in Harlan Lane’s book The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community. It is an often-overlooked historical fact that in 1880 the International Congress on Education of the Deaf essentially banned sign language from schools for the deaf worldwide in favor of the oral method, which stressed only lip-reading and speech. At that time there was no realization that sign language was a natural language with its own temporal/spatial grammar that was efficient and complete in its visual modality. Those who banned sign language were not deaf, but believed they knew what was best for deaf people by promoting their integration into the hearing world.

My parents were very successful as teachers of deaf children and in most other aspects of life. They were bilingual, fluent in American Sign Language and English. They were able to lip-read and their speech was distorted, but they were highly educated with a remarkable command of English in written form. Nonetheless, they always felt the sting of paternalism when others treated them as if they couldn’t take care of themselves or were not qualified for jobs held by hearing people who they knew were less qualified. Future columns will explore people with disabilities in computing in more depth, but in this first column my intent is to provide readers with an understanding of background informing my perspective on broadening participation.

u.S. Ph.D. demographics by gender, race and ethnicity, and disability.

Women
African American
Native American
Asian
hispanic
White (Non-hispanic)
Disabled
Non-resident Alien

Computer Science
21%
2%
0%
12%
1%
29%
1%
56%

StEm

40% 2% 0% 4% 3% 42% 1% 26%

u.S. Population
50%
12%
1%
4%
15%
74%
15%
6%

Reasons for Broadening
Participation

There are a number of reasons why broadening participation is important to the computing field, the most significant of which include numbers, social justice, and quality.

Numbers. In spite of several downturns in the economy since the invention of computers and the dot-com bust in the early 2000s the demand for computer professionals worldwide has continued to gro w, sometimes extremely rapidly and other times more slowly, but always growing. The computing field cannot continue to rely on getting the vast majority of its high-tech workers from a few demographic groups. As an example, the America Competes Act of 2007 has provisions and authorizes spending to help increase the number

of women and minorities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.

Social Justice. An important principle in a democratic society is equality, that is, everyone enjoys the same rights and is obligated by the same responsibilities. The vast public education system in the U.S. attempts to provide as many children as possible with a basic education to help them become contributors to the social well being and to learn their rights and responsibilities as citizens. Through laws enacted by legislatures and interpretations of laws by courts, the U.S. adheres to the principle of equal opportunity whereby citizens should not be discriminated against because of gender, minority status, or disability. Preventing discrimination does not guarantee proportional participation, but it does at least level the playing field.

There is well-documented evidence of implicit bias against women and minorities in academia. 1, 2 Those of us in computer science are typically highly rational; perhaps having the belief that our reasoning power makes us immune to bias. Our reasoning power

i distinguish
“broadening
participation”
from “diversity,”
which is a much
broader concept.

only masks our biases with a cloak of rationalization. Everyone has biases depending on their own upbringing and circumstances. Acting on those biases consciously or unconsciously may be discrimination, some of which could break anti-discrimination laws. The Project Implicit (https://implicit. harvard.edu/implicit) is a good starting point to learn about implicit bias and to take a test that demonstrates your own implicit biases.

Quality. The strongest reason for broadening participation is quality. The argument is similar for why diversity is important to quality. William W. Wulf, the former president of the American Academy of Engineers, explained this very well: “I believe that engineering is a highly creative profession. Research tells us that creativity does not spring from nothing; it is grounded in our life experiences, and hence limited by those experiences. Lacking diversity on an engineering team, we limit the set of solutions that will be considered and we may not find the best, the elegant solution.” 3

Better solutions are more likely to emerge if there is a diversity of points of view contributing to the solutions. This is one of the reasons most major companies try to diversify their work forces: it gives them a competitive advantage. Broadening participation helps our field because it brings in more people with a variety of backgrounds, and at the same time levels the playing field for those who are traditionally underrepresented.

Demographics

It is important to understand the current circumstances with broadening participation, particularly at the end