Melinda Gates is on a mission to boost women in tech fields

Melinda Gates has some advice for tech workers flooding into Seattle for jobs at Amazon and other cutting-edge companies: Do your part to make the field more diverse.“Look around you, look in your group and ask yourself: How many women are on your team?” the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said in a recent interview with The Seattle Times. “If it’s less than two, that’s probably too few.”

Since unveiling the initiative last fall, Gates said she’s started zeroing in on areas where she hopes to make a difference. Those include changes to introductory computer- science courses so they’re more welcoming and interesting to women.


In Seattle’s booming tech economy, Gates urged managers to be aware that women often prefer to work in groups that include other women. “Ask yourself: How do you promote women and sponsor women in these jobs?” she said. “And are you sure women are being paid as much as men?”Also, women often need more encouragement than men to put themselves forward for promotion, she pointed out.