Equality Matters. Women Belong Here.
At GetintheLoop, I’m continually inspired by the diversity of opinions and cultures that are joining our team. It makes us think differently, both for the betterment of our team and for our company as a whole.
But there is a problem with the diversity and equality in our industry. The technology space, and in particular tech start-ups, have been traditionally dominated by males. In fact, as recently as 2014, Apple’s workforce was 70% male.
This is shocking to me. As a father of two young girls, I feel it’s important for them and their peers to have role models and opportunities in all industries. Especially technology.
In our company we have three female developers in an engineering team of 13 (23%). In the last month we’ve had 57 candidates apply for our API Developer roles, where only 4 were female. Our Senior Mobile Developer roles had 36 candidates with only 2 female applicants.
Why is this the case? Is it the lack of female role models & mentors? Gender bias? The perception of the industry? The education system?
A 2018 diversity study showed that:
- Only 20% of all tech jobs were held by women.
- Only 5% of startup founders were women.
- Facebook’s women in tech was 22%.
- Women formed 30.9% of Google’s employees.
Some progress has been made, but clearly not enough.
Today 38% of our overall company is female and 43% of our local franchise owners are female. This is a start, but with only 29% of our leadership team being female, that needs to change too.
We’ve made a pledge to consciously seek out a highly diverse team. This not only means gender equality, but also creating an environment that is inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community and the six different nationalities represented in our company today. We will continue to work on creating better mentoring opportunities, training, and equal paths to promotions and recruitment. It’s a challenge we are up for and it’s unquestionably worth the effort for everyone involved.
If you want to be in technology and are part of the minority, call us, we need to talk.
#womenbelonghere #diversitymatters
