*I am a feminist so you might get slightly biased opinions in this post*
Its always a casual conversation among my female colleagues that there are very few of “us” here. Something we cannot understand why and something we wished could change. A lot of men in the industry dismiss this “problem” as a sole supply chain issue, deep rooted in our society which nobody can do anything about.
Ive examined and analyzed why that would seem to be an obvious reason among my many colleagues. The reason is simple: Numbers are not exposed at each level of the sourcing process! The only statistic that outshines the rest is the lack of women engineers graduating from Computer Science programs which actually has risen in the recent times. So naturally that is one heck of only reliable metric but that is not true.
We can and should encourage reporting statistics at each phase of the pipeline process and these numbers should be exposed to better evaluate the application process that is in place. Google has been doing this for a really long time but none of their granular metrics have ever been exposed to the public. There are various stages which we need to shed light upon and they are as follows:
- Interviewers: Let’s say as an interviewer you have the best interests of your company and you want to make the best hire regardless of candidate’s identity (removing all unconscious biases). If you hire only male engineers then it is because you see only male engineers.
- Recruiters/Sourcing: Now lets assume the same for the recruiters selecting candidates. If they see only male resumes they will select majority of those resumes.
- Manager and the job requisition: Let’s assume as a manager you promise to get only the best candidates and you place a gender and racially neutral job posting that would attract any new grad. The percentage of females graduating college with CS or related degrees that would qualify are 13–15% averaged nationwide. And this should translate to the pipeline above but it doesn’t.
Affirmative Action in colleges that allows for blind admissions or seemingly “blind” admissions has helped enforce laws and rules against any form of discrimination. But when it comes to job applications, even though every company promises equal right employment, the applications still ask for gender, optional race and military status. The same applies to colleges as well, law students can submit an optional “diversity” statement as part of their application and on the common application there is the unnoticeable optional race identifier dropdown (which I am sure you should check if you want to qualify for the diversity quota). Basically, the point is that the system and laws are still partially flawed because they allow for discrimination, which they are supposed to help end!
However, an interesting finding that the NYT came up with about a year ago was that blind auditions increased the likelihood that a woman would be hired by between 25 and 46 percent, something the article below tries to put in practice in technology, give it a read:
But at the end, what I would like to say is that just dismissing the topic as a “supply chain” problem is not going to solve the issue. Generally, it is easier to dismiss hard problems and especially one where historical stereotypes have to be challenged, cultural changes have to take place, and equality has to enforced regardless of race, gender or sex. Yes, it is hard….but think about solving the problem by gathering enough information and examining the whole picture. I encourage everyone to ask your organization for its own numbers, ask for numbers across the pipeline and you will only be surprised by the results.
