What Does it Mean to be a Woman in Tech? It Means a lot of Work Needs to be Done for This Question to Become Irrelevant Someday.
You are reading Part I of II of this Series.
According to the United Nations, less than 30% of scientific researchers worldwide are women. The gender gap in science diverges between European countries: 40.2% of researchers in Spain are women, and only up to 28.0% are women in female-led countries, such as Germany.
The numbers are similar in the booming tech sector, which attracts billions of venture capital funding. Despite these sizable donations, women still need to be included, making up just 20% of the IT workforce in the UK. The Wise campaign for gender balance in tech and engineering reveals that this trend has remained constant for ten years in a row.
Often, sex discrimination and harassment in tech are why women are inclined to leave the field. A past survey conducted by Harvard Business Review found that women in tech are 45% more likely than their male colleagues to leave the industry within their first year.
Boosting STEM careers
Despite a lack of recognition from the scientific community and efforts to put them out of the picture, numerous women leaders in their scientific field have made enormous contributions to science. They have helped advance the understanding of the world we live in. Most of them were not recognized in their lifetime or will never be, but they indeed paved the way for future generations.
They built the modern coding era and unveiled DNA structure for the first time. Their work inspired — and still does — environmental movements and has led to discoveries. They broke the sound barrier and aimed to break the glass ceiling once and for all.
Their stories must be shared to inspire young women to pursue careers in science. Because of their presence, women and girls are encouraged to opt for a role, and more companies would warmly welcome them as well.
The UNESCO report Cracking the Code: Girls and Women’s Education in STEM show that gender differences in interests and participation are already manifested in early childhood schooling. Still, they become more visible at higher levels of education. In 2018, the proportion of female graduates in engineering and computer science, at 15%, demonstrates that there’s still much more to improve.
“Playfulness and curiosity at an early age are key to building a path in which kids can grow and learn equally” -UNESCO Report.
Numbers are still shocking, even though 53% of all students entering STEM Bachelor’s Degrees are women and 55% continue to pursue a Master’s degree, approximately 1 in 5 of them do not go on to becoming doctorates, and only 29% join the R&D workforce.
Thus, the fundamental question to be asked is why women are so underrepresented in STEM and what we can do as a society to change that.
Several initiatives exist, such as Women and Engineering, organized by the Royal Academy of Engineering in Spain, that promote mentoring programs for female students to enhance the visibility of their women leaders while facilitating their insertion into the workforce.
A study has shown that female developers appreciate having a mentor, but unfortunately,
there are not enough women leaders in the industry to provide it. As a result, only 10% of girls mentored were conducted by women leaders in their field.
The Fondation L’Oréal and UNESCO have partnered for two decades to give women in STEM the recognition they deserve. They aim to empower women scientists in their duties to achieve excellent results and strengthen their equal participation toward solving the great challenges humanity faces.
Innovative hiring processes
Historically, the tech sector has been young, white, and male-dominated. There is an incredible shortage of women in STEM jobs, and the industry is well aware of that.
More than 140 cognitive biases influence one’s decision to hire someone. These can range from unconscious to confirmation bias (the ability to interpret new pieces of information with the vindication of previously existing beliefs). Even though it is possible to be aware of them, they will always be there.
Riham Satti, the founder of MeVitae and clinical neuroscientist, has developed software that allows blind hiring, meaning anonymously assessing a candidate’s skills without prior knowledge of background, gender, or ethnicity. It has been used at the company, and they now employ more women than men — which is rare in the sector.
Apart from speeding up the reviewing CV process, the software has only backfired once. This is why investors and policymakers, as the current EU legal framework on AI proposes, are needed for change to become a reality and achieve equality for all. These advances could enhance women being recruited in tech for it to become more diverse and inclusive, which avoids the loss of talent and bright ideas and, in turn, is a boon to productivity.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is promoting hiring processes specifically for minorities and women in particular to reduce the gender gap in the tech sector. Their initiatives involve apprenticeship programs for military spouses regardless of their duty station and with no prior knowledge in the field. Moreover, they help those who have recently been out of work, as could be the case for new mums, to transition back to full-time employment.
AWS has recently partnered with the global non-profit Girls In Tech organization with support and funding to develop a Digital Career Fair and virtual hackathon, where girls and women have to solve real-life problems with technology, which will surely enlighten them on their importance in our society.
It’s time for the tech sector to apply its creativity, expertise, and resources to create tools to combat its gender inequality problem.
We’re here to stay!
Written By: Blanca Zaragoza, Research Ambassador at Metta Space
Edited By: Paula Koller-Alonso, Head of R&D at Metta Space
