We recently generated research for one of the nation's largest technology companies. Their recruiting group has been proactively recruiting women and people of color for technical positions.
They asked us to complete an analytical overview of representation in the tech industry and an analysis of engineering graduation data.
12%
Our analysis concluded that women make up approximately 12% of the workforce in "real" technology jobs, coding, as opposed to more general calculations of ~28% in tech jobs where those numbers include administrative assistants, finance analysts, human resources and other positions in a technical group that usually do not require an engineering degree.
We acquired data from the Computing Research Association (CRA) which showed graduation ratios not too dissimilar from the real world hiring results:
Clearly, a significant contributing factor is education and likely, socialization. We need to develop more diversity in the interests and goals of young girls and young Black and Hispanic boys, as well as access to the resources required to pursue technical knowledge.
Google in June pledged $50 million to its Made With Code initiative to bring girls into the world of coding. Mark Zuckerberg recently donated $120 million to San Francisco schools.