All of the technology in the world is only for half of it.

Women in technology are needed. As the male-dominated field grows, the more important it is that everyone is represented. It’s not an issue that only pertains to half of the world’s population, but the whole of it.

Diversity serves an important purpose in fields that are male-dominated, like technology. Nearly everyone in the connected world uses technology on a daily basis, from their devices, services, and websites. Having services meant for use by a group of people requires having a team that’s representative of that group.

To provide a very basic example, a male lawyer representing a female client on a topic that only women experience or engage in presents a mild conundrum: the lawyer can only sympathize with their client, and cannot empathize with her. In the real world, we can look at services like Pinterest. In 2014, Pinterest’s userbase was 80% female; its tech workforce was 21% female, by comparison.

The idea that Pinterest’s userbase is represented by its developers is difficult to fathom. Can the men behind Pinterest know what the women using the service want out of it?

It’s certainly possible, but a service’s userbase always deserves developers that can empathize with their experiences. This is becoming more important as the availability of technology continues to grow. Educational institutions are beginning to incorporate technology in a manner that makes it impossible to succeed without it. A male-dominated industry can only hope to effectively serve half of the world. The other half must be represented by women.

Technology is still a young field. It’s difficult to imagine that we’ve gained all the insight we possibly can about the field. By introducing more diversity to the field, we stand to gain so much. Diverse groups of people can bring in new perspectives to technology and promote new avenues of research, new projects, and new insight to existing problems.

More women in technology joining the industry can bring in all of the above. Different perspectives, different insight, and different projects can be more easily found. Problems that may not be relevant to men in the field can find the audience they need in women. Services like Google and networks like Facebook will be better informed about more than half of the world’s population if they hire more women, bringing their experiences to the table. Bringing women into tech will help solve issues that women face in their daily lives, especially ones that men can often turn a blind eye to. This isn’t conjecture; it’s real life. There are so many experiences that only women can relate to, and so many problems that only women can efficiently solve.

There are, of course, questions that I hope to find answers to.

• Why is it that the field is so male-dominated in the first place? Has it always been this way, or did it become this way?
• What strategies are companies using to promote diversity in the workplace? Which ones are working, and which ones aren’t? Why?
• How much of this has to do with education? Are we steering young women away from technology? Is technology appearing exclusive?

A field comprised mainly of men cannot hope to grow and help solve the world’s problems. All it can do is help half of it.