Quantifying the Gender Gap in Technology

March 8, 2018 at 7:07 AM by Elena Sigacheva

pexels-photo-306534.jpgTech companies have been in hot water lately for their treatment of women, and industry thought leaders like Sheryl Sandberg, Emily Chang and others have weighed in on the tremendous gender disparity problems in Silicon Valley. But as so many of us call for equality on International Women’s Day, plenty of labor institutions will make statements and predictions about the gender gap in our U.S. workforce. But who really knows how big the gaps are and what it will take to fill them?

Today, our team is glad to release a report that quantifies where the tech industry really stands in terms of gender inequality by job title, region and seniority. Together with our data science team members, Chin Ling and Haroon Rasheed Paul Mohamed, Entelo examined our database of more than 450 million candidate profiles to see exactly what the numbers look like for women in tech roles across the U.S.

Gender Disparity Across the U.S.

When our team looked at the most popular technical roles including engineering, data science, product design and others across all industries, we find that only 18 percent of roles in tech are held by women. Surprisingly, this stat hardly fluctuates when we account for location. Examining the same data set across the West Coast, Midwest and East Coast, we find the proportion nearly identical in all three regions. Employers in more diverse locations who think the inequality in tech is a middle-America problem should think again, as the data clearly proves this is as much a problem in the Midwest as it is on the coasts.

 

Entelo WIT Report by region.png

 

As Seniority Rises, Equality Falls

Disappointingly, the data highlights the lack of women in tech executive roles, finding the more senior the position, the lower the proportion of women. Entry level and mid-level roles are consistent with the overall average, as women account for 19 percent of tech roles. At the senior level however, the percentage drops to 16 percent, and at the executive level drops by nearly half as only 10 percent of roles in tech are held by women. There are many theories as to why there are so few female executives in tech, and survey after survey reveals that women are twice as likely as men to quit tech jobs. If you are one of the many tech companies suffering from a lack of diversity at the top, examine everything from your hiring practices to company culture to see what needs improvement for diversity and inclusion.

 

Entelo WIT Report by seniority.jpg


Certain Tech Roles are Higher Risk

Beyond location and experience, our team also dove in to see how proportion of women in tech varies by function. When looking at engineering, data science, and product design roles specifically, we found that engineering had the lowest percentage of women while product design has the highest. As hiring managers, recruiters and company leaders think about how to recruit and retain women in tech roles, they should be mindful of which roles are at the highest risk.

 

Entelo WIT Report by job title.png

 

“Despite all of the discussions, calls to action, and programs being put forth to increase the number of women in tech, the numbers plainly indicate that we are not there yet,” said Yasmin Zarabi, VP of Corporate Partnerships and Business Development at Entelo. “The data science team at Entelo conducted this assessment because we believe that more information brings greater awareness, and awareness creates change. We encourage companies to take a close look at their makeup and hiring practices moving forward. There are recruiting tools out there to help companies ensure they have a rich and diverse candidate pool to pull from, though it’s the responsibility of individual organizations to utilize them.”

Entelo Diversity

As we celebrate women on International Women’s Day, I’m proud to distribute this report based on Entelo data, and work for an organization that works to improve diversity across all industries including tech. Through Entelo Diversity, our proprietary algorithm allows companies to search for candidates from underrepresented groups based on gender, race/ethnicity, and veteran status. Diversity information is presented with candidate’s matched skill-set and qualifications; and Entelo allows recruiters to review anonymized search results so that companies can objectively hire qualified and diverse candidates.

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Methodology: This report is based on the Entelo database of 450 million candidate profiles, analyzed using proprietary machine learning algorithms to examine approximately one billion job changes, to deeply understand the careers of U.S.-based candidates. Candidate profiles include available demographic information such as race and gender in addition to resume information, skill sets and other work-related attributes found across the web. For the purposes of this report, our team looked at the most popular technical job titles in our database including Engineering, Data Science, Product Design and others across companies of all industries. Findings are based on data collected from our platform through March 1, 2018.

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