Will It Ever Change?
by Miki Saxon
Google is the first tech company to publically share its gender/ethnic breakdown and it’s as bad as expected.
BI, Google and the rest of the tech industry love to blame the lack of gender/ethnic diversity on the lack of available candidates.
Although there is a noticeable rise in “bro culture” when it comes to the tech industry, some of the blame lands on who is actually applying for the jobs. Around 30,000 students took the AP computer science exam, and only around 20% were female, according to the analysis, 3% were black, and just 8% were Hispanic, for example.
On the surface, the dearth qualified black candidates is a plausible explanation, until you consider that nearly double the number of black CS/engineering graduates are unemployed.
In fact, the center’s study found that even black students who majored in high-demand fields such as engineering fare only slightly better than those who spent their college years earning liberal arts degrees. Between 2010 and 2012, 10 percent of black college graduates with engineering degrees and 11 percent of those with math and computer-related degrees were unemployed, compared with 6 percent of all engineering graduates and 7 percent of all those who focused their studies on math and computers.
As for the lack of women programmers, girls are intimidated out of STEM classes and the horror stories of women in tech are enough to discourage many women from wanting to work in the industry—especially in startups and younger companies with their frat boy cultures.
We’ve been harassed on mailing lists and called “wh***/c***’ without any action being taken against aggressors. We get asked about our relationships at interviews, and we each have tales of being groped at public events. We’ve been put in the uncomfortable situation of having men attempt to turn business meetings into dates.
Over the years the pundits claimed that attitudes would change as older generations aged out and bosses were replaced by younger ones that grew up in a more diverse, tolerant and inclusive world.
I started hearing that 50 years ago and am still waiting.
But I’m not holding my breath; there is a quantum difference between political correctness and authenticity.
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The June Leadership Development Carnival is hosted by Tanmay Vora of QAspire. I hope you enjoy the very excellent posts included there.
Image credit: Fast Company
