Women in Tech Reloaded

I may be the only outspoken male advocate of women in tech that I know of, at least up here in Canada. This distinction involves me being passionate about how millennial women are doing things differently and the special challenges they have to face in the workplace, in terms of life-work balance and to excel as minorities in STEM fields. While I'm an older millennial and a male, I look up to people like: 

• Isis Anchalee, who pioneered the #ILookLikeAnEngineer movement last August. 
• Tracy Chou, a really interesting voice for Asian women in Tech and maybe the best influencer on social media for this cause. Her inside knowledge of millennial networks like Pinterest & Quora, makes her the ideal advocate. 

It's not hard to find articles and debate on diversity in technology online:

• LinkedIn Pulse articles. 
• Quora Women in Technology. 
• Medium Women in Tech. 

However, there can never be enough articles and attention drawn to something so innate and representative of inequality in our society. These value shifts and trends need to change at the top, in Silicon valley, in Venture Capital and truthfully, in the hearts of men everywhere. 

It's not enough to have role models like Forbes list of the top 30 women under 30. Millennial women need to look up to a new breed of female CEO. Like Edgar's CEO, Laura Roeder. The new breed of CEO has an all-star presence online and is a superior communicator, PR, visionary not just internally but digitally. Here's her take on women in technology, that she posted on her Medium. 

The State of Women in Technology 

Technology still represents a vastly under-represented sector for women: 

• Overall it's 30% (which you might say is not so bad?)
• In Technology: It's only half that, at 15.6%

Shift of Millennial Women

To illustrate how millennial women are becoming leaders of startups, check this out: 

• So what we are seeing is a general up-swing of women in Tech, among younger Millennials. 

New technology companies therefore have the opportunity to do diversity of their culture right. This has broad implications not just for gender quality but diversity as a whole. 

Churn of Top Female Talent 

According to research around 30 percent of women who quit their job at an existing tech company do so because they feel they aren’t being promoted to high enough positions and aren’t being paid enough for the hours they commit. That's a lot of employe disengagement happening due to lack of equality and poor company culture management.  Some 192 women (27%) cited discomfort working in these companies where the number of women are lower than the average. 

• So while 30% of women are employed in Tech Companies 
• At least 30% of them don't feel they actually fit or are comfortable in such male dominant environments! 

It's not Just a Tech issues, It's a VC Issue

Great ideas don't just materialize, they actually require financial backing. What if all of the board members and VC are male? How do you imagine that part of the system influences tech startups that are female led?

Why do Women Leave?

This ironically, is not just about women, these issues are prototypical Millennial value issues: 

• Companies don't often have the "flex" culture that take the interests of their female employees to heart. 

Which Companies Stand Out?

• Pinterest, Ebay and Tumblr are good examples of companies where women appear to have a more equal footing. 

Sexism for female coders was well documented at the start of 2016. Female software devs hover at around 12% by all accounts. Even though according to GitHub data, female coders are superior at their job.  Researchers found that code written by women was approved at a higher rate (78.6%) than code written by men (74.6%).

For India, a country that will be dominated by millennials, I am particularly interested to see how women will participate in technology and the startup golden age will begin there in 2016. 

Today I also created a Quora question which is an off-shoot of this topic which you may find of interest. 

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