Ending the Exodus: Why Women Should Stay in Computing

This is the second part of my portfolio for UWP1, a writing course at UC Davis. It is a research paper that aims to raise the readers’ awareness of a conceptual problem.

For the first part of my portfolio, click here.

Raisa Gandi Putri

UWP 1 - Research Paper

Professor Megan Arkenberg

September 15, 2017

Ending the Exodus: Why Women Should Stay in Computing

Introduction

Today, women are not participating in the computing industry as much as they used to. The percentage of women in computing has plummeted in the past two decades - from 35% in 1990 to 26% in 2015 (Goodnight, “Solving the Equation"). Additionally, women’s quit rate in computing is high - Hewlett et. al claim that over 52% of women working in technology companies leave their jobs before retirement age (1). What explains this mass exodus? Author and New York Times contributor Dan Lyons points out that the tech industry is dominated with “bro culture”, which he defines as “a world that favors young men at the expense of everyone else” (“The Start-Ups They Ruin”). As a result, cases of sexual harassment are not uncommon. For instance, Susan Fowler, former site reliability engineer at Uber, left the company because of sexual harassment (“Very Strange Year at Uber”). With the prevalence of “bro culture” and sexual harassment in the computing industry, it is not a surprise that women continue to drop out.

At the same time that women are leaving tech in unprecedented numbers, the tech industry is growing exponentially. What some have called the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) - the “[digitisation] of the manufacturing sector” - is taking place right now (Baur and Wee), and the opportunity cost of losing women in this revolution is high. If women had stayed in computing, what extra benefits would they contribute to Industry 4.0?

As a female computer science (CS) college student who nearly changed majors, and having known female peers who dropped out of CS, I was drawn to find out what large-scale effects would occur if women stayed in computing. Hence, I studied the consequences on a national scale as well as on a corporate level. I found that attracting and retaining women in computing will increase the supply of skilled labour, in addition to reducing the evident and increasing gap between men and women in the field. By increasing labour skill supply in the industry, they benefit their companies as well as the consumers of technology.

Shortage of Skilled Labour in Computing

A shortage of skilled labour is common in rapidly growing sectors. Currently, the tech industry has a high demand for skilled labour, but there are not enough workers to satisfy that demand. In 2017, there are 493,270 open computing jobs in the U.S., but only 42,969 CS graduates entered the labour force in 2016 (Code.org). In other words, there are approximately eleven times more job openings than job applicants in computing in the U.S. alone. One major cause of this labour shortage is obvious and treatable: there is a lack of women participation in the industry. As Linda D. Hallman, CEO of American Association of University Women, had mentioned, “By 2022, the United States will need 1.7 million more engineers and computing professionals. Women — who make up more than half the population — are still significantly underrepresented in these fields.” Consequently, a persistent labour shortage would occur, and one way to combat this shortage is to encourage women to enter and stay in computing.

Innovation and Profits

Labour shortage in an industry causes a chain of repercussions. With a shortage of skilled labour, potential development in the computing industry would be hampered. As the tech industry is projected to grow quickly, the shortage of skilled labour might not catch up with the increase in demand for tech services, hence production would not be as efficient. To solve this problem, tech firms should hire workers from different backgrounds and genders, thus promoting diversity in the workplace and contributing positively to a firm’s success. Herring claims that diversity increases a firm’s creativity and ability to solve problems, which contributes to their performance (220). Herring further explains that diversity enables firms to “think outside the box by bringing previously excluded groups inside the box” (220). Therefore, fostering a diverse work environment correlates positively to innovation. This is especially useful for the computing industry, which revolves around innovation: creating technology that solves current problems. Also, a diverse workforce pays off in the form of higher creativity, which gives firms an edge when creating new products.

Given the current gender gap in computing, companies should consider attracting more women if they want to be more innovative. A study by Ostergaard et al. concluded that “firms with a more balanced gender composition are more likely to innovate than firms with a high concentration of one gender” (508). More specifically, gender diversity contributes to radical innovation, which Cristina et al. define as those that “involve drastic changes”, whereas incremental innovation involves “improvements in products or production processes” (151). Furthermore, Cristina et al. claim that gender diversity “generates certain dynamics within the team” that foster radical innovation (158). Thus, gender diversity increases the likelihood of radical innovation and the creation of original products.

If we now turn to business success, the link between gender diversity and innovation becomes clear: as gender diversity contributes to innovation, it also affects how well a firm is doing. Including women in the production process has a positive return: for instance, adding women into corporate boards will increase the average return on equity by almost three times (Ernst & Young 4). Additionally, Herring explains that gender diversity contributes to an “[increase in] sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits”, thus “[offering] a direct return on investment and promising greater corporate profits and earnings” (219). Thus, gender diversity has the potential to reap the more tangible measures of business success. Moreover, a study by Herring found that the average revenue of firms with low gender diversity are around $45.2 million, compared with “$299.4 million for those with medium levels and $644.3 million for those with high levels of diversity” (215). Apart from increasing a firm’s creativity, gender diversity has been proven to increase the firm’s business standing. Thus, companies that increase their gender diversity may increase their sales, which raises their revenue.

Benefits to the Industry and End Users

As mentioned above, a firm’s level of innovation is correlated with high labour diversity. Innovation is not only beneficial for the firm; it also creates a positive impact on the economy. To begin with, knowledge is a public good, which is defined as a good or service provided to all members of society without profit. As Mankiw explains, knowledge is a public good because “[o]nce one person discovers an idea,” Mankiw explains, “the idea enters society’s pool of knowledge and other people can freely use it”. A company with diverse employees tends to increase its innovation and research & development (R&D), which suggests an increase in the file for patents, which allows knowledge to be accessible to public . Once the firm has created a product it deems groundbreaking, it can apply for a patent, and if the government approves, the patent gives the inventor or firm “a property right over [their] invention, turning [their] new idea from a public good into a private good”, for a limited time (Mankiw). Since a patent allows for a temporarymonopoly of knowledge, the knowledge will eventually be available for the public domain for other firms to build on. The ability for firms to file for patents not only encourages other firms to engage in R&D; it also increases competition amongst firms and improves products for consumers.

With more competition, the level of innovation among firms will rise. This innovation will ensure the creation of new products, and when these new proucts are created by women, it will benefit other women. Women are united by their biological similarities, which supports the idea that they have similar spending patterns. Bridget Brennan, CEO of marketing consultancy Female Factor, says that women worldwide have similar brain structures and hormone levels. The similarities in hormone levels influence women’s spending patterns and create a noticeable pattern: a study by Durante et al. concludes that “product choice is influenced by hormonal factors”, with women choosing different products at different stages in the ovulation cycle (929). If firms have knowledge about this pattern, they should now have a head start when trying to market products to women.

The similarity in women’s biology and the trend in their spending patterns indicate predictability, which should further convince firms to hire women employees to cater products to women customers . Moreover, compared to men, women now have more influence on the purchase of goods and services, including technology. Globally, women drive consumer spending as they make purchasing decisions both for themselves as well as for others. By 2028, Boston Consulting Group predicts that women will control about 75% of consumer spending worldwide (Ernst & Young 2). Similarly, women’s powerful purchasing decisions also affect their consumption of consumer electronics (CE). Parks Associates points out that women’s consumer decisions amount to 51% of the purchase of CE products (“Parks Associates research”). The similarities in women’s consumption behaviour are also reflected in their use of social media. Compared to men, women are relatively more active on social media: 83% of female Internet users are active on Facebook, compared to 75% of male users, and the Pew Research Center survey of social media usage found that “female internet users are more likely to use Instagram than men (38% vs. 26%)” (Greenwood et al. 2016”). This not only shows similar behaviour in technology usage; females potentially use social media to market products to a wider audience. Therefore, given women’s control on consumer spending, similar trends in technology use, and dominance on social media, firms should prioritise them not just in marketing, but also in creating their products.

Given the similarities in women’s use of technology and their marketing power, firms should keep women in mind when creating new products. Unfortunately, a majority of women consumers feel underserved. A study by Sayre and Silverstein found that “despite the remarkable strides in market power [...] that they have made in the past century, they still appear to be undervalued in the marketplace”. Hence, one possible remedy is to include women in the production process, even as programmers.. Additionally, women can contribute to consumers by being entrepreneurs. This comes back to gender diversity, which not only increases innovation, but also ensures that women’s perspectives in spending and consumption are accounted for during the production process, supporting the idea that women producers should serve women consumers.

A Case Study with Construction

Clearly, women bring many advantages to the tech industry, but it is also important not to lose sight of the ways gender inequality disadvantages the field. As we have seen, gender inequalty leads to a shortage of skilled labuor. A specific ocurence of skilled labour shortage occurred in the UK’s construction industry, where the lack of skilled labour led to unintended consequences. According to Agapiou et al., the construction activity in the UK increased rapidly during the 1980s, resulting in a “sudden but short-lived boom accompanied by skill shortages” (149). The skill shortages led to a long-lasting recession, which caused employees to leave all sections of the industry, many of whom left the industry permanently (Agapiou et al, 149). MacKenzie et al. claims that construction firms were “poaching labour from each other, leading to inflationary rises in the cost of construction”, a primary consequence of the shortage of skilled labour (854). In other words, a shortage of skilled labour resulted in a higher cost of production. An increase in the cost of production generally leads to an increase in the prices of the (construction) services sold to consumers. Therefore, according to the law of demand, consumers would demand fewer such services, worsening the recession in the construction industry.

In light of this situation, researchers proposed to increase the quantity skilled labour in the construction industry. In 1989, “only 1.6% of the [Construction Industry Training Board (CITB)] apprentice intake was female” (Agapiou, 153). This meant that there had been a pool of untapped resources. Meanwhile, during the recession, the construction industry was expected to grow by an average of 3% per year until 2001, further worsening the shortage of skilled labour in the industry (Agapiou, 149). With this in mind, construction firms needed to hire more of these untapped labour resources to cope with the rise in demand for construction services. Thus, MacKenzie et al. suggest a remedy to this problem: in order to raise or sustain the quantity of workers entering the industry, construction employers must be “actively encouraged to […] draw from all labour sources irrespective of construction-related experience, age, gender, ethnic or social background” (861). With more workers entering the industry, including female workers, the quantity of skilled labour would catch up to meet growing demand and growth in the construction industry. Thus, hiring and encouraging more women to work in construction would decrease the labour shortage and benefit the industry.

The Consequences in Computing

Today, the computing industry is experiencing a case of skilled labour shortage similar to that of construction. In both cases, there is a lack of women participation: there exists a persistent gender divide between men and women in computing, and if nothing is done about it, it may get worse.

Women are set to gain very few jobs in computing over the next three years. Women will lose 370,000 jobs in two male-dominated job families - Manufacturing and Production, and Construction and Extraction - but are predicted to gain “little more than 100,000 jobs in [...] Engineering and Computer and Mathematical functions if current gender gap ratios persist [...] — nearly one new STEM job per four jobs lost for men, but only one new STEM job per 20 jobs lost for women” (“The industry gender Gap” 6). As was the case with construction, there exists a gender gap in employment. In the computing industry, this has consequences for women, as well as for computing firms. Furthermore, if the gender gap in computing persists, and emerging roles in computing far surpass the rate at which women are entering the industry, then women are “at risk of losing out on tomorrow’s best job opportunities while aggravating hiring processes for companies due to a restricted applicant pool and reducing the diversity dividend within the company” (“The industry gender Gap” 6). As a result, gender inequality in computing harms women’s job prospects, and takes a toll on companies and the industry, which impedes innovation in Industry 4.0.

Despite the repercussions of women’s exit from computing, their exodus is still far from over. Yet, their exit is justified - with the overpowering male dominance and harassment towards females in the workplace, the “bro culture” is not doing any good to women and the computing industry. If the computing industry wants to see more growth in Industry 4.0, they should build a wall to end the exodus, but at the same time, allow new and skilled females to enter and share fresh ideas. The females, together with the “bros”, form a powerful combination: as a diverse team, they can create novel technology for consumers. Moreover, women will not just contribute to their firms; their presence will also benefit the computing industry and the economy.

Works Cited

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Díaz-García, Cristina, et al. “Gender diversity within R&D teams: Its impact on radicalness of innovation”. Innovation: Organization & Management, vol 15, no. 2, 2013, pp. 149-160. doi: 10.5172/impp.2013.15.2.149.

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