Why do we have fewer women in tech?
Women are effectively shattering the social barriers that formerly stood in their way in the tech field, standing alongside their male equivalents to generate remarkable results.
Gone are the days when women were expected to stay at home and care for their children while their husbands went out to work. It’s fairly normal to see women in vibrant careers these days, with many women entering the technology sector not only to provide telecom and VPS hosting services but also to hold top positions in some of the world’s largest corporations — and it’s a delight to watch.
Most powerful women in tech
Women are practically smashing through the workplace diversity that formerly stood in their way, standing alongside their male equivalents to create remarkable outcomes in the realm of technology. Not only does their presence counteract the myth that technology-related career paths are only open to men, but it also gives the tech sector a far more relatable and down-to-earth feel, demonstrating that technology isn’t just about super-smart men coders, testosterone-fueled board meetings, and violent video games that are (dare we say) often thought to be more male-oriented.
It also urges folks who aren’t as tech-savvy to pay attention — after all, there’s some pretty incredible female empowerment and, at times, dominance going on here.
Sheryl Sandberg is one such example of a woman who is breaking down gender stereotypes and proving that chicas and computers can coexist. As Facebook’s COO and Forbes’ most strong figure in technology, she is a standout figure in the industry known for her hard work and $1.4 billion Business Empire.
She is a top executive of the world’s fifth most powerful brand, but she is also a proponent of female empowerment at work and shared duties at home. Sandberg is live evidence that women can succeed in technology, having helped increase Facebook’s revenue 66-fold since becoming COO in 2008.
Furthermore, Sandberg is just one of several women holding crucial positions inside prominent technological businesses, standing proudly beside YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and HP CEO Meg Whitman.
Positive impact on company profits
According to a 2016 Peterson Institute study, women and technology are a potent combination in business, with the inclusion of women in leadership roles having a beneficial influence on company earnings. The assessment of 21,980 organizations in 92 countries discovered that companies with at least two women in executive roles in the C-Suite (a company’s most important senior executives) and two women on boards of directors had higher turnover than those without this kind of diversity.
Why? It is believed that having both genders in high positions leads to a more inclusive business culture, which appears to be a powerful strategy for profitable growth.
A diverse environment is more balanced and purposeful, with shared leadership of both sexes adopting the following characteristics to bring out the best in their employees: empowerment, transparency, honesty, and boldness. Businesses that want to build an inclusive culture should seek out women leaders and ensure diversity is present in all areas of the workplace.
Women in tech statistics: The hard truths of an uphill battle
Diversity is important in technology because it allows companies to build safer and better products that include everybody, not just one segment of society. Furthermore, according to a McKinsey 2020 analysis, diverse firms outperform, recruit talented people, have a more motivated workforce, and retain people better than companies that do not promote diversity and inclusion. Despite this, women continue to be significantly underrepresented in IT positions.
Stats from the following nine aspects of IT work, ranging from university education to the professional workplace, offer a clear picture of the problems women face in achieving equality in a career in IT.
The employment gap
As per figures from the National Center for Women & Information Technology, women represent 47 percent of all working individuals in the United States, yet they retain only 25 percent of computing roles as of 2015. (NCWIT). Asian women represent only 5% of the 25% of women who work in technology, while African American women constitute 3% and 1%, respectively. All this even though, according to Pew Research Center data, the expansion of STEM jobs has surpassed the growth of total employment in the country, expanding 79 percent since 1990 while overall employment has expanded 34 percent. Despite national debates about the lack of diversity in technology, women are disproportionately excluded from this surge.
Women now account for 34% of India’s IT industry, with most of these professionals under the age of 30. Certainly, the Indian IT labor force’s youth has considerably fueled its quick expansion, and the country is currently nearly at 50:50 gender balance in STEM graduates. The next difficulty is to maintain gender diversity in middle leadership and organizational positions. Given Indian economic policies, NASSCOM campaigns, and some of the remarkable work done by IT service businesses themselves, it will be fascinating to see if they can reproduce this achievement at the graduate level to keep the gender parity pace through the managerial levels.
Apart from the employment gap, women in tech vastly encounter gaps like degree gap, workplace-culture gap, representation gap, pandemic gap, founder gap, pay gap, leadership-in-IT gap, and many more.
To recapitulate, women have significantly improved many elements of technology to date and will continue to do this for several decades to come.
About Author:
Muskaan Pirani | LinkedIn
Open Source Contributor GirlScript Foundation | Data Science Track
