Tech’s first lady Melinda Gates has called on women to play a bigger role in technology, saying the industry needs them.
Gates, who is the co-founder of the world's largest private charitable organisation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, made the comments while talking about her new book, ‘The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World’.
Speaking to radio station Triple J in her only Australian interview, Gates said women had a vital role to play in the way technology products are created.
“If you think about how pervasive technology is, all over society, it’s changing our lives in fundamental ways," she said.
“And what I know is that women need to have a seat at that table so that they are creators of the society we want.
“Otherwise, we are not getting the most innovative products – we know more diverse teams are more innovative – we’re baking bias into some of these systems from the get-go.
“So that’s why I am so vociferous and I’m putting money behind more pathways for women into the technology space.”
Gates studied computer science at university and joined Microsoft immediately after graduating, where she stayed for 10 years.
It was there she met Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and the two later married.
In recent years, she has prioritised getting more women into tech careers.