Why are millennial women leaving their TECH jobs and how to retain them

The female millennials are women born between 1980 and 1995 and they are representing the new era of female talent who can shape the future world. Being one of the fastest-changing industries, TECH is an attractive field for many millennials, whom witnessed a rapid technological revolution in past few decades.?

?Why millennial women join TECH in the first place?

This year's survey reports, “The female millennial - A new era of talent” (PwC, 2021) and “Global 2021 Millennial and Gen Z Survey” (Deloitte, 2021), has shown that millennial women mainly join TECH to make the world a better place. Millennial women are keen to use?technology?to improve our?world?and deal with important global issues, such as environment, social equality, and discrimination. From my own experience of coaching and training millennials who work in TECH, the second most common reason for millennial women to join TECH is to change their lives for the better one.?

Why millennial women are then leaving their TECH jobs?

Millennial women love working in TECH, but they hate office politics and masculine unwritten rules they have to deal with.?

Many TECH companies around the world were historically founded by men and most influential positions in business and research are still held by men. The rituals, rules, and customs to which many people in business adhere, were long time in the past adopted to fit the preferred working style of their founders - a masculine style. Quite often, these rules are both unwritten and unspoken. There are big differences when it comes to masculine and feminine working styles, both due to our nature and the way we were nurtured. All people have a mix of both masculine and feminine working styles, but most women tend to preferably use feminine style, which in masculine working environments can be considered as weak.?

Since masculine unwritten rules are deeply embedded in the present business world, the race for top positions is highly favourable in the benefit of men, despite many initiatives for having more women at the top. In fact, the PwC report shows that 71% of millennial women feel that while organisations talk about diversity, opportunities are not really equal for all. Since the opportunities for career progression are the most attractive employer trait for female millennials, being constantly overpassed for a promotion by their male colleagues and not being able to progress at the same pace, women leave TECH.?

In the Deloitte survey, at least one in five millennial women said that they feel personally discriminated against “all of the time” or frequently because of an aspect of their backgrounds.??

How to retain millennial women?

Report from LeanIn.Org in partnership with McKinsey "Women in the Workplace 2020" has shown that compared to entry-level men, women at the same level are less likely to have managers showcase their work and help them navigate organisational politics. We need to change such a trend and not only help millennial women to navigate organisational politics in TECH, but also to make the rules of making a career in TECH organisations more transparent and truly equal for everyone.?

Further, employers can support millennial women by offering the flexibility and learning opportunities they need, more long-term contracts, and pursuing initiatives that alleviate work-related pains and biases unique to women in the workplace.?

Millennial women are seeking for inclusive leaders, who combine traditionally considered feminine and masculine behavioural styles.?They don’t want to be discriminated because of their caring and daring way of leading, but to be free to combine both feminine and masculine working styles in their personal leadership path and make the world a better place for everyone.?

Mira Vasic is a keynote speaker, career coach and trainer on topics of unconscious gender bias and female leadership.?She is also a Partner at 'In Touch Female Leadership & Career Academy',?www.intouchwrm.nl/en

You can register for her upcoming Female Leadership program here:

https://www.intouchwrm.nl/en/career-development-program-women/?