Diversity plays a pivotal role in tech, as it enables organizations to create high-quality products by taking everyone into consideration, and not just one section of society. A report by McKinsey found that diverse companies perform better because of hiring better talent, having more engaged teams thus resulting in retaining employees better than companies that do not focus on diversity and inclusion.
That being said, despite the conversations and efforts taken by companies towards gender diversity and equality in tech, women remain underrepresented and underpaid in IT roles, till today.
FURTHERMORE, WOMEN ONLY HOLD A QUARTER OF ALL TECH JOBS
According to the study by Adeva IT recently, women held only 25% of all the jobs in the tech industry, despite women making up almost half of the total workforce. What’s worse is the fact that this number is lower than the percentage of women in tech jobs back in the 1980s.
Statistics on Participation of Women in IT
As the percentage of employed women across all job sectors in the US has grown to 47%, the 5 largest tech companies on the planet (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft) only have a workforce of about 34.4% women. Despite the size and reach, the lack of women in the workforce seems to be the largest problem looming overhead.
Only about 5 percent of leadership positions in tech were being held by women in 2015, thus making up only 9% of partners at the top 100 venture capital firms.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the percentage of women in senior leadership positions grew from 21% to 24% between 2018 and 2019. And this is a good news. Having women in leadership positions can positively impact the organization as a gender-diverse culture is more likely to offer an equal pay to female employees thus increasing the female employee engagement and higher job satisfaction, ultimately resulting in higher retention rate.
Although these statistics are trending upward gradually, a report found that 54 percent of men said they felt it was likely that they’d be promoted to executive management in their company. Meanwhile, only 25 percent of women said the same, noting a lack of support and feeling the need to “prove themselves more than men to get promoted.”
The above points ultimately leading to women quit the industry and move to a non-technical occupation for a better growth curve. The turnover rate of women employees still stands twice as high than it is for men in tech jobs — 41% versus 17%.
What can companies do to close the gender gap?
- Build diversity into your company culture because a diversity of thought leads to better problem-solving.
- Offer workplace flexibility.
- Be transparent about salaries and working hours. Hiring based on potentials and skills alone can help with this.
- Provide access to external women’s networks thus increasing visibility of female role models in the industry,
- Leveling the playing field for women to enable them to achieve their full potential
- Ditching damaging dialogues that perpetuate the stereotype that tech is a man’s world.
- Put Hiring Manager and Evaluators through an unconscious bias training
Looking towards the (Female) Future at Kilowott
Over the past few years, the imagery of a coder or software developer has seen a change from being masculine to now witnessing more women stepping into the world of code. Today, girls as young as 10 are learning to code and harboring dreams of building applications for the future. We are proud to be a witness to this shift.
At Kilowott, we take pride in laying emphasis on gender equality and being an equal – opportunity provider. The tech wing at Kilowott is led by Arati Raikar, with HR being driven by Archana KP and capable women in Tech working also in Delivery, Sales, Marketing, and more. They are shattering the glass ceiling and breaking stereotypes when it comes to career choices. Very recently, the journey of these powerful ladies was documented by a regional newspaper.
We invite more such talented women to come forward and become a part of our team and help us drive this transformation forward and set an example globally. Our chairs are waiting for you.
We can all move onward and upward together. We can do it. We feel it in our code.
