For over 40 years, the tech industry has been working to attract more women. Yet, women continue to be underrepresented in technology jobs compared to other professions. Worse, once hired, women leave the field mid-career twice as often as men. In 2013, Karen Holtzblatt launched The Women in Tech Retention Project at WITops.org, dedicated to understanding what helps women in tech thrive. In 2014, Nicola Marsden joined the effort, bringing her extensive knowledge and research on gender and bias for women in tech. Together with worldwide volunteers, this research identified what helps women thrive and practical interventions to improve women’s experience at work. In this book, we share women’s stories, our research, relevant literature, and our perspective on making change to help retain women. All the research and solutions we share are based on deep research and user-centered ideation techniques. Part I describes the @Work Experience Framework and the six key factors that help women thrive: a dynamic valuing team; stimulating projects; the push into challenges with support; local role models; nonjudgmental flexibility to manage home/work balance; and developing personal power. Employees thinking of leaving their job have significantly lower scores on these factors showing their importance for retention. Part II describes tested interventions that redesign work practices to better support women, diverse teams, and all team members. We chose these interventions guided by data from over 1,000 people from multiple genders, ethnicities, family situations, and countries. Interventions target key processes in tech: onboarding new hires; group critique meetings; and Scrum. Interventions also address managing interpersonal dynamics to increase valuing and decrease devaluing behaviors and techniques for teams to define, monitor, and continuously improve their culture. We conclude by describing our principles for redesigning processes with an eye toward issues important to women and diverse teams.

Demand for tech professionals is expected to increase substantially over the next decade, and increasing the number of women of color in tech will be critical to building and maintaining a competitive workforce. Despite years of efforts to increase the diversity of the tech workforce, women of color have remained underrepresented, and the numbers of some groups of women of color have even declined. Even in cases where some groups of women of color may have higher levels of representation, data show that they still face significant systemic challenges in advancing to positions of leadership. Research evidence suggests that structural and social barriers in tech education, the tech workforce, and in venture capital investment disproportionately and negatively affect women of color. Transforming Trajectories for Women of Color in Tech uses current research as well as information obtained through four public information-gathering workshops to provide recommendations to a broad set of stakeholders within the tech ecosystem for increasing recruitment, retention, and advancement of women of color. This report identifies gaps in existing research that obscure the nature of challenges faced by women of color in tech, addresses systemic issues that negatively affect outcomes for women of color in tech, and provides guidance for transforming existing systems and implementing evidence-based policies and practices to increase the success of women of color in tech.

It has long been recognised that the technology industry is not diverse and gender inclusive. In the UK, the numbers of women in technology roles has remained stubbornly beneath 20% for the last twenty years. With this book we hope to help address that. This guide to addressing the gender imbalance offers expertise, initiatives and true stories to support those wishing to bring greater gender diversity into the workplace. It aims to inform regarding background, theory and policy; advise on concrete actions that can be undertaken, and to be an exemplar for companies, organisations, establishments and campaigns in the form of real world case studies.

An accessible and timely guide to increasing female presence and leadership in tech companies Tech giants like Apple and Google are among the fastest growing companies in the world, leading innovations in design and development. The industry continues to see rapid growth, employing millions of people: in the US it is at the epicenter of the American economy. So why is it that only 5% of senior executives in the tech industry are female? Underrepresentation of women on boards of directors, in the C-suite, and as senior managers remains pervasive in this industry. As tech companies are plagued with high-profile claims of harassment and discrimination, and salary discrepancies for comparable work, one asks what prevents women from reaching management roles, and, more importantly, what can be done to fix it? The Future of Tech is Female considers the paradoxes involved in women’s ascent to leadership roles, suggesting industry-wide solutions to combat gender inequality. Drawing upon 15 years of experience in the field, Douglas M. Branson traces the history of women in the information technology industry in order to identify solutions for the issues facing women today. Branson explores a variety of solutions such as mandatory quota laws for female employment, pledge programs, and limitations on the H1-B VISA program, and grapples with the challenges facing women in IT from a range of perspectives. Branson unpacks the plethora of reasons women should hold leadership roles, both in and out of this industry, concluding with a call to reform attitudes toward women in one particular IT branch, the video and computer gaming field, a gateway to many STEM futures. An invaluable resource for anyone invested in gender equality in corporate governance, The Future of Tech is Female lays out the first steps toward a more diverse future for women in tech leadership

We have an ongoing gender diversity problem in tech that's getting worse. Despite the fact that women outnumber men both in the US population and on college campuses, they hold only 25% of tech jobs overall, only 6% of S&P 500 CEO slots, and secure only 2% of Venture Capital funding. A full 43% of the 150 highest-earning public companies in Silicon Valley have no female executive officers at all.While there is no magic bullet, there is a solution. Get this book to learn a specific, concrete, and proven process to turn this situation around at your organization.

For over 40 years, the tech industry has been working to attract more women. Yet, women continue to be underrepresented in technology jobs compared to other professions. Worse, once hired, women leave the field mid-career twice as often as men. In 2013, Karen Holtzblatt launched The Women in Tech Retention Project at WITops.org, dedicated to understanding what helps women in tech thrive. In 2014, Nicola Marsden joined the effort, bringing her extensive knowledge and research on gender and bias for women in tech. Together with worldwide volunteers, this research identified what helps women thrive and practical interventions to improve women’s experience at work. In this book, we share women’s stories, our research, relevant literature, and our perspective on making change to help retain women. All the research and solutions we share are based on deep research and user-centered ideation techniques. Part I describes the @Work Experience Framework and the six key factors that help women thrive: a dynamic valuing team; stimulating projects; the push into challenges with support; local role models; nonjudgmental flexibility to manage home/work balance; and developing personal power. Employees thinking of leaving their job have significantly lower scores on these factors showing their importance for retention. Part II describes tested interventions that redesign work practices to better support women, diverse teams, and all team members. We chose these interventions guided by data from over 1,000 people from multiple genders, ethnicities, family situations, and countries. Interventions target key processes in tech: onboarding new hires; group critique meetings; and Scrum. Interventions also address managing interpersonal dynamics to increase valuing and decrease devaluing behaviors and techniques for teams to define, monitor, and continuously improve their culture. We conclude by describing our principles for redesigning processes with an eye toward issues important to women and diverse teams.