Despite being a growing industry, there is an underrepresentation of women in technology fields. According to Trustradius, 71 percent of women have worked in a tech company with a strong “bro culture,” and 78 percent of women say companies should promote more women into leadership roles.
The reason why we need women in tech is that diversity creates a more beneficial product for a significantly wider audience—a better product results in higher revenue and year-over-year company growth.
Gender diversity reduces the gender bias that is currently prevalent in male-dominated industries. Diversity of ethnicities and gender also leads to innovation, increased workplace safety, and less employee turnover.
The Importance of Why We Need Women in Technology
If nearly half of consumers are women, it should be common sense to have around half of the product manufacturing, engineering, and marketing done by women. Yet, this is not the case.
Statistics from Trustradius show that men outnumber 72 percent of women in business meetings by a 2:1 ratio. It also states that 26 percent of women reported being outnumbered by 5:1 or more.
The lack of women in technology jobs means that female consumers are being underrepresented. If women use technology frequently, why is the majority of technology being designed exclusively by men?
Not having a voice at the table, in other words, a gender gap, deters products that cater to female-only needs from having the same leg up in the market as male-only products. According to Fortune, only 2.2 percent of venture-capital funding in 2020 went toward women-led companies.
A Harvard Business Review discusses why we need women in tech and the overall workforce, stating that equal representation could raise the global GDP by three to six percent. That translates to between 2.5-5-trillion dollars of a boost to the global economy.
Increasing women’s role in technology firms has a domino effect on the growth of the global economy. It improves the quality of new applications to companies and changes how the tech industry moves into a more gender-equal future that caters to all consumers.
6 Reasons Why We Need Women In Tech Industry
Increased Business Revenue
An easy-to-grasp reason for why we need women in the technology jobs is the benefit they bring to the bottom line of a business. Women offer new ways of thinking that result in innovation and better problem-solving. This translates to improved customer satisfaction, creating loyal customers for your brand.
As women grow into leadership positions, it inspires young women in tech to apply to job positions with a realistic hope of climbing up the corporate ladder. A balanced workplace also cultivates better morale, safety, and workplace culture. All of these things lead to better employee performance and increased revenue.
Diversity & Innovation
Technology is advancing the world in which we live. We need computer engineers in every industry, from the medical field to city planning. This is why we need to make up for the lack of women in technology, science, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs.
We want technology to advance in a way that caters to all consumers, regardless of their gender and race. Computer science engineers designing innovative technologies need to represent the voice of the consumers. Representation can only happen if companies have diverse teams.
Women offer a different way of thinking than men. Considering a woman's viewpoint leads to innovative changes in industries where decisions about uni-sex or female products were once made solely by men.
An article by Stanford Medicine talks about the differences between men’s and women’s brains and cognitive functions. Women excel in tasks that test:
- Verbal ability
- Reading comprehension
- Writing ability
- Fine-motor coordination and perceptual speed
- Accessing information from their long-term memory
This does not mean that men do not have their own set of skills. The study showed that men are better at juggling items in working memory and have superior visuospatial skills. Hiring more women in tech diversifies the strengths of a company's employees. It gives employers more talent to work with and further innovate within their field.
If your goal is to provide a great product and grow your revenue, then your products should be designed for all types of consumers. Since half of consumer spending is female, creating products with females in mind is innovative.
How Diversity & Innovation Helps Businesses
Forbes said it best when they stated that the underrepresentation of women in the tech industry “will become a fundamental economic challenge for the U.S. economy if unaddressed.”
Diversity and innovation help businesses make the user experience better for all consumers. Therefore diversity and innovation in the tech industry, and any industry, results in profit and company growth.
Better Problem-Solving for Better Results
Being adept at problem-solving is not gender-specific. Both women and men find solutions to problems regardless of their gender. However, better problem-solving requires out-of-the-box thinking and fresh ideas. Gender equality and diversity in the workforce would be a simple way to bring new ideas to the table.
According to The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), as of 2021, only 19 percent of women have jobs as computer software engineers and 20 percent as computer programmers. This means that as of 2021, 80 percent of problem-solving in the tech industry was done by men.
Women working in technology often face gender bias and find their ideas and voices silenced amongst their many male counterparts. According to Trustradius, 78 percent of women in tech believe that they have to work harder than their male coworkers to make up for the numbers working against them and prove their worth.
This is why the tech world needs more women in the workforce. We are underutilizing powerful brain capacities and not hearing ideas that have the potential to produce better results.
How Better Problem-Solving Helps Businesses
Just like problem-solving is not gender-specific, facing problems while using social media and other online platforms is also not gender-specific.
Having gender diversity in the tech industry brings about more opportunities for problem-solving solutions that can reduce the amounts of problems faced and help businesses keep their clients happy with fast and reliable customer service.
More Meaningful Mentors & Talent
According to a Research Note from The ILO Bureau for Employers’ Activities (ACT/EMP), “unconscious gender bias remains a significant barrier to women’s career advancement.”
The research found that women perceived themselves as less likely to grow into leadership positions due to “stereotypes against women and inherent gender bias in recruitment and promotion.”
STEM jobs are male-dominated, and unconscious gender bias instills the notion that management roles are meant for men. The way things are now, most upper management in tech industries are men.
Since unconscious gender bias plays a large role in the male hiring manager, men are selecting other men from job pools, assuming that upper management jobs and tech industry jobs generally cater to men.
A catch 22 of the tech industry for women is that qualified female candidates look at how few women in leadership roles a company has and figure that there is little room for growth in the company.
Qualified candidates are not applying to certain male-dominated jobs for fear that they cannot climb the corporate ladder. As the diversity of the mentors, role models, and leaders of a company adjust, the talent pool expands.
When women have more of a voice at the table, in both company hierarchy and an equal number of seats, this affects future generations of the tech industry.
Not only encouraging young women to continue to learn and innovate but also to create technology for women with a better understanding of what female user-intents are. Read more about how to succeed as a woman in tech.
Meaningful mentors bring the talent pool looking to study under people they hope to be one day. A better talent pool means better innovation and a better product. A better product means you can charge more for your services and products.
How Better Role Models Helps Businesses
Having more women in leadership roles encourages other women to work for your company. Further, it encourages women to study technology, bringing forth a new generation of problem-solvers that understand a side of the market that isn’t being fully or well-targeted.
If you have been feeling like the talent pool of new hires is thinning, then consider moving more women into powerful positions and see how the landscape of your company attracts new talent never utilized before.
According to Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of Youtube, “since I joined in 2014, we’ve gone from a company that is 24 percent women to one that’s nearly 30 percent.”
Increased Workplace Safety
One of the reasons why the tech industry needs more women is increased safety. Now that you’ve seen the research on how women’s and men’s brains differ, you can see how women’s ideas bring a new perspective to the table. Hackers are not only men, so having women on your security teams adds an extra layer of armor to your arsenal.
Not only web security, but no company does well in the public eye if sexual harassment lawsuits are floating around on their record. Whether or not the allegations end up holding up in court, it’s costly for a company to go through legal proceedings.
On the other end, women’s safety in the workplace needs to be a priority in all workspaces. You want your company to feel safe for all employees regarding gender, age, or race.
According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, women working in male-dominated environments or environments with traditionally male tasks are more vulnerable to sexual harassment and assault. It also documented “high levels of harassment of women faculty and staff in academia in science, engineering, and medicine.”
Changing male-dominated environments to gender-balanced work teams paves the way for open discussions, better HR practices, and less gender bias in the workplace. This makes a safer and more enjoyable work environment for all.
How Workplace Safety Helps Businesses
High turnaround rates are detrimental to companies both financially and for company morale.
The recruiting process can be grueling, especially for women, so having a safe work environment motivates workers to stick with your company, and invest their time, energy, and passion into working for and growing your business.
Improved Workplace Culture
Office morale is more than just bringing in a cake on someone’s birthday. It’s about having people feel appreciated, heard, and respected even if they are not the vice president or in a position of decision making.
Good mentorship, ideas shared by equal voices, and safe work environments make employees want to stay with the company. For business owners with a high turnaround rate, training new employees is costly and time-consuming. Yet, the training of female employees is cost-beneficial in the long run.
Hiring more females in technology and other industries where there are unequal numbers of male-to-female staff improves workplace culture. It increases safety, allows companies to rethink policies that are more geared towards one gender, and it adds diversity to the personalities of team members.
How Workplace Culture Helps Businesses
According to research gathered by Techjury, women are leaving jobs in the tech industry 45 percent higher than their male counterparts. Women have reported that common reasons for quitting include “weak management support and work-life balance.”
Similarly to workplace safety, a healthy, diverse, and gender-balanced workplace culture makes employees feel seen, heard, and respected. Employees that feel good about the work they do and how management is responding to their efforts have less motivation to look elsewhere for a new job.
Final Points on Why We Need Females in Technology
The reason we need females in tech is that the world needs to be designed by and for the people who are using it, and currently, this is not the case.
Women add innovation to companies by providing new insights and problem-solving solutions to male-dominated industries. By including more women in leadership roles, companies see growth as qualified female talent seeks out role models they aspire to be like.
Balanced workplaces have better workplace safety and office culture, leaving employees of all genders more satisfied with their job satisfaction and increasing the average number of years employees work for your company.
Humans are multifaceted and are more than just what is listed on their resumes. People have passions that overflow into the workplace and lead to ground-breaking ideas that reach millions of multifaceted consumers.
However, for an idea to become an innovation, it needs to be brought up and heard in the first place. That is why we need more women in tech.
If you’re ready to get started with organizing your hackathon, contact us. Our team is ready to help you!
