Where Are All Of The Female Engineers?

The engineering industry is still predominantly male, but why?
It’s no secret that the tech industry has a problem with the lack of diversity in the employees it hires, particularly when it comes to the gender split. This is especially true in the engineering space, where the dearth of female hires is greatest.
Although the issue is talked about frequently enough that it is hard for anyone to deny, there are also plenty of concrete numbers and data to back up the reality: According to the New York Times, “Women account for fewer than a quarter of the engineers at most tech companies. Technical positions are more likely to lead to senior roles at tech companies.” The Department of Labor says that only 11% of engineers in the United States are women, while only 26% are coders.

Adding Value

Hiring women isn’t just about diversity for the sake of optics or sounding good in your annual report—it’s a real value proposition for your company too. As the website hiremorewomenintech.com puts it: “Hiring more women in design, product, project management, community and leadership positions in general creates a healthier workplace. A diverse workplace is proven to get better results, more accurately reflects your customer/client base, and ensures a wider range of experience.” 
If the engineers and coders building the products and services your user base is going to use are overwhelmingly male and white, they are inevitably going to have blind spots that don’t serve your usership. Not only that, as veteran board-member Sharon Wienbar points out in TechCrunch, “I’ve seen firsthand, over and over, that companies with diverse teams (Salesforce: 23% female in technical roles) do better financially and compete better in the market.”

Drawing Female Attention

So if the value of hiring women is clear, the question for many is: how to do it? Many company heads or those in the position of hiring people claim that hiring women to fill senior level roles in their company is more difficult than simply making the right choices. They may even argue there is less interest from females or fewer women who hold the specific qualifications required for a given role. While it’s true that a ground-up effort is required to correct the imbalance in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education starting from a very early age, we really can’t afford to wait that long. We need more diversity in tech, and we need it now.

Training

The first thing to keep in mind is that coding skills are not necessarily required for a hire. Many women from other industries including law, management consulting and science are interested in making headway in the tech space. Just because they don’t yet have sophisticated coding skills doesn’t mean you can’t hire them. In fact, hiring women with mid-level management skills gleaned from other industries and entry level coding skills is a great way to facilitate their growth in your company. Once they have the coding down pat, you might find they accelerate quickly to high-level roles within your company.

Non-Bias

Another thing to address is how you facilitate the hiring process. Thankfully, there are now many more women graduating from coding bootcamps. But even then, the set-up of many interviews or coding “auditions” can unknowingly favor men. To fix this, you can employ a method like online, gender blind coding tests, which TechCrunch notes is “becoming standard practice, because it’s more realistic than a whiteboard session. But it also lowers a well-known gender barrier for many companies.”

Retention

And lastly, once you’ve crossed the hurdle of hiring women, make sure you retain them long enough so they reach senior levels. If women are continually quitting your company, it’s possible that you need to employ some introspection to address the culture that could be causing that. Analyze your performance reviews, code reviews, salary reviews and culture and ask for feedback from you female employees about how the culture and practices might be improved for them.

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