Despite regional variations, women's representation in the tech field hovers between 4% and 20%, influenced by entrenched gender stereotypes, biased investment decisions, male-dominated work cultures, and a pervasive lack of awareness surrounding sexual harassment.
Historical data paints a stark picture: while women earned 37.1% of U.S. computer science degrees in 1984, this figure plummeted to 17.6% by 2011 and has remained stagnant since.
Margaret O'Mara, a historian, notes that Silicon Valley's male-dominated oligopoly replicates traditional power structures, marginalizing women, people of color, and other minorities, ultimately reinforcing a homogenous tech culture.
Moreover, systemic issues such as unequal pay, limited venture capital access, and pervasive workplace harassment contribute to the exodus of women from the industry.
In response, various initiatives, like diversity-focused conferences and nonprofits, are striving to create more inclusive environments, yet the road to equity remains fraught with challenges, as demonstrated by the continued underrepresentation of women at executive levels and in technical roles across leading firms like Google and other tech giants.
[14] In 1997, Anita Borg, then a senior researcher at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) openly complained that women "run into subtle sexism every day" in their professional environments.
At the time only one woman, Carol Bartz of Autodesk, was a chief executive officer (CEO) among the largest Silicon Valley technology companies, highlighting a significant gender disparity in leadership.
Of the $33.5 billion in venture capital invested in tech from 1991 through the second quarter of 1996, only a dismal 1.6% went to companies launched or headed by women, leaving many innovative ideas underfunded.
[17][18] Pao's lawsuit, which alleged that Perkins indulged in discriminatory double standards and denied her the senior partner position, resulted in a controversial verdict for the defendant.
[19] On September 20, 2016, Tesla employee AJ Vandermayden filed a significant lawsuit against her company alleging sex discrimination, retaliation, and multiple other workplace violations.
Vandermayden bravely brought about this lawsuit after learning her salary was substantially lower than those of the eight other employees, all male, with whom she worked most closely, despite the fact that some of them had just finished college.
[35][36] Additionally, primatologists argue that in some groups, female chimpanzees hunt and use tools as effectively as males, suggesting that there is no innate universal primate bias towards technology being male-oriented.
According to Brown and Leaper, "Many parents tend to have higher expectations of sons over daughters in math, science, computers, and sports" which can further discourage girls from developing an interest in technology.
Overall, sexual harassment was not fully recognized by the United States until the late 1900s, leading to a lack of reported incidents up until that point, as well as an increasing, but still underdeveloped, public awareness of the issue, which persists to this day.
[45] In 2012, women created "creeper move" cards, in red, yellow, and green, to hand out at the DEF CON security conference as an indication of what they perceived to be inappropriate behavior from men.
[53] On October 5, 2015, software developer Sage Sharp, known for contributing USB3 support to Linux and coordinating Outreachy, revealed that they had stopped writing kernel patches after feeling antagonized and seeing what they called "subtle sexist or homophobic jokes" on the mailing list.
[54] Although noting that the community's lack of resources was partially to blame, they referred to past discussions in which they sharply criticized the attitudes of Linus Torvalds and Ingo Molnár.
[56] One kernel developer, James Bottomley, urged them to reconsider and stated that the mailing list had made efforts to increase civility in the two years since the most vocal clashes involving Sharp.
[57] One month after the posts by Sage Sharp, Eric S. Raymond addressed readers to claim that women's advocacy groups were looking for opportunities to accuse Linus Torvalds and other open source figures of sexual assault at technical conferences.
He then elaborated that Linus Torvalds no longer spends any time alone at conferences, to which Eric S. Raymond responded by stating that he would take his source's implied advice.
Although announced as the type of feminist programming language that Schlesinger had in mind, the alleged purpose of the code was satirizing the social justice–oriented part of Internet culture and included numerous references to rape, boogeyman and trigger warnings.
Current gender roles and expectations may hold back women from entering, sustaining, and advancing in the technology field, often causing them to feel unwelcome or undervalued within predominantly male environments.
[71] To combat sexism in technology, researchers have suggested that companies take responsibility and change their organizational structure issues instead of expecting women to adapt to the current state of the work environment, which often perpetuates gender disparities.
[72] According to Schiebinger, women should not assimilate to the profession, but should instead modify it to better suit a broader range of perspectives; increased representation of minorities in IT means little to nothing if there remains an unaccommodating, exclusionary industry culture.
He suggests that classrooms should have an inviting and inclusive atmosphere that engages with all students, validates their interests, and supports positive inquiry, encouraging girls to explore tech fields early on.
Another proposed solution is presented by Project include, a nonprofit organization established with the mission of giving everyone a fair chance to succeed in the technology industry.
Forbes columnist Joseph Steinberg wrote of witnessing multiple sexist situations, including a technology company founder referred to as a "Booth Babe" at a trade show.
He blamed disproportionate technology-industry sexism, and a low number of females in the field, on a large number of computing-related startup companies hiring primarily young workers, thereby creating "an environment in which many firms' technical teams consist largely of workers who are just out of college, sometimes giving the businesses fraternity-like cultures, leading to sexism that discourages female participation.
[75] A cover story appearing on the January 15, 2015 issue of Newsweek magazine, titled What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women proved controversial, both due to its illustration, described as "the cartoon of a faceless female in spiky red heels, having her dress lifted up by a cursor arrow", and its content, described as "a 5,000-word article on the creepy, sexist culture of the tech industry".
"[77] The article's author, Nina Burleigh commented, "Where were all these offended people when women like Heidi Roizen published accounts of having a venture capitalist stick her hand in his pants under a table while a deal was being discussed?