Diversityworking - We are the largest diversity job board online, career opportunity and news source resource and job search engine for the cultural diversity marketplace.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

New Study Shows Why Lack of Gender Diversity Assails Tech Industry


It is an established fact that lack of diversity assails the tech industry as shown by the workforce diversity data of big tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple, who are now seriously bent on improving the diversity makeup of their workforces and corporate boards. Recent data from those companies and others like them confirm what everyone has long known: Most of their employees are white and Asian men. Among technical employees, few are women, and even fewer are Latino or African-American as earlier reported. Read more here

However, a new study shows why there is lack of gender diversity in the field, and that only few women stay long in diversity It jobs, and not many are in a diversity executive job, and it is not about their education.

A Fortune article reports that a new study conducted by Catalyst shows that plenty of women are graduating with technical degrees – they just don’t want to work in the tech industry. Looking specifically at the gender divide in business roles within the tech industry, the nonprofit found that while 75% of MBA grads have a tech background, only 36% return to tech-intensive industries — like oil and gas or energy – after completing their MBA. Women MBAs are less likely than men to enter these industries to start, and they are more likely to leave tech-intensive industries quickly. “We found that no matter the job, these companies are a particular difficult place for women to work in,” said Catalyst’s research director and the study’s author Anna Beninger. Read more at

Thus, there is indeed a great need to be proactive in addressing this issue, and based on the Catalyst report, these are their recommendations on how companies can reverse these trends by attracting and retaining top female talent in business roles and becoming employers of choice for women:
  • Make sure men and women with equivalent credentials start out at equal levels, and a re paid equally and at a competitive rate with others in the industry.
  • Engage and empower senior male executives to sponsor up-and-coming women.
  • Make performance standards crystal clear.




No comments: