Diversity in tech companies worldwide: common practice or still a challenge in 2020?
The crazy 2020 can be easily and legitimately called “the year of fighting”. Fighting with world pandemic, with global economic crisis, fighting for genuine lands, fighting for lives to matter, fighting for human rights respect and, of course, fighting for diversity and inclusion.
Although tech giants as far as tech startups annually state their inclusion initiatives and diversity respect, the same annual reports show that the tech space is still too far from equality. Diversity and inclusion initiatives are growing every year empowering women, ethnic and sexual minorities to join the tech sphere due to their professional and personal qualities, yet, the work remuneration conditions remain prioritized for their male, white and heterosexual colleagues.
Controversially, the global situation in tech sphere is not directly related to seism or racism but to micro aggregations and badly integrated role models. All this despite numerous facts that women contributed to tech and IT development at all the major historical steps. For example, the first ever code was written by famous Ada Lovelace…
The Black Lives Matter movement has not only opened public discussions about tech giants and their internal policies but also revealed that such companies as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. that claim to be diversity and inclusion employers but have recently shut down important programs directly related to inclusion and equality. Thus, the current economic crisis is guiding companies to find the right and often a difficult balance between fundamental philosophy and workplaces to be fully kept. We should yet state that Google is now actively developing its Inclusion Programs for Women of Color which guides us away from all polemics and highlights once again that the tech field stresses out minority interests and try to support talents all over the world while dismissions seem to rule quite everywhere.
The sexual harassment question, another top one in the last few years, is still facing low consequences while remaining an open talk in developed and developing countries. Recent researches show that while matters are revealed in the tech community, remarkable employees face nothing but reproof and tend to keep their positions.
In terms of funding, nevertheless the 2020 has since the very beginning been a hard bite and yet we do see female and/or color oriented American and European VCs, racial, sexual and gender minorities receive little funding from the total invested.
Social and communication problems are without any doubt eternal. Living an ideal world full equity and respect is a great aim our society is trying to reach for centuries. And we are already close, thus no doubt and despair should take us over. The tech field that is making our lives better, easier, more comfortable respecting our latest needs is and should be always relying on talents despite gender, color, nationality and age. As together only a better new world could be built.
Thus, every organization focused on diversity and inclusion in tech companies is important as it contributes to finding, supporting and developing the rising stars worldwide. The WomenTech Global Network is the one empowering women presence in tech companies through leadership development, professional growth, mentorship and professional networking. WomenTech brings together over 100 000 women working for tech companies and celebrates their personal as far as corporate achievements with its annual WomenTech Global Awards as far as highlights then at its annual conferences.
In 2020 the WomenTech Global Awards goes virtual on December 3 to announce the most remarkable community members in 22 categories. We are proud to announce that the Quppy project is nominated for Diversity in Tech Employer of the Year and WomenTech Speaker of the Year categories.
We are inviting you to join and support WomenTech Global Network and help choosing the winners that did a great job in developing and upgrading tech development and tech community:
https://www.womentech.net/women-tech-global-awards/nominations?combine=kornienko
