Role Of Women for Leadership in Technology

Role of Women for Leadership in Technology

Technology is the future of the 21st century. They are being developed faster than yesterday. We have to understand how many women around the world are playing a role in the change. Very few women are challenging the STEM but let’s have a look at how women are stepping ahead in their journey to fight their role in the advancement of technology.

20% of all tech start-ups across the world were founded by women. Chicago, Boston and Silicon Valley have the most tech start-ups founded by women. The number of women working for Facebook grew by 84% in 2015, compared to a16% increase of men and 83% more women joined Microsoft in 2015, compared to 17% of men. In 2014, 17.4% of CIOs in Fortune 500 companies were women and 6 of Fortune 15 companies have female CIOs.Women represent 7% of the world’s richest tech billionaires. Rebecca Shanahan is CEO of the fastest growing company led by a woman, growing by$469.4 million in 3 years. Zhou Qunfei, founder of LENS, is the richest female tech billionaire and is worth a huge $7.5 billion.

But why do women leave technology industries?

30% blame working conditions, such as long hours, a low salary and no opportunity for career progression. 27% put it down to work-life balance, stating they do not have enough time with their family and there is too much travel involved. Some of the other top reasons were a loss of interest in their job and problems with the company environment.24% of women who leave a tech role go on to a non-technical role in a different company and 22% become self-employed in a tech field.

I think there are still more to it. Being in the position of executive, they have to face mansplaining every day. Even if the women have a quite a certain amount of knowledge about a particular area, they are undermined by men when men come to explain them with ideas about how things could have been done in a much better way. Unfortunately, at least someone has to take responsibility to avoid that or fight against it. And this can begin by demonstrating them through action or kindly switching the topic and help them to understand that they are not playing a good role in mansplaining.

Basically, before dealing with the perception about how women can take leadership in technology, we need to deal with certain political situations around them. And this can happen when women take leadership in every aspect of their lives. It’s not women don’t have brains. It is just that the society around her think that she does not deserve that position. Fighting against patriarchy system will only help her to take leadership in technology industries. Because still today, there are a lot of people who want to be believe that technology is made only for men.

So from today onwards, encourage your daughter to use technology and be passionate about Mathematics and Computer Science. Please don’t tell them to be a Professor of Mathematics after studying it. Women are not bound to have secured jobs. They have the right to explore, discover and make changes in the world. Believe in her strength, passion and compassion to create her own world. She can make a lot of money out of it if she is passionate about a particular subject. And who knows, she might be the next CEO of Google?

Works Cited:

Deering,Sophie. The Role of Women in the Tech Industry Today. Undercover Recruiter

Hedges,Kristi.(26 February 2018) 5 Ways to Shut Down Mansplaining Forbes