Science Quote by Anita Borg

A prediction that doubles as a warning: corporations can hire women without actually preparing for what women will do once they’re inside. Anita Borg isn’t offering a feel-good diversity slogan; she’s naming a structural inevitability. Bring in people historically pushed to the margins and the institution’s habits start to look less like “professionalism” and more like a pile of convenient defaults.

The phrasing matters. “More than we expect” points at the complacency of “we” - leadership, legacy employees, the gatekeepers who assume inclusion is additive rather than transformative. Borg implies that change won’t be limited to headcount or a better marketing page. It will touch the hidden rules: who gets heard in meetings, what counts as leadership, how risk is judged, how performance is measured, and whose life is presumed in policies built around the unencumbered worker.

Context sharpens the edge. Borg came up in an era when computing culture was rapidly professionalizing while quietly narrowing who belonged. She helped found the Grace Hopper Celebration and the Institute for Women and Technology because she understood that “pipeline” talk isn’t enough; the container itself has to change. This line imagines women not as beneficiaries of corporate benevolence, but as agents with their own norms, networks, and expectations.

There’s also a strategic optimism here: the corporation is not a neutral machine, and it’s not immune to culture. Borg’s wager is that once women have real presence and power, the company will be forced to renegotiate what it is - not just who it hires.