Tech Needs More Women

Mar 18 by JD Rucker | 23 comments

There, I said it. The tech industry needs more women to get in and make things right again. It’s way too male dominated and it doesn’t have to be.

Over half of the professionals in the United States are women. They account for nearly 50% more college degrees than men. With this kind of knowledge, how is it right that less than 20% of the working computer hardware engineers are men? Answer: it isn’t.

This graphic by our friends at SocialCast lays the foundation for why the tech world needs more women. Pay attention – we should expect to see this male-dominated industry fall to the females soon enough.

WRITTEN BY JD RUCKER

JD is President of Hasai, Inc, a Social Media Firm, Director of New Media for TK Carsites, an Automotive SEO firm, and Editor at Soshable, a Social Media Marketing Blog.

COMMENTS
  • Anonymous

    Wow tjhat looks like it might just actually work. Wow.

  • Lincoln

    “There, you said it”. What you didn’t say is how to attract more women into the technology field, thus making your statement worthless. Nice infographic, but doesn’t have anything to do with that statement.

  • Blake Steel

    As a programmer, I’m always trying to teach programming to women, but they don’t have the patience for it. Why this is, I really don’t know. I’m really good at teaching programming. Maybe there’s something I’m missing that I could be doing to make it more appealing to them. What is interesting to note about the women depicted at the end of this article is that they founded technology companies, but in many cases weren’t involved in the development of that technology directly. Women seem to prefer business over technical work from what I can tell, perhaps they have stronger social skills than men that benefits them more in business. In any case, there aren’t less women in tech for lack of a good honest attempt on my part. It might also be worth noting that men are getting less into tech these days as well themselves. My cousins, nephews and nieces want to be car mechanics, mathematicians, vets, doctors, etc. And, they all despise computers and see them as nothing but a chore. I expected them to pick them up quickly, but they haven’t. And, when I offer any assistance, they turn it away. They’re afraid I might break the computer, and seem to be afraid of technology beyond simply cell phones and game consoles, versus embracing it. This particular outlook doesn’t seem to be gender biased.

  • http://www.facebook.com/kirwandavid David Kirwan

    “With this kind of knowledge, how is it right that less than 20% of the working computer hardware engineers are men? Answer: it isn’t.”

    huh?

  • http://twitter.com/donna_crawford Donna Crawford

    The question is, how many schools have tech/IT/programming classes that would appeal to young girls in order to gain their interest an a young age?

    The classes that are available are usually rather late in your options, often at college level, and give the impression of working in the industry as being very isolated, working away on your own for hours at a time (also reflected in the media image), rather than the possibility of co-operative group work.

    As a software engineer I believe programming could be made more fun for young women if it was more common and if teaching strategies were adapted to the more social way in which women can work collaboratively. Coding is modular, therefore it is actually quite perfect for women.

  • Djmarqueemark

    “…how is it right that less than 20% of the working computer hardware engineers are men?”
    This type of disparity stems from two primary contributors (and no neither of them has anything to do with discrimination or sexism).

    First, far fewer women choose to pursue technical careers to begin with. The graphic points out that 3 women receive a college degree for every two men, but the overwhelming majority of these degrees received by women are in non-technical, non-science fields of study.Additionally, many tech and engineering jobs require very high levels of intelligence to succeed. We’re talking IQ scores of 140+ (I know IQ isn’t a perfect measure of intelligence but it’s good enough for the purpose of this argument). Now while the average female IQ score is about 1.5 points higher than the average male score, males have a much larger standard deviation from the average. This means that despite the lower average intelligence, the number of men with the high intelligence required for technical jobs is simply larger than the number of women with this same level of intelligence. These are statistical facts that anyone can easily confirm.

    These two factors in combination easily account for about 95% of such large disparity in the mix of men and women in the technical workforce, and until either of these changes (which they won’t) the tech sector will continue to be male dominant.

  • Vonskippy

    What a crock of sh*t. That’s as dumb as saying professional basketball needs more short people. Women have had (and still do) plenty of opportunity in tech. They CHOOSE not to. Tech is a demanding, running on internet time career, and there’s no such thing as a “time out” to take little jimmy to the dentist or several weeks off to have a baby. It’s not the men’s fault that women choose family over career.

  • Beans1006

    Under Notable Female, you forgot : Sandra Lerner, co-founder of Cisco Systems.

  • Asd

    Um, who cares? Male, female, you’re human! Shutup!

  • http://www.facebook.com/Rustygreer Rusty Greer

    to this article, i say: Olivia Munn, LaLa from TikiBarTV, Veronica Belmont, Natali Morris (previously DelConte), Molly Wood, Sarah Lane, Leah Culver, Neha Tiwari, Annie Gaus, Elieen Rivera, Stephanie Chu, Jackie Talbot, Calli Lewis all the girls from CNET, all the girls from Revision3, all the girls from G4 and countless others!

    • oh look a neckbeard

      Olivia Munn? Are you serious right now?

      And to “all the girls from G4″ I say… cleavage, legs, ass, endless levels of sexual exploitation because G4 is marketed to MEN in the tech industry, just like most of the other crap. Male gaze. Look it up.

  • http://alltopstartups.com Thomas Oppong

    These 30 women have made maximum impact in the startup scene, they founded their own web startups. check them out here: http://t.co/GuIKtdZ

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Tim-Smith/100002116432891 Tim Smith

    I think you are off on this one. you sound like Data from star trek. men and women are different. WOMEN – IF YOU ARE NOT ATTRACTED TO COMPUTERS FROM THE INSIDE DON’T LISTEN TO PEOPLE WHO TRY TO SELL YOU ON WHAT YOU NEED TO BE DOING WITH YOUR LIFE. DO WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART.

  • baat

    Thank you for this nice infographic. Just a small correction – The “Female vs. Male Startup Founders” study was done by Kauffman and NCWIT (Naitonal Center for Women & IT) and not as noted above.
    Thanks!

  • Jajajaj

    IT needs more sluts that dig nerds

  • vrg

    I think the reasoining of this article is completely illogical. There is not a secret code to keep women out of the tech industry. The actual reason is that there are simply not enough women in that career field. I have recently graduated from college and I remember most of tech programs had women/male ratios of 3:10 or less.

    The feminist movement has brought companies to try to balance their workforce, lowering their standards and hiring and promoting less qualified women which is the true definition of sexism and is completely unfair.

    How about hiring a person based on is qualifications rather than on his gender? I believe that is the real meaning of social equality.

  • http://www.callthatgirl.biz Lisa Hendrickson

    Well I for one have to agree with this article. Some will say I am biased, since I am a female small business computer repair owner. But I would really like to see more women getting involved in this sector. Women have a real opportunity to shine here.

  • Anonymous

    But women will do the same job for less pay, so why are any men hired at all? Hmm… are dollars sexist, and so more attracted to companies that hire men for the tech jobs?

  • RJ

    Do the same thing with nursing and you’ll see that there is a larger disparity in that field. It’s important to note that both genders have their “domination” in certain fields.

  • http://www.kymalabs.com elblanco

    Wanted to add KyMaLabs ( http://www.kymalabs.com ) to the list of startups owned by a woman (who also happens to be the principle engineer).

  • http://www.jobsfor10.com/ Jobs for 10

    How about we try and hire people who are good at their jobs, instead of trying to balance the sex ratio for no actual reason?

    • Max Powers

      Just what I thought. At my college, I am seeing ratio’s of 1:12 [woman/men] (roughly) in computer and electronics (and/or science) degrees. So why is it that my government demanded that at least 1/3 of the people fulfilling executive and management positions is female within the next 5 years.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_N6BJ56PKHQMYMIH3LYCOQC233I Sidd

    But why? What’s the point?