There is a tremendous amount of evidence showing that women in technology lag behind men both in salaries and in positions of leadership. The scale tilts terribly in favour of men.
The picture in many organisations in Africa and around the world is: There are few women in the top echelons of tech leadership.
We know that women’s and men’s brains are not different when it comes to mathematical or logical skills . Still, some of the best IT platforms widely used today are coming from countries like India where the awareness of the rights of women and girls is expanding within social and legal structures as much as within the field of IT.
Notwithstanding that women are not rewarded equally, their ability is not in question. They are seen at least as effective tech managers and leaders as men.
The technology industry has been accused of making it difficult to combine having a tech career with motherhood, hence dissuading young women from building a lasting career in the industry.
In a recent study reported in Fortune, 85 per cent of 716 women surveyed who have left the tech industry cited maternity leave policy as a major factor in their decision to leave.
The opinion that hiring women to work in Tech is solely a PR effort by companies and that doing so is damaging to a company’s productivity and bottom line is a dangerous one. Especially when you consider the opposite is proven to be true by a wide array of data-driven sources.
Here are just a few of the reasons we need more women in Tech and how you might directly benefit from more gender diversity in Tech businesses and Tech-based positions.
1.An entire marketplace lacks Tech-driven innovation; There is currently a marketplace of female-oriented products that desperately lacks Tech-driven innovation. These are products that by definition only women buy, like menstruation products, ovulation tracking tools/apps, as well as products typically bought by women.
This could be a direct result of having a majority of Tech businesses run by male-dominated corporate leadership, since people are often less likely to start a company in a sub-industry that has no relationship to them. However, this industry presents a wealth of profitable possibilities that Tech-driven businesses run by women, or ones with more women in corporate positions, might be more apt to pursue.
2.The ability to tap into the largest single economic force in the world; women. According to a survey by Catalyst, women control around 73 percent of all household spending in many countries. A lack of women in Tech or corporate roles can lead to an inability to market effectively to that audience.
As technology continues to invade the average household, this consumer base and where they decide to spend their money could greatly impact the continued or future success of some Tech-driven companies.
3. Inspiring a new generation of women to learn computer science empowers female entrepreneurs to come up with unique solutions to new problems.