A new report by Deloitte says that women in tech continue to chip away at the glass ceiling with double-digit gains made in leadership roles.
“There’s some good news for women in the traditionally male-dominated technology field: They are shrinking the gender gap,” writes Esther Shein in TechRepublic.
The research released by Deloitte April 2022, predicts that one in four tech leadership roles will be held by women this year.
“Large technology companies are steadily increasing their female workforce representation – with the fastest growth happening in leadership roles,” writes Deloitte’s Gillian Crossan, Susanne Hupfer, and Sayantani Mazumder.
Deloitte Global forecasts that large global technology firms, on average, will reach about 33 percent overall female representation in their workforces in 2022, up slightly more than 2 percentage points from 2019.
Although the share of women in technical and leadership roles tends to lag the overall proportion of women by 8 to 10 percentage points, they are increasing the most rapidly.
“Women in tech are gaining ground as the technology industry—or at least its largest players—makes slow but steady progress in shrinking its gender gap, and women in tech leadership are making the fastest advances,” writes the Deloitte trio.
The research numbers took at look at 2019 actual workforce participation vs. 2022 projected for women in tech and found:
Deloitte researchers argue that diversity in the tech workforce and leadership is good for business.
“With a growing body of research suggesting that diverse teams perform better and are more innovative, many technology, media, & telecommunications (TMT) industry leaders are recognizing that diverse workforces and executive teams are good for business,” says the Deloitte team.
Board diversity legislation in states with a high number of TMT companies, such as California and Washington, has helped spur women participation on TMT boards with 25 percent of board seats now held by women, up from just 17.4 percent in 2018.
Only the consumer industry has a higher proportion of board seats allocated to women than TMT.
“Many large tech companies have made public commitments to improving gender diversity, including increasing women in their technical and leadership ranks. These companies are also expanding their efforts to ensure greater workforce and leadership diversity by race, age, and other social factors,” said Deloitte.
Organizations such as Women in Mission Critical Operations (WiMCO) have raised awareness and stimulated industry dialogue in recent years around gender equality.
Infrastructure Masons, which has a commitment to ensure that 50 percent of all their scholarship dollars are awarded to women, found in a 2021 diversity and inclusion report that:
Big name tech companies are looking to change these numbers:
“It makes sense that tech companies are moving the needle on women in leadership faster than women in other roles: It helps send a signal to prospective employees, it helps shift corporate culture, and it may help tech companies increase retention of women in their overall and technical workforces,” said Deloitte.
Hiring is just the first step as Carrie Goetz pointed out in Mission Critical magazine that the quit rate for women in tech is over 2x that of their male counterparts.
The Deloitte report said that tech companies still have work to do to shatter the glass ceiling for women.
“Improving gender and other diversity should inspire the same kind of leadership commitment and strategic focus that underlies other critical organizational initiatives,” said Deloitte.
Recommendations that tech companies can do today:
“It takes a forward-thinking company to have the drive and ambition to balance the scales,” wrote Goetz.
Oona King, Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Snap and Chair of the Catalyze Tech report: ““Collective action is key, and needs everyone in business — from CEOs to interns — to be inspired to act.”