Robin Hauser Reynolds' 2013 documentary film, Running for Jim, tells the inspiring story of high school running coach Jim Tracy, his battle with fatal Lou Gehrig's disease, and the championship team that made him famous. Running for Jim won 14 awards at 21 film festivals.
Her recent documentary film, CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, exposes the dearth of female and minority computer science engineers in the U.S. and explores the reasons for the gender gap and digital divide. It will be screened at the i4cp 2016 annual conference. Lorrie Lykins, i4cp's managing editor, sat down recently with Robin to discuss the film, which premiered last April at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.
Lorrie Lykins: Robin, I'veread your interviews in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the International Business Times, and on and on, so I don't want to ask you the same questions everybody has already posed, but for our i4cp members, can we start with you telling us a little bit about the impetus for this—what made you say "I need to make a film about this."?
Robin Hauser Reynolds: My daughter was studying computer science in college and she's always been really academically competent, but for the first time ever, she began to have real doubts about her ability to succeed in a subject, which is unlike her. But she was just one of two women in the class and she really honestly felt like she didn't belong.
What was interesting to me was that at same time the Wall Street Journal,the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and others seemed to weekly run front page articles saying "If you want to get a good job out of college, you should know something about computer science. You can start at $75,000 a year; you don't need a traditional four-year degree..." And then the White House published a report that said that by the year 2020 there would be a million unfilled computer science-related jobs in the U.S.
I found it really difficult to understand why there aren't more people pursuing these jobs and why we're missing half the population—people of color and women—so it was really just my thought that this is fascinating—and what's going on with the supply and demand, and how do women factor into that? Let's see if we can figure it out.
LL: Did you learn that stereotyping and sexism are big factors in all of this?
RHR: It's interesting to me what goes on today in terms of what we view as sexism. It's not like what we see on "Mad Men," it's not always blatant sexism, it's more latent and nuanced and I think often it's somewhat unconscious. I think that it may be a little bit the sort of habitual behavior of men working together in a group without a lot of women around. There may be certain behavior and habits that are fine for them when they're working with each other but suddenly you add a woman or a person of color into it and I don't think they consciously understand how their behavior might marginalize or make somebody feel uncomfortable.
I think it's more about education. I'm always the first to say that I love men—this is not about pointing a finger, it's about getting everybody to realize the importance and value of adding diversity to business and to enterprise and how everybody can benefit from that. That said: enough with the old boys' network. We have to get women in the boardroom and at the C-level.
LL: In the course of conducting interviews for "The SheSuite," this is what we hear over and over again — what you just said—I don't think it's intentional or some elaborate conspiracy on the part of men to keep women out of positions of power, but we're certainly accountable for bringing it to everybody's attention and to keep bringing it up until we see some movement, even if that means making the men in the room feel uncomfortable.
RHR: Exactly. And here's what's happened multiple times: I hear from men who have watched CODE and then I get an email afterward saying, "You know, I never thought about the fact that my women colleagues are interrupted more in meetings, that they might say something but they're not necessarily heard and now that I'm aware of it I've sat in meetings and watched it happen."
LL: I've heard that referred to as "SWF" -- speaking while female. A woman may have a great suggestion in the course of a meeting but it doesn’t seem to get much traction. Ten minutes later her male colleague might say pretty much the same thing and everyone in the room acts like it's a brilliant idea—one that they'd not heard before.
RHR: One guy told me that the first time he saw this happening [after watching CODE], he sat there fascinated, watching exactly what we're describing. The second time it happened he said something along the lines of "Hey, Rick, I don't think Sally was finished with her comment..." And everyone in the room stared at him, but later that day people stopped by his desk and said "Wow, thank you, that was great."
That's what this is all about—it's about becoming aware. We all have unconscious biases, every one of us. We all pass judgments and we all have a certain way of acting around certain people. But becoming conscious of how we can make people feel more comfortable in the work environment, so that we can all work together to end up with a better product, a better ROI is the point.
LL: But it's a point that's not easy to get across.
RHR: Yes. And some people need facts and data to understand these things, especially if you're talking to the older, 60- or 70-year old guys, who you see in a lot of boardrooms. What's interesting is when you look at things like The Female Factor, which is the study done at Carnegie Mellon and Harvard and it was published in the Harvard Business Review in June 2011. They did numerous studies that basically show that regardless of the individual IQs of a group of men on a team, if you add one woman to that team, regardless of her individual IQ, the collective IQ of the team rises. And the more women you add the higher the IQ of that team goes.
For whatever reasons, women have greater EQ [emotional quotient]—they're able to read people better, they don't take risks as easily, so they're better investors, better decision makers, etcetera. So when you can throw facts at the equation and say, "Look, there are actually scientific reasons for why diversity is important..." it's more effective. And I do that a lot when I'm talking to 20-somethings who are in startups—I tell them that it will be so much easier for them to bring on diversity right now because it's hard when you're a room full of 15 white guys. Bring it on when there are four or five of you. Often I hear, "But it's really hard to find a woman engineer, it's hard to find a person of color..." Guys, it's really not that hard. Make the effort—go out and do it and you'll find that having a female on your team is going to make it much easier to attract other women and the same thing goes with people of color, and socioeconomic diversity, and on and on.
LL: What'sbeen the reaction on the part of your daughter to this project?
RHR: She's so funny. The first film I made was about her also, so when I told her I was making this she sort of rolled her eyes and was like, "OMG, really, Mom?"
She's 21 now and she's very supportive of this film, but she's still so close to the situation that I’m not sure she has a full understanding of the factors that made her drop computer science. She'll say she just didn't like it. I did ask her once if she had been getting As, would she have liked it. She said, "Well, yes, of course." But here's the thing—she was convinced that she was failing the entire time, but she actually had a B average. Yes, she's supportive of her mother's projects, she came to the world premier at the Tribeca Film Festival, she's been to other screenings—she's been great about it.
LL: Howdo you explain her sense that she was failing when in fact she wasn’t?
RHR: There's this thing called ambient belonging, where people make decisions about becoming part of a group based on what it looks like or how they feel about the environment, Whatever it is, sometimes you walk into an environment and you don't know exactly why, but you get a sense that you don't fit in, you don't belong. It might be the decor, it might be the people, but clearly those classrooms—when it's you and just one other woman—are not inviting. Because the classes were predominantly male, and because most men who take computer science in college have a better foundation and knowledge of CS through gaming, it’s easy to think that everyone else in the class is much better at the subject. Women also judge themselves more harshly than men do, so while a B might be a perfectly acceptable grade to a man in the class, a woman would feel that a B is below average.
LL: Has anybody asked you if there was personal outrage or indignation on your part that fueled this project beyond your curiosity about the lack of women in computer science?
RHR: I get what you're asking and I have to be honest with you about that because I really believe that my job as a documentarian is to go at something objectively. I really did think about it, and I even thought, well, wait a minute, maybe it's true—maybe there's something physiologically different about women's brains that makes us not as good at coding, so let's figure this out, let's go talk to brain scientists. And maybe because the stereotype of being a coder is so isolating and quantitative that's the reason why women really didn't want to do it as much. I found that none of that is true. Coding can be collaborative and creative and women are doing amazingly creative things with coding.
LL: Have you had any surprises along the way—has anything unexpected come out of this project for you?
RHR: We have been humbled by the attention the film is receiving abroad and outside the tech industry. We hit upon issues that women and people of color face across different industries and therefore retail, finance, law and media companies have reached out to us for private screenings.
The film is obviously striking a nerve and companies are using it to raise the question and start a conversation about gender bias in the workplace across industries, not just tech, and that's been very rewarding.
LL: You didn't anticipate that cross-industry appeal—that's interesting.
RHR: No, gosh, I didn't anticipate that at all.
LL: Were there any other surprises?
RHR: I was hoping to get into Sundance or Tribeca, but we weren't ready [production-wise] for Sundance so when we were accepted to Tribeca we were thrilled. And we're booking screenings and speaking events months in advance.
You know, I didn't go to film school, so I'm not afraid to not follow rules or to break rules, and I'm not afraid to be somewhat outspoken if I really believe in what I'm saying. I think that's refreshing to some people. We certainly weren't the first to start talking about it. Tracy Chou [software engineer] at Pinterest was calling out different tech companies to show their numbers early on, that was one of the reasons why we interviewed her. But I think that people receive information and respond to it in different ways and I think this been a really good way to show through film that we can affect people who may not sit down and read an article, or who might not be in the tech industry.
LL: What's been the response at screenings--have you had dead silence at the end of the film--is this making people say "Wow, I need to think about this."?
RHR: Yes. There's definitely a period where you feel like people need to digest, especially after certain scenes. And then once you get people talking—let's put it this way—there has not been a single screening (and we have had over 80 so far) where we haven't had to say "Unfortunately, we are out of time, we can only take one more question."
Women feel validated, that their voices are being heard and that's huge for me because I'm not a coder. I'm not a woman in tech (although someone said to me recently, "Well, now you are!"). That was probably the biggest weight on my shoulders—it HAD to be truthful. We weren’t going to make a vanilla film. We had to tell the truth and if it's shocking and impactful, well that's the way to make change, right?
At the same time we have an educational version which is much more vanilla; it's more designed for middle schoolers to inspire them to get into it and to show them how creative they can be. We've made a few different versions of the film so that it's appropriate for different ages, different audiences.
LL: The women you profiled in the film–have you kept in touch with them, have you heard back from any of them since the film premiered?
RHR: Yes! I have been very much in touch with all of them; we feel like a family. Every one of them has been to a screening and lots have been on panels, Danielle Feinberg at Pixar and I have gotten to be good friends. Tracy Chou and I email--we'll probably do a screening at Pinterest—they have a new diversity and inclusion officer there, which is great.
LL: Are you aware of any change that's been affected in the organizations that the women who were featured in the film work for?
RHR: I think just the fact that companies like Pinterest are now developing new positions, which will really bring awareness to this issue, is big and there is a lot more discussion about it.
I think that change takes time and given that we have to try to change a stereotype, we really need a lot of help. We need Hollywood's help; we have to get more role models. I think having Megan Smith [the U.S. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in the Office of Science and Technology Policy] in the White House is really helpful. That’s a good start.
But it takes time. I hope that we are doing our part to inspire change that leads to making it an ongoing discussion point. And I'm glad that it's happening even internationally now. We sold the rights to BBC Persia and they're going to be screening it in Iran. We also sold the rights to CBC Canada, we've screened it in Berlin and Helsinki and India and Chile —we've had probably more than 30 international
LL: What's next for you?
RHR: I'm not going to abandon CODE too soon, so I think clearly into the summer, I'll be continuing to speak about gender diversity and to screen the film at private events.
And then I'll make a new film. I'm not sure exactly what is going to be on, but it will likely still be on women's issues. Maybe I need to get something started to help our 20-year-olds navigate entering the workforce.
Her recent documentary film, CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, exposes the dearth of female and minority computer science engineers in the U.S. and explores the reasons for the gender gap and digital divide. It will be screened at the i4cp 2016 annual conference. Lorrie Lykins, i4cp's managing editor, sat down recently with Robin to discuss the film, which premiered last April at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.
Lorrie Lykins: Robin, I'veread your interviews in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the International Business Times, and on and on, so I don't want to ask you the same questions everybody has already posed, but for our i4cp members, can we start with you telling us a little bit about the impetus for this—what made you say "I need to make a film about this."?
Robin Hauser Reynolds: My daughter was studying computer science in college and she's always been really academically competent, but for the first time ever, she began to have real doubts about her ability to succeed in a subject, which is unlike her. But she was just one of two women in the class and she really honestly felt like she didn't belong.
What was interesting to me was that at same time the Wall Street Journal,the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and others seemed to weekly run front page articles saying "If you want to get a good job out of college, you should know something about computer science. You can start at $75,000 a year; you don't need a traditional four-year degree..." And then the White House published a report that said that by the year 2020 there would be a million unfilled computer science-related jobs in the U.S.
I found it really difficult to understand why there aren't more people pursuing these jobs and why we're missing half the population—people of color and women—so it was really just my thought that this is fascinating—and what's going on with the supply and demand, and how do women factor into that? Let's see if we can figure it out.
LL: Did you learn that stereotyping and sexism are big factors in all of this?
RHR: It's interesting to me what goes on today in terms of what we view as sexism. It's not like what we see on "Mad Men," it's not always blatant sexism, it's more latent and nuanced and I think often it's somewhat unconscious. I think that it may be a little bit the sort of habitual behavior of men working together in a group without a lot of women around. There may be certain behavior and habits that are fine for them when they're working with each other but suddenly you add a woman or a person of color into it and I don't think they consciously understand how their behavior might marginalize or make somebody feel uncomfortable.
I think it's more about education. I'm always the first to say that I love men—this is not about pointing a finger, it's about getting everybody to realize the importance and value of adding diversity to business and to enterprise and how everybody can benefit from that. That said: enough with the old boys' network. We have to get women in the boardroom and at the C-level.
LL: In the course of conducting interviews for "The SheSuite," this is what we hear over and over again — what you just said—I don't think it's intentional or some elaborate conspiracy on the part of men to keep women out of positions of power, but we're certainly accountable for bringing it to everybody's attention and to keep bringing it up until we see some movement, even if that means making the men in the room feel uncomfortable.
RHR: Exactly. And here's what's happened multiple times: I hear from men who have watched CODE and then I get an email afterward saying, "You know, I never thought about the fact that my women colleagues are interrupted more in meetings, that they might say something but they're not necessarily heard and now that I'm aware of it I've sat in meetings and watched it happen."
LL: I've heard that referred to as "SWF" -- speaking while female. A woman may have a great suggestion in the course of a meeting but it doesn’t seem to get much traction. Ten minutes later her male colleague might say pretty much the same thing and everyone in the room acts like it's a brilliant idea—one that they'd not heard before.
RHR: One guy told me that the first time he saw this happening [after watching CODE], he sat there fascinated, watching exactly what we're describing. The second time it happened he said something along the lines of "Hey, Rick, I don't think Sally was finished with her comment..." And everyone in the room stared at him, but later that day people stopped by his desk and said "Wow, thank you, that was great."
That's what this is all about—it's about becoming aware. We all have unconscious biases, every one of us. We all pass judgments and we all have a certain way of acting around certain people. But becoming conscious of how we can make people feel more comfortable in the work environment, so that we can all work together to end up with a better product, a better ROI is the point.
LL: But it's a point that's not easy to get across.
RHR: Yes. And some people need facts and data to understand these things, especially if you're talking to the older, 60- or 70-year old guys, who you see in a lot of boardrooms. What's interesting is when you look at things like The Female Factor, which is the study done at Carnegie Mellon and Harvard and it was published in the Harvard Business Review in June 2011. They did numerous studies that basically show that regardless of the individual IQs of a group of men on a team, if you add one woman to that team, regardless of her individual IQ, the collective IQ of the team rises. And the more women you add the higher the IQ of that team goes.
For whatever reasons, women have greater EQ [emotional quotient]—they're able to read people better, they don't take risks as easily, so they're better investors, better decision makers, etcetera. So when you can throw facts at the equation and say, "Look, there are actually scientific reasons for why diversity is important..." it's more effective. And I do that a lot when I'm talking to 20-somethings who are in startups—I tell them that it will be so much easier for them to bring on diversity right now because it's hard when you're a room full of 15 white guys. Bring it on when there are four or five of you. Often I hear, "But it's really hard to find a woman engineer, it's hard to find a person of color..." Guys, it's really not that hard. Make the effort—go out and do it and you'll find that having a female on your team is going to make it much easier to attract other women and the same thing goes with people of color, and socioeconomic diversity, and on and on.
LL: What'sbeen the reaction on the part of your daughter to this project?
RHR: She's so funny. The first film I made was about her also, so when I told her I was making this she sort of rolled her eyes and was like, "OMG, really, Mom?"
She's 21 now and she's very supportive of this film, but she's still so close to the situation that I’m not sure she has a full understanding of the factors that made her drop computer science. She'll say she just didn't like it. I did ask her once if she had been getting As, would she have liked it. She said, "Well, yes, of course." But here's the thing—she was convinced that she was failing the entire time, but she actually had a B average. Yes, she's supportive of her mother's projects, she came to the world premier at the Tribeca Film Festival, she's been to other screenings—she's been great about it.
LL: Howdo you explain her sense that she was failing when in fact she wasn’t?
RHR: There's this thing called ambient belonging, where people make decisions about becoming part of a group based on what it looks like or how they feel about the environment, Whatever it is, sometimes you walk into an environment and you don't know exactly why, but you get a sense that you don't fit in, you don't belong. It might be the decor, it might be the people, but clearly those classrooms—when it's you and just one other woman—are not inviting. Because the classes were predominantly male, and because most men who take computer science in college have a better foundation and knowledge of CS through gaming, it’s easy to think that everyone else in the class is much better at the subject. Women also judge themselves more harshly than men do, so while a B might be a perfectly acceptable grade to a man in the class, a woman would feel that a B is below average.
LL: Has anybody asked you if there was personal outrage or indignation on your part that fueled this project beyond your curiosity about the lack of women in computer science?
RHR: I get what you're asking and I have to be honest with you about that because I really believe that my job as a documentarian is to go at something objectively. I really did think about it, and I even thought, well, wait a minute, maybe it's true—maybe there's something physiologically different about women's brains that makes us not as good at coding, so let's figure this out, let's go talk to brain scientists. And maybe because the stereotype of being a coder is so isolating and quantitative that's the reason why women really didn't want to do it as much. I found that none of that is true. Coding can be collaborative and creative and women are doing amazingly creative things with coding.
LL: Have you had any surprises along the way—has anything unexpected come out of this project for you?
RHR: We have been humbled by the attention the film is receiving abroad and outside the tech industry. We hit upon issues that women and people of color face across different industries and therefore retail, finance, law and media companies have reached out to us for private screenings.
The film is obviously striking a nerve and companies are using it to raise the question and start a conversation about gender bias in the workplace across industries, not just tech, and that's been very rewarding.
LL: You didn't anticipate that cross-industry appeal—that's interesting.
RHR: No, gosh, I didn't anticipate that at all.
LL: Were there any other surprises?
RHR: I was hoping to get into Sundance or Tribeca, but we weren't ready [production-wise] for Sundance so when we were accepted to Tribeca we were thrilled. And we're booking screenings and speaking events months in advance.
You know, I didn't go to film school, so I'm not afraid to not follow rules or to break rules, and I'm not afraid to be somewhat outspoken if I really believe in what I'm saying. I think that's refreshing to some people. We certainly weren't the first to start talking about it. Tracy Chou [software engineer] at Pinterest was calling out different tech companies to show their numbers early on, that was one of the reasons why we interviewed her. But I think that people receive information and respond to it in different ways and I think this been a really good way to show through film that we can affect people who may not sit down and read an article, or who might not be in the tech industry.
LL: What's been the response at screenings--have you had dead silence at the end of the film--is this making people say "Wow, I need to think about this."?
RHR: Yes. There's definitely a period where you feel like people need to digest, especially after certain scenes. And then once you get people talking—let's put it this way—there has not been a single screening (and we have had over 80 so far) where we haven't had to say "Unfortunately, we are out of time, we can only take one more question."
Women feel validated, that their voices are being heard and that's huge for me because I'm not a coder. I'm not a woman in tech (although someone said to me recently, "Well, now you are!"). That was probably the biggest weight on my shoulders—it HAD to be truthful. We weren’t going to make a vanilla film. We had to tell the truth and if it's shocking and impactful, well that's the way to make change, right?
At the same time we have an educational version which is much more vanilla; it's more designed for middle schoolers to inspire them to get into it and to show them how creative they can be. We've made a few different versions of the film so that it's appropriate for different ages, different audiences.
LL: The women you profiled in the film–have you kept in touch with them, have you heard back from any of them since the film premiered?
RHR: Yes! I have been very much in touch with all of them; we feel like a family. Every one of them has been to a screening and lots have been on panels, Danielle Feinberg at Pixar and I have gotten to be good friends. Tracy Chou and I email--we'll probably do a screening at Pinterest—they have a new diversity and inclusion officer there, which is great.
LL: Are you aware of any change that's been affected in the organizations that the women who were featured in the film work for?
RHR: I think just the fact that companies like Pinterest are now developing new positions, which will really bring awareness to this issue, is big and there is a lot more discussion about it.
I think that change takes time and given that we have to try to change a stereotype, we really need a lot of help. We need Hollywood's help; we have to get more role models. I think having Megan Smith [the U.S. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in the Office of Science and Technology Policy] in the White House is really helpful. That’s a good start.
But it takes time. I hope that we are doing our part to inspire change that leads to making it an ongoing discussion point. And I'm glad that it's happening even internationally now. We sold the rights to BBC Persia and they're going to be screening it in Iran. We also sold the rights to CBC Canada, we've screened it in Berlin and Helsinki and India and Chile —we've had probably more than 30 international
LL: What's next for you?
RHR: I'm not going to abandon CODE too soon, so I think clearly into the summer, I'll be continuing to speak about gender diversity and to screen the film at private events.
And then I'll make a new film. I'm not sure exactly what is going to be on, but it will likely still be on women's issues. Maybe I need to get something started to help our 20-year-olds navigate entering the workforce.