Professor Charlotte Lee Political Science 3

Beomjin Kim (Benji)

Professor Charlotte Lee

Political Science 3

23 March 2018

Essay Prompt # 1

“Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.” This famous phrase was told by Aristotle when he discussed equality and democracy for the politics and constitution of Athens. It implies the fundamental value of democracy and shows how long the ideology of democracy has been developed. In contrast to this, we can easily find that sexual discrimination and prejudice between men and women that men are superior and women are inferior have long been historically linked. The founder of sociology and positivism, Auguste Conte, said that women cannot perform mental tasks that require steady because their mental abilities are weak, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a liberal, said that “women do not love art and have no talent or appreciation of art”, and a philosopher Hegel said that women are not acting in accordance with the demands of universality but they are dependent on contingent inclinations and opinions, therefore a nation will be in danger if women go to politics. Although it has passed a long time since these discussions about equality and gender gap were made, unfortunately, conflicts of sexual discrimination and gender inequality are still ongoing in numerous fields. Especially, the gender gap is remarkable in the cybersecurity field and tech industry. According to Finkle, ISC2, the largest organization that certifies cyber professionals, said that “a poll of nearly 14,000 information security professionals in developed countries found that only 10 percent were women.” Why do such conflicts in gender inequality not be solved in spite of a lot of research, protests, laws, and discussions for a long time? Is this an immortal problem that cannot be solved as long as two genders coexist on the earth? As discussions on such social issues have been made for a long time, there are various theories that are applicable to the social issues, and fortunately, through the academic research on political materials, I have found that critical approaches of constructivism and feminism to the gender gap in cyber security field broaden understanding and help to get diversified perspectives for the issue, enabling to rationalize and see the bright sides of the issue.

First, in the perspective of constructivism, which is one of the most interesting critical approaches for me, the significant thing in terms of a group’s characteristic is socially shared beliefs. This critical approach is most interested in the norms that influence how we see the world. They state that how to address an issue would differ depending on at what point of view we believe the world will come to be. Generally, there has been a prevalent perception that men are active, rational, and aggressive, while women are passive, emotional, and defensive. For the problem of the gender gap in the cybersecurity field, constructivists would say this socially shared recognition and bias is the fundamental reason for the issue. Second, the perspective of feminism that addresses the problem of the gender gap in the cybersecurity field and the ways to solve it would differ depending on the different strands of feminism. Generally, for feminists, the gendered language and underrepresentation are the main issue in the tech industry. One survey found that 84% of industry women were told to be too aggressive and 75% were asked whether they were married or have children during the interview (Griswold). And they will criticize women’s underrepresentation which they think is underlying because of men’s domination in the cybersecurity field and would say they are overlooked and sometimes they are neglected at all in the industry. For the postmodern feminists, who challenge biological-based notions of gender, among other things, would say many differences between men and women are not innate, but rather are created by environmental factors. Especially, liberal feminism is the most mainstream of the feminist theories and we can easily find some leaders who have embodied this approach such as Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright. These feminists are interested in bringing women's issues to the international security agenda through establishments such as the UN and national governments.

My recommendation to solve the gender issue in the cyber security field in the perspective of feminism is to encourage more women to speak up in public places like liberal feminists. The story of Malala Yousafzai, a school girl, is exemplary of this idea. She had the language skills and technology to blog about the risks of going to school in Afghanistan. Her message reached English-speaking audiences around the world. Then, when the Taliban sent shooters to kill her on a school bus, she survived the attack and became even more vocal about the rights of girls worldwide. The international human rights community had found a torchbearer. To the credit of her parents, both were incredibly brave to send her to school, and her father, in particular, has long been an advocate of girls’ rights in Afghanistan. Like this young girl’s case, women’s confidence and consistent effort to speak up and share their idea widely would be the most effective way to inspire numerous people in the world.

Additionally, according to Griswold, John Greathouse, a venture capitalist in Rincon Venture Partners in California and an adjunct professor at Santa Barbara State University, gave advice to working women in the tech industry. In a column in the Wall Street Journal, he told women to erase all the tokens that could guess their gender, if possible, from their email address, LinkedIn profile, Twitter, and wherever they show up. Also, he suggested writing the abbreviation and do not show the full name if their name is a typical woman’s name, and mentioned that when interviewing employers or investors, information about gender and related experience should be talked about as slowly as possible to get a fair assessment. However, this article is failed to consider what is the important thing in the context. In other words, it is blaming women for solving problems that are not caused by women. This is just an advice to bypass the problem in such a way as to conceal an identity. This article assumes that the tech industry will never be free from female discriminatory practices forever and that men will prefer men to women who work as colleagues and industry workers. As long as the mainstream leading the industry keep this way, there will be rarely a change. However, the idea of concealing an identity still has an effect to solve the gender gap in the tech industry, therefore what I suggest as a solution for the gender gap problem in the cybersecurity field is institutionalizing “Blind Recruitment”. Blind recruitment mandates companies not to identify applicants’ gender and to receive only the minimum amount of information they need to understand the applicants’ abilities, and this would gender-based employment discrimination in the cybersecurity field. This can be confusing to both companies and applicants, so I would suggest planning to introduce the system into the public sector first and expand it to the private companies.

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