As more and more business and manufacturing processes revolve around technology, the demand for people with the necessary skills is growing. To assure the supply of qualified people filling those positions, we have to stop thinking in terms in terms of stereotypes and clear the way for women to get on board.
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The problem is not that women aren’t trained in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. “Women have earned 57% of all bachelor's degrees and about half of all science and engineering (S&E) bachelor's degrees since the late 1990s,” according to the latest figures from the National Science Foundation. The problem is that those percentages don’t translate into the same level of representation at work.
In fact, women are still far outnumbered at engineering positions at tech companies. You can see the numbers of engineers in actual companies updated regularly on a spreadsheet in Tracy Chou's Women in Tech list. Though the numbers vary, the average representation for women engineers at the companies listed appears to be near 20% to 25%.
The gap between the sexes grows higher up the hierarchy. The Gender Divide in Tech-Intensive Industries put out in 2014 demonstrated that women with MBAs with tech qualifications were still far less likely to work in the industry than their male counterparts. Perhaps part of the reason is that women ae far more likely to be placed in entry level jobs, at the rate of 55% in contrast to the 39% for men. Women MBAs also were more likely to leave the tech industry than their male counterparts at the rate of 53% to 31%.
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