Where are the women in tech?

If you’ve ever walked through the office of a tech company in the Silicon Slopes area, you’ve probably seen industrial architecture, standing desks, and a fully stocked soda fridge. You’ve probably seen unconventional office perks like rock walls, longboards, or dogs. You may have seen a developer’s toes peeking out of flip flops or a sales rep that wears nothing but band tees. However, out of all these oddities that set many Silicon Slopes tech companies apart from the traditional business world, the oddest to me is the lack of female representation.

Being a working woman for the past 7 years in Silicon Slopes, I can’t help but wonder:

Where are all the women in tech?

The following thoughts outline my hypothesis.

Degree-less Ladies

It’s no secret that many women in this valley are encouraged to get married young. While everyone’s situation is different, many women start off single at a university, meet a nice young man, get married, and don’t end up going further than an associate’s degree. I’ve seen many of my friends quit school to start working so that their husband could finish his degree. Where does this leave these women? Typically, it’s in a lower paying job – often retail, clerical, or call center – where they have little or slow growth potential. Many women have good intentions to return to school, but life gets in the way, kids enter the picture, and it gets harder and harder to go back. It’s not impossible to get a job in the tech world without a degree – fortunately, I was able to do it. However, it does take some grit, time, determination, and a bit of luck to get into a well-paying tech job. In most cases, you will have to start from the bottom and work your way up.

There are alternatives to degrees – like self-guided certifications, coding courses, etc. A lot of these courses give discounts and scholarships to women, but that is usually because not many women sign up for these courses.

La Jobs vs. El Jobs

If you remember back to your eighth grade Spanish class, you’ll remember that some languages have male and female nouns. In the professional world, some job titles have also taken on a gender. In my early twenties, I was marketed to by dental hygiene schools, cosmetic schools, and nursing programs. These programs are compelling to women because of the decent pay and often flexible schedules that come in handy for family life later on. It wasn’t until I starting looking into coding schools and marketing programs that I started receiving ads for tech-centric education (yay retargeting!). It’s interesting that these tech programs don’t focus more on targeting women because most tech jobs can be done remotely and outside of the regular 9-5. You’d also think tech would be a gender-neutral industry since it doesn’t require any specific physical requirements. However, most young girls and women aren’t encouraged to pursue a career in tech and aren’t really marketed to heavily enough to compete with other women-populated industries. There have been huge strides for programs and companies to recruit more women, but I believe that interest in tech needs to start at a younger age.

Stay-at-Home Mothers

There has been an idea passed down from generations before us that a woman needs to be home with her children. When I told my father I was going back to work after having my daughter, he proceeded to tell me all the reasons I shouldn’t – even though financially it didn’t make sense for me to quit. I think there’s a lot of pressure for mothers to stay home with their children, even if they would rather work. There’s a lot of mom-shaming – on both sides – that make it hard for a woman with children to go back to work. It’s also quite a hassle – pumping at work, finding care options, having to leave work for doctor’s appointments, time off when your kid gets sick, etc. Because of social media, there are also a lot of opportunities for moms to make a little bit of money on the side via blogs, side businesses, and MLM’s, so more women are able to justify staying home.

Another alternative to a mother staying home would be for her husband to take on the role of caregiver, but there’s still a silent stigma towards stay at home dads that can make this difficult. If both parents work, the child may need to go to daycare. In Utah county, the cost of daycare is the same as the cost of a one bedroom apartment per month, and you may feel guilty for leaving your child with someone else. As a woman with kids, the weight of working gets heavier and heavier over time which causes many women to take part-time jobs or drop out of the workforce altogether.

Equal Opportunities

Let me preface this by saying that most companies do a great job of promoting culture, equality, and opportunity in the workplace. In my experience working in tech, I have sometimes felt “left out” as a woman. The majority of my coworkers and managers have been men. I’ve seen male colleagues who do a fraction of the work I do be considered for promotion. I have found that in order to compete, I have to speak up – not just work hard. I’ve had to call managers out for favoritism towards male coworkers and pull numbers to make my case.

In a time where I was the only woman in my department, I would hear my coworkers make jokes followed by “We can’t say that in front of a lady!” They may have been trying to be polite, but they were also isolating me into a different group rather than treating me as an equal. Even after I would speak up to let them know I didn’t mind, they would still segregate me.

I love working with men, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t frustrating sometimes. It can be tough to find my place in a male-dominated company.

Not Interested

I believe that one of the main reasons for a lack of women in tech stems from a general lack of interest. In my own experience, no one encouraged me to learn tech skills or to go after a career in tech. If I had been encouraged to explore these types of jobs, I would’ve taken a much different path when I went to college. I started college pursuing a degree in broadcast journalism. I was encouraged to be a news anchor or a journalist. My brothers, however, went to a technology-focused magnet school where only 38% of the student population was female. Their career paths: Bioinformatics, information systems, and software development. I wasn’t interested in tech while I was younger, but I truly believe it was because I was not encouraged to be. I am so impressed by the number of tech programs that are encouraging young girls to learn these skills (ie. Built by girls, Grace Hopper, etc.) and I wish that these programs had existed when I was younger. For years, girls have been steered towards female-dominated careers – nursing, hair school, dental hygiene, elementary education, etc. While these careers are great options and we need intelligent people in these industries, my hope is within the next year, we see more diversity in tech.

So how can we get more women in tech?

• Encourage girls to explore tech during primary education
• Market tech programs to women enough to compete with other female-dominated programs
• Have a true understanding of equality in the workplace
• Normalize stay-at-home dads
• Provide a good work/life balance so that women can spend time with their families

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what affects the number of women in tech and how we can encourage more women to work in tech!