Trends in education

The number of women pursuing degrees in the technology field has been dropping over the last few decades. According to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, we have seen a 7% decline in women entering their first year of college to pursue degrees in Computer Science between 2000 and 2014. The percentage of women who received Computer Science bachelor degrees has dropped from 37% in 1985 to just 18% in 2013, even though the overall percentage of women who received bachelor’s degrees in 2013 was 57%. (By The Numbers, 2014)

Trends in Employment

Women made up 57% of the professionals in the workforce in 2014, while only 26% are in the computing field, and only 6% hold CIO positions. (By The Numbers, 2014) According to Tech Republic, some of the major Social networking sites are lacking in representation by women. Google only has 30% female employees, Yahoo has 37%, Facebook-31%, and LinkedIn-39%. Google has committed $50 million to education and coding for girls to encourage and stimulate interest in STEM education and coding. (Gilpin, 2014)

While the numbers of women pursuing education in technology fields have dropped, the numbers of available jobs in the tech industry are growing. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the projected growth in fields relating to computer system designs between 2010-2020 range from 28.8% ( Computer programmers) to 71.7% (Software developers, systems). The overall expectation is that by 2010, there will be 1.4 million jobs in the field of computer science available. (Csorny, 2013)

Without women to fill these jobs, who represent over 50% of all employees in our country, we are going to have a serious deficit in our employee pool, which will end up with more jobs outsourced to overseas companies, and less income in our own economy.

Trends in Wages

Women have long trailed behind men in receiving equitable pay for the work that they do. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) published a fact sheet called The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation in 2014, discussing 116 different common occupations, and the wage gaps within occupations, and across occupations with similar education requirements and skill sets.

For example, among high-skilled workers, men in ‘software developers, applications and systems software’ occupations, a male-dominated field, earn $1,736 per week on average (compared with $1,457 for women), while women ‘elementary and middle school teachers’ occupation, a female-dominated field, earn $956 (compared with $1,096 for men). (Hegewisch, 2015).

These numbers, to me, are alarming. The idea that a woman can take as much education and financial debt as a man in any vocation and yet be paid less is just another example of our male dominated society pushing women down. With the need for most families to be a two income family, it is ridiculous that by earning a degree and being female sets you up for continued financial struggling.

Influencing the future

The goal of Reshma Saujani’s foundation, Girls Who Code, is to decrease the gender gap by teaching girls how to code and encouraging them to pursue their careers in the technology field. Started in 2012, the goal of Girls Who Code is “to provide computer science education and exposure to 1 million young women by 2020.”(Girls Who Code, 2015)