Woman, you have come a long way, but the tech industry still is a different ball game

The most influential firms in the tech industry are led by men like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos. The reason why women find this arena still a male preserve, so to speak, could perhaps be the long-held perception, rightly or wrongly, that women and technology were not made for each other. Though women have managed to break into the sector as employees, breaking into positions of power and leadership appear still some distance away. It is recently that tech firms are now focusing on gender diversity and inclusion, and that is opening the industry to more women.

Take the top five powerful tech companies of the world — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft – all are led by men and women form only 34.4 percent of the average workforce in these companies.

The ongoing pandemic has only widened the gap between men and women, as the latter come under increasing pressure to balance their personal and professional lives. Shuchi Nijhawan, Chief HR Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer, Eka Software Solutions, traced her own travails and travel across the tech industry in conversation with ETHRWorld and said women often are victims of an unconscious bias at the workplace and have to work double as hard as men to prove themselves.

Apart from the professional work stress, women have to face toxic “bro culture” in the workplace, and also, they are victims of an unconscious bias that erects a barrier between women and their progress to manager-level positions.

Drawing from her own experiences of gender inequalities at the workplace, Nijhawan said, “I see women all over the world, across levels but especially in leadership roles, work twice as hard as their male counterparts to prove they are of significant worth. I am no exception to this rule. What’s worthy to note is that women also hold themselves to very high and exacting standards. Along with systemic change, there is the need for a mindset change, among people and more importantly, among women themselves.”

“Easy dismissal of opinions and ideas, and mansplaining are some of the challenges that I have faced. These challenges lead you to question your own selves at times, because of all the systemic push-back you receive,” she added.

Nijhawan said a bias gets generated against women due to maternity breaks, their ability to work and to be the way they are.

Recently, Indian-origin women techies took the centre stage as Apple unveiled its next line-up of products, including an all-powerful MacBook Pro with new M1 chips, next-generation AirPods, and other products and services.

This is an exciting time for women in the tech industry as the decade-long trends of stereotyping women are slowly getting eradicated. New initiatives focused on the advancement of women in technology with changing ideologies are coming up, Nijhawan said.

A 2021 “Women in Tech Report” showed that Covid-19 proved worse for women, saddled as they are with household responsibilities and work-life during remote work. For instance, 57 percent of women felt burnout at work compared to 36 percent of men. They are also twice as likely compared to men to lose their jobs in the ongoing pandemic.

“I will say this though, that because of Covid-19, it has been a few steps backward with nearly 2 million women looking to quit their jobs, due to the excessive personal pressures this has put on their families,” asserted Nijhawan.

The report suggested mentorship opportunities, flexible scheduling, unconscious bias training, and providing maternity and paternity leave as potential solutions for dealing with the increasing gender gap in the tech industry.

Nijhawan stressed the need for reskilling and upskilling women employees, crafting international leadership programmes to give them exposure to different roles with different micro-cultures in an organization, and creating opportunities based on skills that an employee displayed in the past. Women should be given a certain business opportunity and be allowed to grow, she added.

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This article was first published on The Economic Times.