The Future Is Here And It’s Female.
Yes, we’re writing an article in August putting a spotlight on gender inequality in the IT industry. But why publish an article about the value of women in the tech space even though International Women’s Month is celebrated in March?
Yes, we’re writing an article in August putting a spotlight on gender inequality in the IT industry. But why publish an article about the value of women in the tech space even though International Women’s Month is celebrated in March? That’s easy because no matter the month of the year, the increasing need for gender equality and diversity remains one of the biggest challenges faced by companies today and even more so during the Covid-19 era.
We are privileged to serve the education market from K-12, post-secondary, technical college and even industry professional level, and while we can support the validation of skills at each of these levels, it is important that academic institutes and companies alike continue to educate and stimulate more females to consider technical roles.
Information technology is one of the fastest growing industries, and technical innovation will play a vital role in almost every sector of a country’s economy.
Forbes lists three reasons why more women in tech are needed:
- Diversity Generates More Revenue
Compared to their peers, high-gender-diversity companies deliver slightly better returns, and that they have outperformed, on average, less diverse companies over the past five years. Companies that hire and manage to retain more women put themselves at the forefront, automatically gaining a competitive advantage, a benefit that extends to all or any stakeholders.
- Women Think Differently
By nature, engaging with various teams forces individuals to arrange better and anticipate alternative viewpoints. The presence of girls makes individuals anticipate differences in opinion and perspective and makes them assume that they’ll have to work harder to return to a consensus.
Men and ladies see things differently and bring unique ideas to the table. This enables better problem solving, and can boost performance at the business unit level directly.
- We want more Role Models
When we celebrate our female tech leaders, it’ll encourage more girls to pursue their interests and careers in tech, thus increasing the hiring pool diversity.
Being a woman in IT is not always easy, and being the only woman in the boardroom can put unseen pressure on you. When you bring women into senior roles, you demonstrate that others have a chance to succeed, too.
Let’s speak about GAFAM
In 2020, women made up 28% to 42% of the GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft) workforce, consistent with self-reported data from Statista. More broadly, only 31% of IT employees are women, according to Gartner’s research.
The percentage of women within the United States labor pool has gradually climbed to 47 percent over the past decades but remains significantly lower within the tech sector.
*https://www.statista.com/chart/4467/female-employees-at-tech-companies/
According to the latest key findings of the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2021, gender gaps are more likely in sectors that require disruptive technical skills. For example, in Cloud Computing, women make up 14% of the workforce; in Engineering, 20%; and in Data and AI, 32%. While the eight job clusters typically experience a high influx of new talent, at current rates those inflows do not re-balance occupational segregation and transitioning to fields where women are currently underrepresented appears to remain difficult. For example, the current share of women in Cloud Computing is 14.2% and that figure has only improved by 0.2 percentage points, while the share of women in Data and AI roles is 32.4% and that figure has seen a mild decline of 0.1 percentage points since February 2018.
How to create a future for women in tech
As the tech industry booms, the hope is that opportunities will continue to grow for everyone.
Here are some ways to open doors for women in tech and help them advance their careers:
- Keep skills relevant and up to date. Technology-driven Skills Validation for Future Careers. Get Real Credentials for Real Skills.
- Reduce Your Hiring Costs, Upskill, and Certify Your Existing Workforce Instead. Upskilling and certifying your team has and will always be the most vital part of keeping your team productive and at the forefront of change.
- Quantifiable credentials, Smart adoption of technology, and the Validation promise. Knowledge Pillars develops task-based live-in-the-app certification exams for some of the fastest-growing major programming languages.
McKinsey’s analysis reaffirms the strong business case for both gender diversity and ethnic and cultural diversity in corporate leadership—and shows that this business case continues to strengthen. The most diverse companies are now more likely than ever to outperform their less diverse peers on profitability.
Moreover, we found that the greater the representation, the higher the likelihood of outperformance. Companies with more than 30 percent women executives were more likely to outperform companies where this percentage ranged from 10 to 30, and in turn, these companies were more likely to outperform those with even fewer women executives or none at all.
Knowledge Pillars strive for excellence. Our team offers over four decades of expertise in the EdTech industry.
We provide industry-leading live-in-the-app coding and web editing certification exams and practice tests. These significantly contribute to quality in IT education and career improvement aimed at K-12, college-level students, and industry professionals.
Knowledge Pillars boasts 50% female representation within its leadership team across CTO, CMO, and CPO roles.
“We are lucky to have 50% female representation in these strategic and essential C-level roles. They have contributed to building Knowledge Pillars from the ground up, making a difference in every decision we take to make Knowledge Pillars stronger and better. Women bring creativity, dynamism, hard-working attitude, and unique problem-solving capabilities to industries like ours where change and challenges are constant. They make our team better.” – Alessandro Macri’ CEO and Founder of Knowledge Pillars
Final thoughts
Certification recognizes that you have the professional skills and education matching standardized criteria for specific professional associations, companies, or independent organizations. They are used as industry standards and may be required for career advancement.
According to Certification Magazine, a substantial 49.4 percent of all Salary Survey respondents report that they use skills “learned or enhanced through certification” several times a day at their current jobs.
A further 40 percent rely on their certified skills either several times a week (28.9 percent) or several times a month (11.1 percent).
That leaves just 10.6 percent of respondents who reap a direct workplace benefit from certification only occasionally (8.8 percent) or rarely (1.8 percent).
71.6% of those surveyed either agree (43.9 percent) or strongly agree (27.7 percent) that getting certified has increased their ability to solve problems. 67% either agree (41 percent) or strongly agree (26 percent) that getting certified has improved workplace productivity.
Simply put, we encourage all women interested in embarking on a career in IT to get certified and stand out. Certifications can help put you on the map and drive your career in technology further!