The Rise of Women in Tech

October 9th, 2012 [ Tags: , , ]

My views on women in science and technology have always been terribly skewed. My mother is a scientist and a lab chief. I was introduced to the Wacom tablet by a female co-worker at my first job out of college. Another female coworker taught me how to animate. Most of the cartoonists I look up to in the webcomics game are ladies. So the notion that there’s a deficit of women in the fields of science and technology baffles me to no end. Sure, it’s probably because I’m a naive idiot. But as someone who has been surrounded by women in science and technology all my life, this info graphic sent along by Emma Brown was a real eye opener for me:

The Rise Of Women In Tech
Created by: www.MBAOnline.com

I still can’t get over the fact that even with the growing number of women in the tech field, their salaries are still less than their male counterparts. Like, what the fuck? I suppose you could say that men need more money to fix more things because they break shit far more often than women, but that’s fucking stupid. It’s the new goddamn millennium. The fuck is wrong with us? Equal pay for equal work, people. The wage gap needs to be closed.

Thanks to Emma for sending this my way. I expect we’ll be seeing these numbers change in a major way in the near future.


  • michael

    All following statements are made about the average Joe and Jane. If some hypocritic bitch(er) feels touched by this, IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU!
    Payment is affected by some factors. Bargaining your pay, doing
    overtime, variable payment (commissions), etc.. Women tend to avoid
    risks (like variable payment) and negoitate lower wages. And they tend
    to be more loyal in their jobs, which means they are less likely to
    leave one employer for another for even a considerable raise.
    AND, the avarage male worker is older and therefore has more work experience than the average female worker.

    Maybe there is something wrong with society in general, but why should women make the same (bad) decissions as men?

    It’s
    not man vs. female, it’s choosing work-life(familiy)-balance before a
    larger pay cheque. And if the wage gap closes, it means more women are
    choosing the pay cheque…
    ….which will close another gap, women in our generation won’t outlife their male counterparts by 5-7 years anymore.

  • Kyle Wright

    I agree with the idea that equal work equal pay. My thing on the percentages is this: I think the only reason to increase that number is if women want to do those positions. The percentage of women in a particular field does not matter, the percentage of women that want to do something, are capable of doing said something, and are able to find work in said field does matter. One of my best friends is married to a rocket scientist. She’s fucking awesome, but I also know a lot of women that hate science and math. So it’s really about what they want to do. Equal work = equal pay definitely. As far as working in a field goes…I think employers should not be able to see the names, gender, ethnicity, etc of applicants. Lets be truly fair here. Best resume gets an interview.

  • cphoenix

    Kyle – a lot of women “hate” math because they didn’t do well at it in school. And some of that, sad to say, is because teachers (still!) pay more attention and give more encouragement to boys in math. Girls in all-girl classes do just as well at math as boys.

    The stats (in the above graphic) on how women in high positions help companies are impressive. I’m not ready to just say “Oh well, there are no more women to hire, so we’ll stick with the gender ratio we have.” Maybe the place to look now is school reform rather than (or in addition to) hiring reform… but there is still reform needed somewhere.

  • Vortigar

    Well, most of the women among my friends have higher educations than the men and are on the scientific end of things. But that’s my lil geeky circle so that’s probably skewed stats.
    Among the women in my choir (pop/rock btw) almost all of them have part time or no jobs, most in education and care (and a fluke large number of hairdressers for some reason, 4 out of 40).
    Also, I have a computer science degree and I graduated in a class of like, 140 guys and 8 girls. So, yeah…
    Electro and machinery were in the same building as us, never spotted a girl in any of those classes. Car mechanics had their own practically girl-less 4 story building. Civil engineering was a 60/40 split or so though, those groups were easy to pick out in the hallway.
    From my experience it all comes down to one thing, women want to be able to work with people or have a job that means something to other people. The really technical stuff doesn’t occur to them in this context.