Women in Tech

Women basically founded the field of computer science, yet today they are vastly underrepresented in it. What happened?

In the last few decades women have made great progress in general when it comes to rights and freedoms and even in the greater job market as a whole. This has been an overwhelmingly positive thing that has helped to grow our economy overall. But there are still many sectors where women struggle to get ahead, and tech is a major one — though women make up more than half of the workforce in the United States, they account for only about 20% of tech workers.

Even as early as elementary school girls are losing interest in pursuing tech jobs, and the ones who continue to pursue their tech aspirations find hostile environments that they just can’t work in. Emily Chang’s new book, Brotopia, documented things in Silicon Valley companies like sex parties, company lunches at strip clubs, broken or nonexistent safeguards against sexual harassment and assault, and more.

There are, however, many companies that are getting it right. Intuit focuses on recruiting and retaining female talent, while SalesForce did an intensive study and closed the gender pay gap.

Learn more about closing the gender gap in tech from this infographic!

Women in Tech was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.