The Pipeline: Women In The Tech Industry

Improved Essays
There is no secret that the entire tech sector has a very serious gender problem. Despite women making up around half of the US workforce, they only account for 26% of all tech jobs. Public disfavor has made this a problem the tech sector seeks to fix, in theory, but HR departments often find that a tall order to fill. Given the potential economic benefits of tech careers, why aren’t more women in IT?
The Pipeline
One oft-cited explanation is that there simply aren’t enough women in the pipeline to create a balanced workforce in tech. Despite boys and girls showing similar enthusiasm for science as children, young women have turned away from science and tech by the time college rolls around. Girls are, in part, steered away from STEM careers

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    There are several tech companies that are lacking in females being hired or inspiring to become programmers, graphic designers, etc. Make sure there are quotas to help kick start having these businesses hire women so that the inequality within the tech field can slim down within the next few years. Finally, a major push can be the addition of the equal gender pay. This has been a hot topic during the 2016 presidential candidates as each candidate has different opinions regarding this situation.…

    • 421 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Introduction Women currently hold roughly 25% of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) jobs in the United States, despite a roughly equal representation in the workplace as a whole (Beede 2011). It seems as though our society has accepted the presence of women in the workplace, on the condition that women only occupy jobs deemed suitable for their gender. Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers made a speech in January of 2005, claiming that the reason women are underrepresented in scientific higher academia was due to innate biological differences. He claimed that socialization and expectations of women “didn’t explain the differences between the sciences and mathematics and other fields” (Hemel 2005). Summers colleagues also…

    • 1626 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Less than three in ten science and engineering jobs are held by women,” says a faceless female voice within the first five seconds of IBM’s “Hack-A-Hairdryer” commercial. This is true. Although women comprise half of the total U.S. workforce, only twenty-four percent of STEM workers are female (Beede et al., 2011, p. 2). Even within the past few years, gender gaps in many engineering fields continue to widen (Accenture & Girls Who Code, 2016). The alarming statistics of women in STEM have pressured big name companies such as Microsoft and Google to implement their own initiatives that expose young girls to technology.…

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Most people aim towards STEM fields since those occupations have higher wages. The problem with STEM fields is that it is male dominated. In “Still Earning Less” by Mary Ann Mason, Mason discusses how even though more women are working they still continue to be directed towards low paying jobs, so non-STEM fields. Although women are earning more degrees than man, their degrees are from female dominated occupations, such as sociology or visual arts. Mason argues that from an early age women are being pushed away from STEM fields, young girls are being taught how to be hair stylist instead of engineers.…

    • 1136 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This number on the left tells quite a lot about the kind of encouragement women are subjected to when it comes to being a part of the tech industry. When studied, a reason for this undermined…

    • 415 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Presents an overview of the literature on women's and girls' lack of participation in technology. Then introduces the "SWIFT" program - an umbrella project for several efforts aimed at increasing girls' and women's participation. Projects described include a career survey; E-GEMS - educational software designed to be gender-inclusive; the Virtual Family software designed to introduce Java programming in an appealing way; several outreach initiatives; and the ARC program for retraining adult women for entry into IT careers. Note that this research was done in Vancouver, British Columbia and that some of the results presented (particularly those looking at computer science major and employment trends) may not apply to…

    • 808 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The reason behind males not joining female dominated fields comes from the connotations that female dominated fields like nursing have gotten. For example, society has labelled nursing as being a girly career and any male entering the nursing field has a questionable sexuality. Although, there is some chores that males do that woman find manly like cooking, and cleaning because if you do female dominated activities and are pursuing a female dominated field, it means you are confident of who you are and it shows through your…

    • 88 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Paragraph Representation

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Women make up 48 percent of the U.S. workforce, but only 24 percent of workers in STEM fields (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017). Revised paragraph Although many scholars believe that women are underrepresented in the STEM fields. I argue that the government should offer incentives to women to help them pursue STEM careers, like discounts on tuition or they should be offered accelerated programs much like the programs that are…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Women still dominate the fields of nursing, and teaching. As a woman, if you tell people that you want to be an engineer, a doctor, or something else like that, you are met with raised eyebrows and surprise. Women are not treated fairly in the field of science. The men get all of the credit.…

    • 519 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Underrepresentation of Women in STEM Fields Introduction Women in STEM are continuously being underrepresented in the United States. This issue has caused women to suffer in the workplace, created a more disengaged generation of girls, and impacted scientific innovation. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math, jobs in the STEM field have increased but women’s role in them has not. According to the National Science Board in 2013, women consisted of 29% of the STEM workforce, compared to the overall workforce in which they made up 49% ( “Diversity in the workforce contributes to creativity, productivity, and innovation. Women’s experiences—along with men’s experiences—should inform and guide the direction of engineering…

    • 1988 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    May it because they feel as if a woman being in a certain field may feel taboo or that employers unconsciously discriminate and prefer men working in the field can be one of many reasons why women do not get into the careers they may feel passionate about. We must come up with ways for every career to give women a chance to show that certain careers aren’t just for men, but for those who feel passionate enough to put all their efforts into learning the skills and gaining the mindset for these careers and to help progress in those fields. Personally I would love to see more women who have a passion for automotives to ignore these biases and stereotypes and make that push to become a technician. As the staggering percentage mention before of the amount of technicians being male, I’d like to see that change. Automotives is not a man’s world, but a world that requires anyone with passion and determination to love working on automotive vehicles and to advance in efficiency of these vehicles.…

    • 1267 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What type of jobs do the majority of women hold today? Definitely not in the STEM related careers. Women should hold more important jobs in the fields of engineering, science, mathematics, and technology, rather than inessential jobs such as; secretaries, office assistants, and fashion models. This should not be. Women should be there lifting the heavy objects, discovering the cure for cancer, inventing something new.…

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From the beginning of time, women were considered inferior to men -- whether it be in the workforce, or generally in the society. A patriarchy of sexes has always been instilled in the minds of individuals, where the man is on top of the pyramid. Although the views towards women have improved throughout the years, women, today, are still facing some misogynistic inequalities in the workforce, as well as unfair reproductive health care. Ever since the Second World War, women became more and more involved in the workforce, and have created a new image of themselves in the society. Now, plenty of women work in male-dominated areas, such as engineering, law, and medicine.…

    • 567 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    What’s Wrong with Gender Gap in STEM Fields? Now close eyes and picture an engineer or a scientist. How many people have a male in the picture and how many people have a female? U.S. Department of Commerce (2011) reported the data that “Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs.” The gender gap in STEM fields is a long-existing problem and obviously, this gap won 't disappear in a short time.…

    • 1020 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Why are they only few women in computer science? Women who did better and equivalent to boys what happened to all of them. Why aren’t there a lot of women in computer science field? Why aren’t they choosing the stem field or why are they leaving the STEM…

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays