Why Are There So Few Women in Tech?

A few weeks ago, I taught a workshop on the three building blocks of the web, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, to a group of roughly 50 females in all stages of their career. It was a rewarding experience to share my knowledge with a sampling of a very large demographic (large as in 50% of the population). I’m always impressed at the organization, creativity and passion displayed at these workshops by #LatinaGeeks, the organizations I partnered with for this event, led by Lala Castro, Tanya Salcido, as well as my good friend Ana Reyes.

The most rewarding experience for me was the networking session because I was able to have some candid conversations with a handful of attendees about a question I have long pondered over: ‘Why are there so few women in tech?’ According to the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) by 2024, 1.1 million computing-related job openings are expected, 45% could be filled by U.S. computing bachelor’s degree recipients. Sounds like a sea of opportunity, but then take a look at this statistic, from the same NCWIT site: In 2016, 26% of the computing workforce were women.

One word that seemed to be a re-occurring one was ‘Intimidation‘. One attendee recalled her experience of being overlooked as the Cybersecurity expert in a room with male co-workers. Another described her mistakes being looked upon as ‘expected’ whereas for a male co-worker it was ‘accepted’. Finally, another attendee felt she had to work harder to prove herself worthy of her tech position.

The first reason why this needs to be fixed is because, ethically speaking, it is the right thing to do. Period. But there’s also economic reasons. The chances of having a positive outcome of a project or product increases when a diverse team with different insights and backgrounds comprise the team. In my experience, this is due to the fact that the different insights and backgrounds act as a soundboard that will have vetted the project/product before release, saving everyone time and money in the long run. We are living in the dawn of the Artificial Intelligence era, do we really want to transfer these conscious or unconscious biases into our products? I, as most consumers, would consider that a very flawed product. Social media is an unforgiving medium, imagine the economic fallout due to negative social media publicity of a bias that has been acted out on a customer. Imagine the damage due to a restrictive bias placed on a specific demographic.

With that I conclude with a shout out to International Women’s day (today March 8). Let’s celebrate by hiring some of them.