Even when they have extensive tech credentials, women often shy away from taking tech jobs because the industry makes them feel like outsiders and fails to provide the flexibility they need to handle family responsibilities and other priorities.
That’s what the Catalyst Research Center for Equity in Business Leadership, a non-profit outfit that lobbies for greater women representation in business, found when it surveyed 5,916 MBA graduates working in a variety of companies.
Only 18 percent of the women opted for a tech-related job after completing their MBA, compared with 24 percent of men, the study determined.
Moreover, 53 percent of the women who did start their careers in tech later took a position in another industry, versus just 31 percent of men who did that.
Women were nearly twice as likely as men to say they left their tech jobs for at least one personal reason, such as “wanting to make a greater social contribution, child rearing, family reasons other than child rearing, or their spouse/partner being relocated,” the study noted.
Yet it concluded that women often feel like outsiders in tech because their companies make it hard for them to pursue outside interests, lack women role models and require them to start out in lower-level jobs than men.
Photo by Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group of Sophia Westwood, a Stanford University graduate student majoring in computer science, with exposures of computer code she wrote.
