So why are there so few women in technical jobs?  Is it that they aren’t being advanced at the same rate as the men?  Or is it that there are so few women entering the technology sector?  If it is the latter, then isn’t it time women stop letting men take these high paying job when women can do them just as well as any man.  Let’s get more women to join the technology workforce.

From: Huffington Post.com

As the U.S. technology sector has boomed, women and minorities have largely been left behind. This is what’s clear in the wake of recent disclosures on workforce demographics from a handful of tech companies.

On June 25, Facebook became the latest tech giant to publicly release its demographic data, which indicated that men represent nearly 70 percent of all global employees. Worse yet, of the 31 percent of women in the company, a mere 15 percent work in jobs that are actually technical. (Women hold 47 percent of non-technical jobs.) When it comes to the top of the pyramid, although Facebook boasts COO Sheryl Sandberg, more than three-quarters of senior-level jobs (77 percent) globally are held by men. Among these senior-level executives in the U.S., nearly three-quarters (74 percent) are white, leaving just a quarter of the pie for everyone else (19 percent are Asian, 4 percent Hispanic, 2 percent black, and 1 percent two or more races#.Yahoo released a similar report two weeks ago, revealing that although the tech company is among the few with a female CEO, less than a quarter #23 percent) of people in VP roles or higher are women. Yahoo’s figures match Facebook’s exactly when it comes to percentage of women globally in technical jobs: while women comprise nearly 40 percent of global employees, disappointing 15 percent have jobs related to technology. Yahoo has a higher percentage of non-white workers than Facebook (50 percent) — but most (39 percent) are Asian, with Hispanic (4 percent), black (2 percent), and those of more than one race (4 percent) still sorely underrepresented.

Similarly, Google’s first diversity report, published at the end of May, showed that men account for 70 percent of the global headcount and 83 percent of the tech staff. Women occupy only 21 percent of leadership positions, and 17 percent of tech jobs at the company. While these numbers are incrementally higher than Yahoo’s or Facebook’s, it’s notable that Google has no female executive officers, and only one woman on its senior leadership team. Google’s workforce is 61 percent white.

While these and other tech companies (including LinkedIn) have a long way to go in improving their track record on diversity, these disclosures demonstrate a first step of commitment toward accountability and future change. The fact that Facebook, Yahoo, Google and LinkedIn have chosen to submit this information to the general public puts pressure on other tech companies to do the same. The message behind these actions is that keeping this problem a secret is not the solution. Tech companies can no longer hide from the glaring reality that they are still largely male and white — especially when it comes to the top positions and (in most cases) the tech jobs.

Working closely with a number of tech companies, SHAMBAUGH Leadership has seen that several important interconnections need to be addressed in parallel within an organization to effect change in this area. Here are a few thoughts that reflect important steps for organizations and leaders to take:

via The Genie Is Out of the Bottle for Silicon Valley: Lack of Diversity | Rebecca Shambaugh.