Resetting Tech Culture: Doubling the Number of Women in Tech by 2030

When I started Girls Who Code to close the gender gap in tech, I was naive. I thought what we were facing was only a pipeline problem, and we would close the gap if we just taught more girls how to code.

And so I set about teaching as many girls to code as I could. In eight years, we’ve taught 300,000 girls to code. 80,000 of those girls are college-aged, and majoring in Computer Science at 15X the national average. These girls are ready to enter the tech workforce, and they have all the qualifications we told them they needed to succeed.

And yet the gap persists. Today, women make up only 27% of the technical computing workforce. And half of the women who enter tech will leave the field by 35.

Why? Culture. Specifically, the culture within the tech workforce. 

This week, Girls Who Code released a research report in partnership with Accenture called, “Resetting Tech Culture.” We surveyed 2,700 college students, 500 senior human resource leaders, and nearly 2,000 employees working (or who previously worked) in a tech role.

They told us the same thing we’ve been hearing from our college-aged alumni. It’s not a pipeline problem, it’s a culture program. The most frequent reason cited for leaving tech was poor company culture. Women in tech don’t feel like they belong, they don’t feel supported, they don’t have role models, they’re made to feel like the job isn’t for “people like them.”

And things haven’t changed, in part, because of a disconnect between how leadership views culture, and how female employees view culture.

According to the research, 75% of senior human resource officers believe their company cultures make it easy for women to thrive in tech ---- only 50% of women do. SHROs are (at 45%) twice as likely as their women employees (at 21%) to say it’s “easy for women to thrive in tech.”

So there’s a culture problem, and a lack of understanding about the extent to which culture matters. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle. But it’s one that we have the power to change. 

We have the power to make tech more inclusive, and to drop the annual attrition rate of women in computer science by as much as 70%. In sum, that would bring us to 3 million women in tech by 2030. 

 We need to take the following 5 steps to make tech more inclusive: 1) encourage parental leave by both parents, 2) set and publish diversity goals for leadership teams, 3) provide women with targeted support and mentors, 4) reward employees for creativity and communicate the change-making and innovative nature of roles, and 5) schedule more inclusive networking events.

Paul Daugherty—Group Chief Executive at Accenture and longtime Girls Who Code Board Member—said it right: “During this time when many organizations are focusing on rebuilding because of COVID-19, they can turn this into an opportunity to emerge stronger from the crisis and create a more equitable world.” 

Together, we challenge business leaders to build inclusive cultures, retain women in tech, and make real progress on diversity and equity.

Read more in our report with Accenture here.