Professor Jo Atlee is an internationally renowned researcher in software engineering, who is a pioneer in automated analysis of software requirements. Recently, Virtualware featured her in a video of remarkable women researchers, alongside Marie Curie and Margaret Hamilton. She co-penned one of the classic software engineering textbooks, Software Engineering: Theory and Practice.
But over the years, she noticed there was something that held her and other women back: how they were socialized to be risk-averse.
“Stereotypically, when it comes to proposing a big project, men will shoot for the moon and women will propose something they know is doable. Women will outline all the steps needed to achieve their goals. But at the end of the day, the people who evaluate these proposals prefer the moonshots. I definitely recognize myself in the camp of someone who would propose an achievable project.”
Read the full interview with Prof. Atlee on the Computer Science website.