As an IP strategist for FINCH, Greg Attwells helped to develop "Createable", a technology curriculum for young women. We asked him to tell us more about this important new project.
What inspired you to work with young women? I work for Finch, a production company which has evolved, more and more, into a technology company. A few years back, we went to hire two new engineers. We asked universities in our city to send us applicants — anyone who was interested in innovation, advertising, story-telling. We got 67 applications... and only 2 were female. That shocked us, but [reflected] how the technology industry is sort of male-dominated. We felt like we were in a position to do something about it.
We managed to convince a private school in Sydney to let us take ten 15-year-old female students on a year-long journey where we [helped] them build their own ideas. That was a highly successful pilot program, which evolved into 150 students in some of Sydney’s most prestigious schools. That’s become an important part of our business now — igniting a fire of creative expression through technology.
Your wife Penny is involved with Iysha, an organization which helps sex trafficking victims. Did that influence your work? Absolutely. Empowering women is a real core value for me. A lot of people don’t consider Australia as a destination country for human trafficking, but it is. Sexual slavery, forced marriage, forced labor — all that stuff. The [estimate] is, at any one point, there are about 4,000 women being trafficked. There’s only one safehouse in Sydney: It has 30 beds which cost about AUD$30,000 a year to run, so it’s a crisis.
My wife came up with a more decentralized model where she places women with host families for a period of time on their journey back to freedom and independence rather than institutionalizing them. That way, it’s less resource-heavy and more scalable. I sat on that board, but then there was this opportunity to empower women in a different way... so we did.
There’s been some speculation that male-dominated tech professionals are typically more introverted and, as a result, the apps they create are making end-users more introverted as well. Might an influx of female tech professionals change this trend? What we’ve noticed is that women solve different kinds of problems differently. From my perspective, even though I’m interested in empowering women, I’ll never be able to perceive male entitlement the way women do. Because of that, they bring a unique perspective which creates diversity and, in turn, makes innovation happen.
Are there obstacles in the path of young women who might otherwise be interested in tech? We’ve found that the two biggest hurdles that women face with technology are perception and confidence. The problem with perception is teenage girls think tech is boring [and] just not cool enough to interest them. The program we teach sits within the Australian school curriculum —it’s not a holiday program or an after-school program. We try to champion creativity and teach tech, in context.
We also try to change [attitudes of] internal attribution as opposed to external attribution. Basically, if there's a math class that's particularly hard, male students say “The class is tough” (which is external attribution). However if a class is hard, the female students may say “I’m not good enough.” They make this sweeping judgement about their capability and we’re trying to build confidence and change [this] perception.
You’re also a singer/songwriter and your music was used in a film starring Faye Dunaway. How did that feel? It was very random. They found me through my website and my publisher set it up. Six months later I asked what it was called and, when I heard it was “The Case for Christ”, I thought it sounded like a B-grade Netflix stalker film — but it turned out to be a great film about the life of this investigative journalist. The point in the film where they used my song was a good 30 seconds at an important part — so I thought it was done well.
- Mahmood Ali
