating space for difficult conversations
Team members must be empowered to voice their opinions, especially when they feel that their teams are falling short of enabling diversity in the workplace. These conversations can be uncomfortable, but that means team members are challenging norms, gaining different perspectives, and developing a more inclusive future.
Some questions to kick off these conversations could include:
- How can our team improve its diversity efforts in the future?
- Do you feel confident speaking up at work?
- Are there consequences to voicing an opinion?
- Does our team use inclusive practices when promoting and planning career growth and development?
A recent report found that only 50% of managers who identify as a person of color feel comfortable expressing dissenting opinions, compared to 84% of managers who identify as white. The act of building trust will not happen without intentionally creating safe spaces and fostering connections through consistent dialog and action. Only when teams can empower all employees to share their feedback without fear of punishment or repercussions can space be made for thoughtful and crucial conversations.
Learn about the experiences and perspectives of marginalized groups
Many companies celebrate Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Pride Month, and more to highlight the rich histories of different ethnicities, sexual orientations, and genders. However, I encourage teams to look beyond those moments and make an ongoing commitment to learning and taking in marginalized perspectives to understand how they can better support them.
This means investing time to learn about various communities’ histories, struggles, and perspectives highlighted in books, documentaries, and at activist events and then showing up to take action.
In practice, this action can include advocating on behalf of other people’s needs, even if they differ from yours. For example, a hearing person may not consider the accessibility of a weekly Zoom meeting. After educating themselves on the needs of a Deaf or hard-of-hearing colleague, they can proactively enable captions and transcriptions to ensure that meetings are inclusive to all. Or better yet, consider adopting asynchronous communication protocols to increase inclusivity.
Speaking up for – and amplifying – marginalized voices
According to the U.S. EEOC, the tech sector is currently 64 percent men and 36 percent women, with 69 percent of workers identifying as Caucasian and just 15 percent identifying as African American or Hispanic. The diversity gap is even more pronounced among executives in the technology industry, with 71 percent of executives being male.
While leadership development programs can help begin to address the lack of diversity at executive and management levels, it is up to people at all levels who are in positions of privilege to be active allies to those with less access and to take responsibility for taking action to help others be successful.
For example, leaders can create psychological safety at work by effectively managing mistakes when they happen, which sets an example for their team members to do the same. For the victims of microaggressions or inappropriate comments, speaking up can require exhausting amounts of emotional labor. Often, the easiest path forward is to let the comment go. But as allies, our goal should be to speak up on behalf of our colleagues to make sure they feel seen and heard. Managers can take this a step further, taking on the responsibility of opening up an avenue for mutual understanding and working toward an environment of kindness and empathy.
Similarly, using your platform and your connections to shine a light on people who may otherwise be overlooked helps enable more diversity and facilitate belonging within an organization. That can be as simple as recognizing a colleague’s good work on social media or in a public slack channel, submitting them for an award, or putting them forward for a new opportunity at work.
Allyship is about putting actions behind our words and commitments in service of a world where belonging is the norm, not the exception. We have an opportunity to make the tech industry more inclusive for the next generation. What action, big or small, can you take to be a better ally today?
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fatima Sarah Khalid is a Developer Evangelist at GitLab, and passionate about building more inclusive tech communities. Her keynote talk on allyship, “The Power in the Choices We Have” earned her two prestigious invitations in 2023. She was invited to keynote the Open Source Summit EU, the premier event for more than 2,000 open source technologists, alongside leaders from Amazon, Fujitsu, and Google. Fatima also led the keynote at All Things Open, one of the largest open source events in the US.
