Although the tech industry is at the forefront of innovation, it is far from achieving any kind of gender parity.
Only 24% of computing jobs are held by women. And this number keeps dropping.
It’s crazy to think that only 1 of every 4 employees is a woman in companies like Google and Apple (GAFAM*— an acronym for the big five tech giants— companies truly at the forefront of innovation). Perhaps not surprisingly (after the previous stat) only 11% of executives in Silicon Valley are women.
Interestingly, as the NCWIT noted, tech companies with more women in management have a 34% higher return of investment.
Yet the number of women studying CS is declining — in 1995 𝟯𝟳% of computer scientists were women, while today it’s only 𝟮𝟰%. As the organization Girls Who Code states in their website, this percentage will continue to decline if we do nothing and a tangible way to take action is to get girls between the ages of 13 and 17 (the biggest drop off of girls in computer science is between this ages) interested in CS. Although let me be clear, in my opinion, it's not that (in most cases) girls aren't interested in CS, it's that we've been socialized and conditioned to steer away from CS.
Here are some stats to get you excited to get more girls and women in STEM:
Here are some organizations doing amazing work in getting more girls and women in STEM:
Girls Who Code is one of the organizations looking to close the gender gap in tech by changing the image of what a programmer looks like and does — and teaching young girls how to code. I’ve been such a huge fan of Reshma Saujani (as proven by the fact that she was my first post on BBW) . In 2012 she founded Girls Who Code after noticing during her campaign for Congress the lack of girls in CS classrooms.
Girl Develop It is another organization closing the gender gap in tech. GDI is a nonprofit that provides affordable programs for adult women and non-binary individuals to learn web and software development in a judgement free environment.
Women Who Code is also an incredibly inspiring organization envisioning a world where women are proportionally represented as technical leaders, executives, founders, VCs, board members, and software engineers.