Verizon’s recent commercial calls on parents to inspire girls’ minds, encouraging girls to study typically male-dominated fields such as science and technology. The ad finishes, “Isn’t it time we tell her she’s pretty brilliant too?” Well, new data from three tech giants show the time for telling girls they’re brilliant might be coming sooner than later.
Recently, Google, Yahoo, and LinkedIn released data on the gender makeup of their firms. As Kimberly Weisul of Inc. Magazine explained, none of the three are particularly diverse. Women are in the minority of each company’s workforce, and they are in the very small minority of each company’s leadership. However, AIER data suggest that these three companies’ share of female employees is actually higher than the national average.
AIER’s recent research brief found that 26 percent of workers in high-skilled computer technology occupations in the U.S. are female. By comparison, high-skilled finance occupations are 55 percent female.
At Google, 30 percent of its workforce is female; at Yahoo it’s 37 percent; and at LinkedIn it’s 39 percent. These percentages reflect all workers in the technology companies, not just the high-skilled tech workers. This means that some of these women could be in lower-wage, lower-skilled jobs, such as technology assistants or administrative assistants. But it is still important to note that these proportions are higher than the national average for the technology industry.
Let’s be clear: 30 percent is nothing to celebrate. And without knowing what percentage of these companies’ high-skilled and high-paid tech workforce is women, it is difficult to assess the extent of progress achieved by women in tech. However, considering the increased demand for encouraging women to enter STEM-fields, these percentages could reflect a (slowly) growing female high-skilled workforce.
The Verizon ad, aimed at parents rather than girls, highlights that the biggest barrier to women pursuing tech careers is the culturally biased gender norm that girls don’t “belong” in STEM-fields. It’s nice to see programs encouraging young girls to become coders, like Google’s new “made with code” initiative. But this sort of ad reminds us that perhaps it’s equally important for parents to encourage their daughters to “be brilliant” in the first place.
[Photo: via Verizon]
