The gender disparity in the tech sector is getting worse.
According to a report from Accenture and Girls Who Code, women in the computing workforce will shrink in the next 10 years unless immediate action is taken, and there has already been a huge 37 percent drop of women in tech since 1995.
What exactly is causing the rates of women in the tech industry to fall?
A skills shortage will begin to damage the economy. There were 500,000 new computing jobs in the US in 2015, but there were fewer than 40,000 new computer science graduates.
As a result, a call to action has been identified to triple the number of women in computing by 2025.
The report, aptly named Cracking the Gender Code, recommends what needs to be done to spark interest in tech in girls throughout their school years.
Teaching girls from a young age, in both a school and a home environment, that computing is not just for boys is paramount to addressing the drop of women in tech. Girls are 18 percent more likely to show interest in computing if they’ve been exposed to it in their school years.
Reshma Saujani, who founded Girls Who Code in 2012 to help close the tech gender gap, says that developing curriculum with girls’ interests in mind and teaching in ways that girls prefer—such as project-based work—is needed to keep them engaged.
A lack of female role models is also reinforcing girls perceptions that a future career in the tech sector is not for them and is instead best left to the boys.
Tech Nation found that men outnumber women by a ratio of three to one within the tech sector, and big computing organizations need to evoke how technology is a force for good if they want to attract more females to the sector. It is one of those most iconic and pioneering industries and last year the tech sector grew faster than the UK economy, attracting £28 billion (roughly $36 billion) in technology investment to the country since 2011.
Out of the top ten tech companies in the world, Cisco has the smallest gap when it comes to the ratio of men to women.
There are 3 females in executive positions at Cisco and 4 male executives. The tech giant Samsung is the worst culprit in this arena; there are no female executives and no females on the board of directors either. At Apple, the disparity between the genders at the executives’ table is as equally astonishing. Out of 18 employees, only 3 are female.
At Apple, the disparity between the genders at the executives’ table is as equally astonishing. Out of 18 employees, only 3 are female.
The barriers surrounding females in tech have been highlighted and action needs to be taken.
The fight to close the gender gap once and for all starts by addressing sexism, the surrounding social stigmas and supporting the prospect of a career in tech in schools.
