K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
Here's something we should all be talking about: Women, who make up half of the U.S. population, remain severely under-represented in technology, and they continue to flee the industry at alarming rates. In fact, women make up just about 25% of technology workers, and the quit rate for women in high tech jobs is 41%, or more than twice that of men.
Although some cynics argue that women don’t want to work in tech, that’s a typical stereotype that can obscure the path to viable solutions. In truth, women can be excluded from tech by a variety of forces, but the evidence shows that women thrive in tech under the right conditions, bringing talent and innovation to resource-starved IT teams.
So what exactly are the right conditions for women? The same conditions under which anyone would thrive: encouragement; hands-on tech discovery in school; the presence of role models in leadership positions; mentorship; executive sponsorship; fair pay; workplace inclusion; and the flexibility to parent while employed.
The great news is that substantially increasing women’s involvement in technology is not a zero-sum game. The technology skills gap is well-documented, and there are more than enough job openings in technology to go around.
Here are seven key steps we can take to close the gender gap in technology:
Although some cynics argue that women don’t want to work in tech, that’s a typical stereotype that can obscure the path to viable solutions. In truth, women can be excluded from tech by a variety of forces, but the evidence shows that women thrive in tech under the right conditions, bringing talent and innovation to resource-starved IT teams.
So what exactly are the right conditions for women? The same conditions under which anyone would thrive: encouragement; hands-on tech discovery in school; the presence of role models in leadership positions; mentorship; executive sponsorship; fair pay; workplace inclusion; and the flexibility to parent while employed.
The great news is that substantially increasing women’s involvement in technology is not a zero-sum game. The technology skills gap is well-documented, and there are more than enough job openings in technology to go around.
Here are seven key steps we can take to close the gender gap in technology:
- Start girls early. Competence is not a function of gender but rather of belief, passion, and effort. Starting in kindergarten, we should intentionally provide girls with concrete opportunities to discover their natural wonder around technology.
- Recruit in new places. A standard tactic for recruitment involves seeking graduates from a traditional set of colleges and universities with as much prestige as your workplace can demand. This can be a dated practice that won’t necessarily fill all the open tech opportunities. Companies should cast a wider recruiting net and update their hiring approaches and criteria. For example, a college degree shouldn’t always be a requirement; military service or another salient career experience can be an excellent substitute. One household-name tech company is looking even further into nontraditional sources, turning formerly incarcerated women (and men) into full-time paid software engineers.
[/LIST=1]
Continue reading: https://fortune.com/2021/09/15/women-in-tech-gender-gap-inclusion-mentorship/
