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Women In Tech
From an article on "The Latest Stats on Women in Tech",
"We all know that there's a major gender gap when it comes to women in tech.
Although we make up the majority of the workplace and the social media sphere, we only represent a tiny percentage of the technology world.
And that's reflected in some of the stats you see. For example, according to a 2011 report from the Level Playing Field Institute, 82% of men in startups believed their companies spent the 'right amount of time' addressing diversity, while almost 40% of women believed not enough time was devoted.”
Although women are still underrepresented in the tech world, it does not mean that we are not making a difference in the tech world.
In a Women in Tech Round-up event presented by Google in Austin, the Women who spoke at these events were vice presidents (VPs) and high-level management positions from profitable companies working in the tech industry. Not all of them began their careers in the tech world, many had started as secretaries and other roles that are often populated by women. They worked hard and took risks to get where they are now. The one piece of advice that seemed to resound from all of them was that for you to succeed, you must take risks.
The Google VP who spoke at this event gave women a piece of advice: that we should take any and every opportunity afforded to us and risk applying to jobs we are not qualified for. The worst that will happen is you’ll get rejected or you won’t get an interview. Men frequently get tech positions not because they are more experienced or better than women, but because they apply to positions that they often aren’t qualified for. Conversely, women tend to apply only for jobs that they think they are qualified for. Various studies show that women applied only to jobs where they fully match the desired criteria, compared to men, who applied to positions which were about 50% match.
The worst thing you can do is to sell yourself short. If you want something, take that risk and achieve the impossible.
Encouraging girls in elementary, middle, and high school can also help to increase the number of women going to work in the tech industry as they get older. We must actively fight against gender stereotypes in careers beginning at a young age so that children fully understand what career options are available to them. If girls are able to get more familiar with computer science concepts at a young age, this will help to make entering a college classroom full of men a less intimidating experience. Over time we will hopefully start to see a gender balance in tech careers.
More Information:
- Why are there so few women in tech? The truth behind the Google memo
- Ellen Pao: Has Anything Really Changed for Women in Tech?
A non-exhaustive list of global women in tech initiatives:
- ChickTech
- PyLadies An international mentorship group with a focus on helping more women become active participants and leaders in the Python open-source community.
- R-Ladies A worldwide organization whose mission is to promote gender diversity in the R Community by encouraging, inspiring, and empowering people of genders currently underrepresented in the R community.
- Django Girls A non-profit organization and a community that empowers and helps women to organize free, one-day programming workshops by providing tools, resources and support.
- Rails Girls A global, non-profit volunteer community whose aim is to give tools and a community for women to understand technology and to build their ideas. Hosts Ruby-on-Rails-specific coding workshops for girls.
- Girls Who Code Girls Who Code is a nonprofit organization which aims to support and increase the number of women in computer science.
- 1 Million Women To Tech A 501(c)3 educational non-profit whose mission is to offer free coding education to 1 million women by 2020.
- Women Who Code Women Who Code is an global non-profit with a set of programs for engineers to reach the careers we want.
- MotherCoders MotherCoders offers an eight-week tech camp focusing on helping mothers enter tech careers.
- Ada Developers Academy Ada is a free females-only developer academy lasting 11 months based in Seattle, WA.
- Women Techmakers
Podcasts on Women-in-tech:
If you're interested in podcasts, check out Esperee Devora's on women in tech here.