The US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the official source of American employment trend data reports that in the last year 60 percent of the positions in tech went to women. Traditionally - to the extent that anything in tech can be considered traditional - over 70 percent of tech jobs went to men.
What's up with this?
It's not like there's a shortage of talent: heck, even Ivy League business schools are reporting that their graduates are forsaking investment banking and consulting for tech. Is the industry famously and proudly known for its lack of social graces suddenly growing a conscience? Ehh, probably wouldnt want to bet on that happening.
There seem to be several trends combining to create this development: the immigration of skilled women software engineers from South Asia and Eastern Europe, a dawning awareness that by discriminating against women, however inadvertently ( or not) tech firms are contributing to a resource allocation imbalance that works against them and that women are becoming more assertive about seeking such jobs. As the following article explains, the positions going to women cover a range of tasks, not just sales or administration.
Whatever the reason, the numbers are sufficiently robust that this appears to be a structural change and not merely a faddish one. Friday afternoon beer and foosball may never be the same. JL
John Pletz reports in Crain's Chicago Business:
More than half the new jobs recently created at computer-systems design and services companies have gone to women, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data analyzed by Dice.com, an online jobs site.
Nationally, women got more of the new jobs than men in July, August and September at such companies, according to BLS data, with 109,500 women hired vs. 88,100 men.
It marks the first time in a decade that women outnumbered men in new hires at tech companies in three consecutive months. However, the data isn't definitive because BLS statistics measure all jobs at a particular type of company, not specific tech jobs across all companies.
While there is plenty of noise around the signal here, recruiters and technologists say the numbers reflect the general trend.
“I definitely have seen an uptick in women, not only entering the job market but also being hired,” said Rona Borre, president of Instant Technology LLC, a Chicago-based staffing company.
She said more women are taking jobs in product and project management, but “it is still very much male-dominated with development.”
Blagica Bottigliero, founder of Zlato Digital, a digital-marketing firm in Chicago, said two trends are converging to help improve the situation. “There is a combined effort of companies looking for women but also women seeking out those career opportunities more than before.”
She points to a recent women-only hackathon for coders, Girls Do Hack at Adler Planetarium, which drew 45 participants.
Of first-year students in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the number of women has doubled in the past three years to 20 percent. And women made up 10 percent of incoming computer engineering students this year, up from 5 percent in 2010.
Matt Maloney, CEO of Chicago-based GrubHub Seamless Inc., sees signs of progress but said there still is a long way to go. Two women are among his six direct reports on the senior management team of the online food-ordering company, he told an Economic Club of Chicago audience yesterday.
“The challenge is finding women in tech,” said Mr. Maloney, who has a master's in computer science from the University of Chicago, where he's on an alumni advisory board. “When we find a resume from a woman (for a technical role), we get really excited.”
Michael Fertik, founder of Reputation.com, based in Redwood City, Calif., said he also has seen a change in the past decade, noting that women make up most of the quality-assurance jobs, a stepping stone to software engineering and development.
“I'm bullish on tech women in Silicon Valley,” he told the same Economic Club audience. “We're well on our way to improving the gender balance in Silicon Valley: That ship has sailed.”
But he said immigration is the reason for the increase in women taking technical jobs. “It's because of immigrants from South Asia and Eastern Europe. Engineers are still overwhelmingly first-generation immigrants. Women will be a major influence in tech. But it's not because children of families in the United States are going to college and studying engineering and moving to Silicon Valley.”
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