Although artificial intelligence (AI) continues to be a growing field, only a small percentage of women work in this industry. In fact, according to the World Economic Forum's 2020 Global Gender Gap Report, globally only an estimated 26% of data and AI professionals are female. To learn more about the gender divide in the AI industry, IBM recently teamed up with Morning Consult to survey 3,200 AI professionals across the globe. The survey found that one of the main roadblocks to entry is that young women are often not encouraged to pursue their interest in math and sciences while they're growing up. In fact, the survey found that 46% of men working AI became interested in a career in technology while attending high school while 53% of women working in AI didn’t become interested in technology until college or graduate school.

Girls Who Code COO Dr. Tarika Barrett has told CNBC that tech companies need to focus more on supporting women beyond the hiring phase, whether that's through pay equity and promotions or more flexible policies for employees who are caregivers. ''For tech companies, the critical thing is to acknowledge where we are with women, with people of color during this pandemic,'' Dr. Barrett said on ''Squawk Alley.'' Despite national conversations about the lack of diversity in tech, Dr. Barrett says that women make up less than 25% of the tech workforce, and for women of color it's only 18%.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has announced that the agency’s headquarters building in Washington, D.C., will be named after Mary W. Jackson, the first African American female engineer at NASA. Jackson started her NASA career in the segregated West Area Computing Unit of the agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Jackson, a mathematician and aerospace engineer, went on to lead programs influencing the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. In 2019, she was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

Are you a woman aspiring to pursue a career in tech? This might be for you! The 2020 Women In RPA Initiative is a FREE virtual skills development program which aims to train and upskill 1 million women in Robotics Process Automation. Despite decades of progress towards achieving equality in the workplace, women remain significantly under-represented in emerging tech. We want to change this! Inspired by Blue Prism, RPA Nuggets takes the baton to empower women and other underrepresented groups to take risks and realize their full potential in the workplace, particularly in emerging technologies. Applications open to women worldwide.

NASA is naming its newest space telescope for pioneering astronomer Nancy Grace Roman - marking the first time in the agency's 62-year history that one of its major, billion-dollar programs has been named for a woman. Roman, who overcame obstacles that women faced in her male-dominated field and at NASA to become the agency’s first female executive and its first chief astronomer, is a ''fitting'' eponym for the project, astronomer Heidi Hammel said. Her championing of space-based observatories gave her the nickname ''Mother of Hubble.'' With the new telescope, NASA is ''taking her child and making it even more powerful, Hammel said. ''It's widening the Hubble vision.''

Call for Participation! The 1st WiML Un-Workshop will be co-located with ICML on Monday, July 13th, 2020.
Deadline to submit a breakout session proposal/poster or apply for funding is June 10th, 2020.
Students, postdocs & researchers in all areas of ML who primarily identify as woman and/or nonbinary are encouraged to submit a proposal (1 page PDF) to lead a breakout session on a certain research topic. You can submit starting today. The application form is included in the CFP. WiML registration fee funding is prioritized for accepted breakout session leaders who fulfill certain eligibility criteria (see the CFP) and do not have any other sources of funding.

You can join the first-ever NCWIT Conversations for Change! This online thought leadership series of events will occur throughout May 4-22. Register today for conversations, Q&As, on-demand videos, and more where you can fully immerse yourself in research-based recommendations and peer-to-peer discussions to further your efforts in creating inclusive cultures.

The woman who discovered the first human coronavirus was the daughter of a Scottish bus driver, who left school at 16. June Almeida went on to become a pioneer of virus imaging, whose work has come roaring back into focus during the present pandemic. Covid-19 is a new illness but it is caused by a coronavirus of the type first identified by Dr Almeida in 1964 at her laboratory in St Thomas's Hospital in London. The virologist was born June Hart in 1930 and grew up in a tenement near Alexandra Park in the north east of Glasgow. She left school with little formal education but got a job as a laboratory technician in histopathology at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. She pioneered a method which better visualised viruses by using antibodies to aggregate them. She identified what became known as the first human coronavirus.

Each year, the ARC Network selects two Virtual Visiting Scholars to conduct research on existing or emerging themes from scholarly literature on gender equity in STEM workplaces. Virtual Visiting Scholars employ qualitative and/or quantitative meta-analytic and meta-synthesis techniques to identify best practices, structural barriers or other larger themes from existing literature. Research also incorporates considerations of diversity and inclusion from an intersectional and systemic perspective. Applications are due on June 1, 2020 at 5:00 pm ET. Decisions will be made by July 1, 2020. All decisions are final. The Virtual Visiting Scholar term begins August 1, 2020. Up to two (2) awards are made annually.

The gender gap in professional space has a fundamental bearing on whether or not a company will thrive. Where skilled women count sums up to one-half of the world’s talent, it is quintessential to acknowledge their role in growth, competitiveness, and future-readiness of organizations. The females have always been instrumental in technology development, yet the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT)’s report depicts that the number of women in computing space has steadily declined since 1991 when it peaked at 36%. Specifically, with the growth of data-centric roles, industries are developing a variety of job opportunities but it seems like the situation is not the same with women. Analytics Insight’s study found that only 30% of women are actively working in Data Science and other data-oriented jobs. Also, around 10% of data teams do not have any female members in them.