Ask a Female Engineer: How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women?
To answer some questions regarding the comments about how these things are different from men to women. They may not be. The reported answers may be the same and related to issues both men and women struggle with.<p>However, I think theres been some more chatter in the industry trying to get to the bottom of some issues that have come up recently with gender in tech one not so recent and more general. Here&#x27;s what I mean<p>1. In the 1980s, for reasons everyone can quantify but noone can understand why, is why women stopped going into computer science in the 1980s: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;money&#x2F;2014&#x2F;10&#x2F;21&#x2F;357629765&#x2F;when-women-stopped-coding" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;money&#x2F;2014&#x2F;10&#x2F;21&#x2F;357629765&#x2F;when-...</a><p>Particularly data scientists and computer scientists and economists who are skilled at teasing out data in large and seemingly choatic data sets cannot figure this out, which is ironic considering they are the group in which this gender disparity occurred which such a dramatic and relatively sudden dropoff.<p>2. On top of the dramatic drop of women in computer science, 41% of the women who do go into tech leave compared to 17% of men: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;tech-diversity-files&#x2F;if-you-think-women-in-tech-is-just-a-pipeline-problem-you-haven-t-been-paying-attention-cb7a2073b996#.cuwsh66wd" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;tech-diversity-files&#x2F;if-you-think-women-i...</a><p>3. A number of studies have shown that identical job applications, resumes AND VC pitches are evaluated differently based on whether they are labeled with a male or female name.
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;tech-diversity-files&#x2F;if-you-think-women-in-tech-is-just-a-pipeline-problem-you-haven-t-been-paying-attention-cb7a2073b996#.cuwsh66wd" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;tech-diversity-files&#x2F;if-you-think-women-i...</a><p>4. High acheiving women, and particular women in tech show<p><pre><code>   a. more negative feedback in reviews compared to men

   b. the word  abrasive is used positively with men, negatively with women in reviews
</code></pre>
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;08&#x2F;26&#x2F;performance-review-gender-bias&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;08&#x2F;26&#x2F;performance-review-gender-bias...</a><p>5.  Alot of women get into entry level tech jobs, but far fewer climb the ladder&#x2F;wages stagnate<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qz.com&#x2F;645587&#x2F;a-mckinsey-report-on-female-leaders-finds-women-are-unable-to-enter-the-tech-industry&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qz.com&#x2F;645587&#x2F;a-mckinsey-report-on-female-leaders-fi...</a><p>6. Female leaders: Founders, CEOs, CTOs receive far more public criticism AND HOSTILITY than male CEOs and CTOs ie.e Ellen Pao as leader of reddit, Marissa Meyer, Sheryl Sandberg
   * The things that have been said about these women and their bodies and how evil they are I have never ever heard with  male CEOs no matter how evil, nor have I  seen criticism as harsh, unrelated to the business issue, cruel and emotionally punishing as these women have faced. Dear god, how could any women aspire to be a leader when the women who aspire to are bombarded with a nonstop barage of sexual and emotional humiliation 24&#x2F;7 on the internet male CEOs never face. It&#x27;s ridiculous.<p>* I am not saying these things happen (the disparities by gender noted above) because men are sexist and evil. I don&#x27;t think anyone knows why this is happening, which is why more women who are in tech are being asked to open up and speak out to get their personal perspective since all the data and studies in the world don&#x27;t seem to be providing these answers<p>* My personal opinion for what its worth: I have to say as a woman in tech, an Electrical Engineer with a minor in Computer Science who now does graphics engineering and GPU software layer dev, I don&#x27;t think it is fair that large corporations are being blamed for the gender disparity in STEM fields. The gender disparity is documented in highschool starting with the number of women in advanced STEM related classes like Calc and Physics all the way through college majors to then the workplace, and yet Microsoft and Google need to fabricate highly skilled and experienced technical women out of thin air or take on the effort to create fund and integrate their own ideas for education in highly unskilled and complexly funded school systems. I think its great they are doing these things, but I think the expectation society has suddenly placed on them since they decided to be angry about it this year is unreasonably punishing and creates more anger and blaming than it does objective awareness and productive conversations, of which I think this convo was an attempt to counteract on YCombos part so thank you<p>( and to go back to my mid-sentence point, as far as people being angry about big tech corps and the lack of women...ummm yeh Ive been a women in tech for almost a decade now so thanks for suddenly caring out of thin air but how about asking women in tech about it instead of just finding the biggest tech corporation around and blaming them for everything, which is why Q&amp;As like the above listed are nice)<p>Lets address the gender disparity in STEM at age 8 and work our way up. Need help start with Toys R us and just do a study noting toys based on level of difficulty&#x2F;problem solving&#x2F;building creating and colour versus child care, clothing and social itneraction based toys...and start there. DONT start at google and blame everything on them. Start with YOU and how YOU raise, dress, spend time, talk with your own duaghters as mothers fathers sisters teachers etc before you assume everything is googles fault.<p><i>There is no &quot;bad guy&quot; guy we get to blame for this as much as mass media these days loves bad guys to blame for everything. This is a very complex cultural issue for which atleast in my experience my parents, teachers, school, cultural demographic of the area I grew up in, politics, media, men in college, magazines for women, AND THEN on top of all of that and all the warped ideas I had about myself and my capabilities due to that yes also there were cultural clashes between me and men at my tech university and also at work.<p></i>I have also on top of all of this faced blatant sexual harrassment cases which were quickly resolved just because, there was no debate about whether they were harrassment or not. They were. Even though these issues were resolved, they were horrrible experiences, emotionally traumatizing, and embarassing and annoying because other employees always find out, not to mention distracting me away from that thing called my job that I came to work for.<p>*The amount of times men have shockingly stated to me after getting to know me that they now realize I&#x27;m not in the industry to husband shop...is too damn high.....