As Silicon Valley sours on diversity, women in tech suffer

There is a financial crisis among groups that recruit and advocate for women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields, the BBC reports. 

Funding has dried up for many of these organizations, with Women Who Code and Girls in Tech — two of the most prominent U.S. organizations supporting women in tech positions — folding this summer. The problem stretches across shores, with the UK’s Tech Talent Charter shuttering in June. Like Women Who Code and Girls in Tech, the Charter’s reason for closure was a lack of financial support from tech companies, which appear to be souring on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives that once worked to recruit women and employees of color, especially in the early 2020s. Google, Meta, X, and Zoom have all slashed DEI budgets and laid off staff.

The tech gender disparity appears stuck in a doom loop, with companies devoting less effort to bridging the gap and fewer tech organizations for women able to survive. At Google, Microsoft, and Apple, women make up less than 33 percent of leadership teams, while female employees at the three tech mega-companies constitute only about a third of workers.

While tech corporations often blame missed revenue targets for the cutting of positions and initiatives that support minority students and candidates, the BBC posits that the companies are following cultural currents whipped up by figures like X CEO Elon Musk, who compares DEI programs to “racism.” Even when companies cough up money to support groups like England’s TecWomenCIC, the funds are usually a one-off contribution that does little to sustain the effort of bringing more women into the field, TecWomenCIC founder Caitlin Gould told the BBC.

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The dearth of women in tech positions isn’t helped by the lack of girls in STEM classes, a phenomenon that compounds itself as female students may be discouraged from joining classes when they know they could be the only girl there. If they do proceed in a STEM field and get hired, they are also known to make around $15,000 less annually than their male peers, according to The American Association of University Women. For Latinas and Black women, that pay discrepancy is more than double.

Efforts to recruit girls and women into tech and other STEM fields is not completely moribund, though. The Tech4Girls event happens in October at the Mobile World Congress expo in Las Vegas, with two days of training, networking, hands-on experience, and mock interviews. In Florida, the recently launched Women in Tech & Entrepreneurship (WTE) is helping industry women throughout the state network, hone their skills, and chip at the glass ceiling.