The big question is: what does it take to change a workplace? First, commitment to the goal. Second, a willingness to do a deep self-assessment. And third, the implementation and ongoing reevaluation of strategies to make sure they work. Analyst and investor Esther Dyson also points to a difference between the diversity strategies of startups, which often are formed through friend-circles and of companies that are scaling much larger. “Candidly, startups are just struggling to stay alive, so diversity is rarely on their agenda, and they don’t have enough people to be genuinely diverse. The small ones especially just tend to cofound with or hire their dormmates. Once they’ve reached some size, ideally they start to think about building a team of the best rather than of the familiar.” Corporations who have gone to scale have implemented a variety of programs, including the Hacker School/Etsy partnership; Cisco’s Inclusive Advocacy Program, a nine-month mentorship with an executive that helps build employee connections; and the Yahoo! Women In Tech Employee Resource Group, which includes travel funding for conferences and partnering with organizations, such as the Anita Borg Institute for Women, that focus on women in tech.[1] Of course, the numbers of women vary widely in different parts of the technology sectors. Bright Labs released data about the percentage of men in each of the following jobs and found:
92.7 percent of network engineers are men; 92.6 percent of desktop support technicians; 91.6 percent of network administrators; 91.6 percent of network technicians; 91.5 percent of PC technicians; 90.8 percent of computer technicians; 90.4 percent of IT support; 89.7 percent of system administrators; 89.7 percent of systems administrators; 89.5 percent of senior software developers; 88.6 percent of application engineers; 79.8 percent of database administrators; 78.3 percent of software engineers; 78.1 percent of software developers; 77.8 percent of technical support specialists; 77.1 percent of programmers; 77.1 percent of web developers; 77.1 percent of senior software engineers; 76.7 percent of developers; 75 percent of senior programming analysts; 72.3 percent of systems analysts; 68.4 percent of help desk analysts; 67.8 percent of programming analysts; 66 percent of web designers; 66 percent of software test engineers; 65 percent of IT project managers; 63.7 percent of application developers; 53.8 percent of data analysts.[2]
In addition, a 2012 survey by McKinsey & Company titled “Unlocking the Full Potential of Women at Work” highlighted some of the broader issues facing women. In a survey of sixty companies, most of them Fortune 500 corporations, McKinsey found key levers that helped push a more gender-diverse workforce. Few companies utilized them all. The report states that researchers “found twelve companies among the sixty surveyed that met at least three of these standards”:
The report continues, “Almost every participant achieved one of these metrics—in fact, fifty-two companies did. About half of the participants achieved two—twenty-seven companies did. We raised the bar to three of the four conditions, and twelve companies rose to the top. They outperformed the pool’s average by a significant margin, especially at the highest levels of leadership. Small improvements along the pipeline really do make the difference.”[3]
[1] “Companies Leading the Way: Putting the Principles into Practice,” United Nations Global Compact, March 2012.
[2] Jacob Bollinger, “The Tech Gender Gap: Title Analysis,” Bright.com, May 24, 2013.
[3] Joanna Barsh and Lareina Yee, “Unlocking the Full Potential of Women at Work,” McKinsey & Company, 2012.