Representation Of Women In The American Workforce

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American workforce consists of women significantly which has happened through time, however improvement of the situation is slow and uneven across industries. Women continue to make up the majority of employees in the education sector, service jobs, and health care such as nursing while men dominate in construction, tech, and utilities.(U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, 2013). High-tech, in particular, is an industry where women continue to be vastly underrepresented. The gender share of women employed in information and technology(IT) occupations is below average ranking anywhere between 7 and 40 percent among computer network engineers to web developers(Women’s Bureau,2013). In non traditional industries ,women are facing particular …show more content…

Women continue to make up the majority of employees in the education sector, service jobs, and health care such as nursing while men dominate in construction, tech, and utilities.(U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, 2013). High-tech, in particular, is an industry where women continue to be vastly underrepresented. The gender share of women employed in information and technology(IT) occupations is below average ranking anywhere between 7 and 40 percent among computer network engineers to web developers(Women’s Bureau,2013). In non traditional industries ,women are facing particular challenges regarding their career success not only due to the lack of female representation among senior management teams, but the gender biases resulting from the less diverse employee groups. The low participation of women in Tech and science has been, indeed, a matter of concern for many years. "According to the most recent Taulbee Survey conducted by the Computing Research Association in North America, only 14.7% of computer science bachelor's degrees went to women. The U.S. Department of Education's data shows the female participation level in computing peaked at about 35% in 1984, more than twice as high as it is today". When we look at the workplace, we see the same issue. "According to McKinsey & Company’s 2015 Women in the …show more content…

But when it comes to people in the tech sector, the number of women has actually decreased over the past three decades: "whereas in 1990 around 33 percent of programmers were women, that number has dropped steadily to just 27 percent today." What are maybe even more surprising are the divisions of labour within tech related jobs: in 2014, only 22.1 percent of software developers and 23 percent of software programmers were women. Clerical sections of the industry have a better female representation, where women represent 40 percent of database administration positions. The tech companies state that they’re starting to address the problem by acknowledging it. Google, for instance, is training its managers to be more aware of hidden biases, so they don’t, for example, give false lower performance evaluations to women. Facebook is working with professional organizations and other nonprofit groups to get more girls and minority children interested in science and technology. A major issue facing the industry is the number of female computer science students present at universities. That number has fallen in the last 20 years, when the percentage of women in other industries like biology and chemistry has risen." Sure, the tech community has come a long way. However, here we are in 2016, and it appears that the ratio