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The tech industry tends to be one that is fairly male-dominated. Ask a technical recruiter how many men versus women he or she speaks to in a day when seeking to fill a Java or QA role, and you will tend not to hear the odds stacked in favor of the ladies. While this issue would have been a pet project for Third-Wave Feminists in the 1990’s[1], in the 21^st century, enough equal opportunity exists in the work force these days that job types or industries dominated by one gender tends to be by employee choice (arguably). Employers with an eye for diversity may be either actively looking for employees that break with the status quo, or have an ongoing wish list to diversify if the right candidate appears.

An AOL jobs article, for example, cites the IT  job title ‘IT Network Engineer’ as one in which women consistently make 5% more than men when filling the role[2]. Their statistics, below, show that this technical position is on average a male-dominated role by 95%, with only 5% of women choosing to pursue the title, despite the fact that employers offer a compensation incentive for females.

According to Neelie Kroes, VP for the digital agenda at the European Commission, that should change. “It’s a digital world now and the digital world is for everyone. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” she advised[3]. Certainly, in the present professional environment, it would be hard to make the case that there is a strong contingent of women trying to break into technical roles and balance out the gender inequality. It’s more socially acceptable at the moment for women to express interest in industries where they tend to hired either more or less equally, or more than men.

If real change is going to take place in the percentage of females willing to enter the tech field, it needs to start at the interest level. Girls in high school are generally not being groomed to be tech-proficient, or encouraged to familiarize themselves with the opportunities and salary levels they could enjoy if they pursued a course of education that would qualify them for roles like the IT Network Engineer. Education initiatives like this could either increase the pool of female talent entering the tech workforce and energize the economy, or it could just prove that the effort to equalize everything may be a little unrealist. It’s possible that in general, women may tend to find more career satisfaction in non-tech roles, and maybe that’s just one of the many differences that will always exist between genders.

Sources:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movement

[2] http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/03/01/jobs-where-women-earn-more-than-men

[3] http://www.womenintechnology.co.uk/news/make-technology-more-inclusive-for-women-mep-says-news-801313746