Women in Tech:What's the Real Story?
has become a widely accepted number used to describe the number of women in the tech industry…
…but at companies like
of employees are female but only
In Europe, less than 7% of tech positions are filled by women.
But wait, 28% of CS Master’s degrees go to women, so shouldn’t the number in technical roles be closer to that?
Maybe, but we have a couple of problems:
Historically, just 7% of founders accepted to seed accelerators like YC are women.
And by the mid-career mark, 72% of men stay in tech,
compared to only 44% of women.
Also, only 6% of user profiles on GitHub are female, and the numbers only get worse when you look at increasing user activity:
Lack of diversity in leadership like this hurts everyone. When leadership is homogeneous,
Why does it matter?
Among individuals holding professional jobs in the U.S.,
Among individuals attaining a Bachelor’s degree in the U.S.,
Gender balance makes for better teams. It’s been proven time and time again that diversity unlocks innovation and drives market growth.
Shifting from an all-male or all-female office to one split evenly along gender lines can increase revenue by 41%.
Additionally, businesses with a woman on the executive team receive valuations that are 64% larger in the first round and 49% larger in the last round.
Luckily, people are starting to speak up.
So how can we close the gender gap?
No one can determine exactly why the number of women in tech is so low, but there are many ways we can work to improve gender diversity and build better teams. Here are a few:
About Toptal STEM Scholarships for Women
The Toptal STEM Scholarships for Women program is open internationally to aspiring female computer scientists, software engineers, and developers. We’ll be announcing 12 winners over the course of the next year. If you win, you’ll receive $5,000 in cash to use towards your educational and professional development goals, as well as one year of weekly one-on-one mentoring with a Toptal senior developer.