Everything we do today relies on and/or uses data in some way or another. Research on any topic – from covid to climate to investing to your favorite sports team. Your smartphone. Your computer. Searching terms in Google or Bing or Yahoo or on Twitter or Instagram or on any website or platform. The list goes on and on and on…
Those searches use terms and algorithms programmed into it by someone – and 82% of the time, that person is a male (and white). Women make up only 18% of data scientists, and put data at risk of being biased.
“Relying on biased information undermines the effectiveness of evidence-based policymaking. A potential source of bias in many datasets is that most of the world’s data scientists—i.e., the people who collect, organize, analyze data, and make decisions—are men.” That’s from the Center for Global Development, and says, in essence “garbage in, garbage out.”
