Almost one year ago -
it was February, I believe, 2019 -
I was browsing in the Internet,
and I saw this.
Women built the tech industry.
Then they were pushed out.
Pretty powerful headline, don't you think?
Actually, this is true.
Women were at the forefront
of the tech industry
back when technologist jobs
were considered menial, akin to typists.
In 1946, the US military
selected a team of people
to work on the world's first computer.
Guess what.
More than 50 percent were women.
The lady in the picture
is Margaret Hamilton.
She was the head of the coding team
that charted Apollo 11's path to the moon.
Another most renown lady
of those times was Grace Hopper.
Grace Hopper was a US Admiral
who invented the first compiler.
It was actually her programming
and coding skills
that enabled the United States
to model the impact of the atomic bomb.
Let's look at some numbers.
Thirty-seven percent is the estimated,
by the US federal government,
number of women, percentage of women,
that were taking computer studies
between the '70s and the '90s.
This was actually the peak.
Thirty-seven percent, early '90s,
was the peak in the percentage of women
who attended computer science fields.
At that time, the conditions
of working in the tech industry
were not so glamorous,
but the women were known
for their meticulous work ethic
and their attention to detail.
One of the great anecdotal
stories of that time
was how Grace Hopper
identified the first-ever computer bug.
She traced a glitch in the system
to a moth trapped in a relay wire.
Today in the US, there's an annual
conference every year named after her
to celebrate women in computing.
What happened afterwards
is that the computer industry
became more lucrative.
The tech jobs were of a bit better status
and higher paid.
So the tech companies
were looking to find the best profile
that would fit an engineering job.
But they didn't know,
because the coding skill was really new.
So what they did is they developed
a personality test,
a personality test
that would help them identify
what a good computer engineer
would look like.
That personality test
was actually favoring people
who were not so social,
who were not so extroverted.
It was the birth of the geeky profile.
(Laughter)
A computer engineer
could only be nerdy and antisocial.
That was the industry demographic
from then on, okay?
So what we know today as a stereotype,
of the male who's nerdy
and anti-social as a programmer,
was actually part of this vicious circle
that started at that time.
As the personality test favored more men,
then the industry got more
representation of men,
then that fueled the public perception
that computer engineering
is only suitable for men.
So where we are today.
In 2018, it was March, I think -
March 8th, International Women's Day -
the European Commission announced a study.
The study was named
"Women in the digital age,"
and, actually, it has
a lot of concerning facts
about the representation of women
in the European tech industry.
So today, there are four times more men
taking up computer-related fields
or tech-related fields.
Based on the same study,
out of 1,000 female graduates
of universities in Europe,
24 are studying in tech-related fields,
but then only six
end up working in a digital job.
For every 1,000 of male graduates,
49 end up working in a digital job.
What's even more concerning
is that women are leaving the digital jobs
more often than men.
Actually, in 2015, it was measured
that nine percent of women
left the industry.
The same year, the percentage
for men was 1.2 percent.
And this happened
at the age between 30 and 44,
which is, of course,
the primary working age.
At the same time, it is the age that most
Europeans are having their first child.
So the gender gap is increasing.
If we talk about digital entrepreneurship,
the European Startup Monitor
measures the startups
that have female founders to 14.8 percent.
Startups that have only female founders
got only five percent of the global
venture capital investment.
And the average investment
on the female-founded startups
is dropping every year
of the last five years.
I graduated computer engineering
in the early '90s.
It was the time that the gender gap
was not so visible in the numbers,
but, of course, the unconscious
and sometimes conscious bias was there.
I had to sign up for volunteering work
at the computer center in the university
and, of course, miss a lot of parties
outside of school to be taken seriously
by my professors and my classmates.
You see, I was not the geeky profile,
and femininity at that time was actually
adversely related to brilliance.
When I got into the professional life,
things seemed easier and better.
I was learning everyday,
I was growing every day,
and I had respect from my colleagues.
And then I decided that it was about time
to move up with my career,
to move on, to develop my career.
"You can't - you are a mother.
What would your husband say?
Who would take care of your kids?
How will you manage the long hours?"
Surprisingly, nobody asked me before
how I managed the long hours
when I had to deliver a complex project
with quality and on time.
(Applause)
My husband is in this room today,
and I guess he's smiling.
(Applause)
Today, I am thankful
for this painful moment of truth
because it made me stronger,
because it fueled my determination.
So I worked really hard to make it happen.
I worked really hard
to make my dream come true.
And, of course,
there was advancements,
and, of course, there were setbacks,
and, of course, I was faced
with unconscious bias many times,
which was not only gender,
I have to tell you.
In the years of the Greek crisis,
I had to to overcome the unconscious bias
that the Greeks are incompetent, okay?
Very incompetent and lazy
and corrupt, okay?
(Laughter)
But I made it.
And today, today I feel
I need to share this story
because I want to empower young women
to follow up on her dreams.
So this evolution that I have lived,
because technology has been growing
exponentially over the past years,
was not an inclusive one.
More than 50 percent of the population
has not been part of that.
But is it only gender that was left out?
It was not only gender,
because diversity doesn't have to do
only with whether you are male or female.
It has to do with age.
It has to do with ethnicity.
It has to do with color.
It has to do with religion or culture.
Take for example the older people today.
Today, we are living in a time
that we are having for the first time
five generations at the same time
in the workplace.
In the next five years, analysts expect
that 25 percent of the workforce
will be over the age of 55.
How do we make sure
these people are not excluded?
How do we drive
cross-generational collaboration?
How do we give opportunities
for them to thrive
and to leverage
the benefits of digitization?
Why is this discussion
happening right now?
It is happening first of all because
there is a business case around it.
Based on McKinsey,
companies who have top female executives
and have good diversity
rate in their executive boards
are 35 percent more likely
to be more profitable.
The European Union has estimated
the annual productivity costs
of this nine percent of women
leaving the workplace
to be 16 billion euros.
But it's not only the country
or the company financials.
Diversity is an action.
Inclusion is a culture.
Belonging is a feeling.
And the need for all three
is deeply human.
When we empower people,
when we give them the opportunity
to bring their strengths
and the best talents,
then we all win.
And today, it's even more than that.
With the advance
of technology, such as AI,
a lot of things, a lot of activities -
like, for example, recruiting -
have been outsourced.
So in 2018, there was a Reuters article
that revealed that one of the major
e-commerce companies globally,
a machine-learning-fueled recruiting bot,
was disqualifying women over men.
Τhe machine-learning algorithm
used CVs that were gathered in the company
for a period of more than 10 years
to learn and identify patterns
that would drive
what would a good candidate be.
Of course, those CVs
were coming mostly from men.
So the bot, when it was finding
words like "women" in the CV -
like participation
in a women's soccer club -
it would disqualify that CV.
Biases that exist in the data
in a world that is becoming
more and more data-driven,
in a world the decisions
are taken based on this data
can be reproduced, can be reinforced,
can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I am Greek; I was raised in Greece.
I was educated with the principles coming
from the ancient Greek philosophers.
And as old-fashioned
as this might look today,
it is actually some ethical values,
some timeless values
that we need all to go back to.
We need a new ethical coach
in technology today
that would earn trust,
that would help technology be trustworthy,
that would make us believe
that it will be used in a fair way.
So when we talk about new technologies,
like artificial intelligence,
we want them to be fair,
to not have biases.
We want them to be transparent
for us to understand how data are used,
how decisions are made.
We want them to work
in a safe and reliable way.
We want them to respect our privacy.
We want them to make sure
they include and they empower everyone.
So we know we need inclusive technology.
To do that, I would refer
to Simon Sinek's talk "Start with why."
"Why" matters.
Why are we building technology?
Technology is here
to enhance our capabilities,
to help us make smarter decisions faster,
to help us make less mistakes.
"Why" matters.
Then "who."
Who's involved
in building the technology?
We need more diverse teams
building the technology.
"Who" matters.
And then, finally, "how,"
how transparent we are about
the way we are building technology.
How are we using the data?
How are the machines learning?
"How" matters.
In an evolving digital world,
as we welcome robots,
holograms, artificial intelligence
and more and more automation,
people are getting more and more scared
what the future will be.
What will be the future of jobs?
What will be the future of us as humans?
The future is as good as we make it.
Technology has always been here
to enhance our capabilities.
If you ask me, what would be
our future as humans?
I would tell you,
we need to get back to our core identity,
to the core of who we are,
and that's empathy.
Empathy is not a "nice to have."
Empathy is absolutely essential
to us as humans into the future.
Empathy is about overcoming biases.
It's about respecting each other.
It's about understanding
or trying to understand.
It's about listening.
It's about showing compassion.
It's about offering support.
The future will be good
if it only includes and embraces
every talent on earth.
The future will be good
if it only relies on empathy.
In a digital world that would respect
every individual's talents,
that would empower everybody
to get high, higher, highest,
these headlines will not be there anymore.
Today, I have one ask of you.
Let's make this decision collectively.
Inclusion starts with I.
It starts with each and every one of us.
Let's act, let's listen, let's understand,
let's respect each other.
Let's empathize.
Let's make this evolving
digital world a more inclusive place.
Thank you.
(Applause)