Confronting the Confidence Gap:​ Women and Tech Skills Workshop

Bryn Mawr College's Digital Competencies Program helps students build the digital skills and critical perspectives on technology needed for success in the digital age.

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This week, Jenny Spohrer and I (Beth Seltzer) had the pleasure of hosting a session on the Digital Competencies for the Bryn Mawr Community Day of Learning. This post shares our slides and materials.

Our topic was "Confronting the Confidence Gap: Women and Tech Skills." Research suggests that women frequently understate their technical skills compared to male peers. This session started from the question: what can we, as a women's college in 2018, do to address this so that our graduates can accurately articulate their technical ability? In this workshop, we discussed the research and reasons around this phenomenon, and participants reflected on and practiced articulating technical abilities using Bryn Mawr's Digital Competencies, a framework of digital skills and critical perspectives on technology. Open to participants of all levels of technical skills, attendees left with a compelling story about their technical competency adaptable to various audiences, including potential employers.

We began our workshop by asking participants, "How would you rate your tech skills on a scale from 1-5?" While our personal scales varied around the circle, several participants noted later in the conversation that they had rated their tech skill quite low.

Next, we gave a short presentation interlaced with discussion on the research behind the so-called gender "confidence gap" in technology. We discussed the relationship of the confidence gap to imposture syndrome, its impact on who applies to tech jobs in the first place, and its influence on women's decisions to choose STEM majors. We also discussed critiques of the idea of the confidence gap, and structural issues in companies and online which help explain why it exists in the first place.

Bryn Mawr College's Digital Competencies Program is one way of breaking down the confidence gap by giving students language and a way to practice articulating their digital skills. We briefly introduced the initiative before moving into the interactive portion.

Download our slideshow here.

Second, participants completed a multi-part exercise asking them to first pick a single competency and brainstorm how they used it. Then, we discussed what makes a compelling story about digital skills (for resumes, cover letters, or job interviews), and participants completed a rough draft. We ended with a short peer review where participants were invited to give positive and constructive feedback on each other's materials.

Download the worksheet here.

Want more info about the digital competencies? Contact us at digicomp@brynmawr.edu.