Pull the Plug on Patriarchy
As of August 2023, women hold 26.7% of technology industry employment in the U.S. while men hold the remaining 73.3% of these positions (Tech Report). It is no secret that women and non-binary people in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) field are brutally overshadowed by male influence, with men holding 3.7 million more tech jobs than women. This disparity could be seen at the 2023 Grace Hopper Celebration, an annual career expo in Orlando, FL exclusively for women and non-binary tech workers, attended by 30,000 people. It was a four-day event that cost upwards of $1300 to attend. At the entrance of the fair, the workers who wanted to participate filled out a form, which indicated their personal information, including their gender. The men in attendance lied on this form, selecting non-binary or female when they did not identify as either. Most of the men at the event were rude to the women and non-binary tech workers there by cutting lines and calling them misogynistic slurs. Many sponsors from large corporations, such as Apple, Amazon and Google, came to discuss job opportunities and hosted career workshops specifically targeted toward minorities. The expo is usually competitive with tens of thousands of annual attendees, and this year the access was more limited due to a surge of men overtaking the lines (National Public Radio). Although inclusivity was the main theme of the event, men should have been asked to leave the expo since women deserve increased access to tech jobs due to their underrepresentation in the industry. The presence of men and their disrespectful attitudes diffused the support system built between women and non-binary tech workers.
“The men who attended [completely disregarded] the context of the event,” senior Eshani Prasad said. “It is disheartening to see how women in STEM keep getting pushed off to the side. At [the expo], someone [should have] made it clear to the men that they should not have imposed rather than just letting them take opportunities that were not meant for them.”
A common misconception about inclusivity is that by encouraging minorities to participate and engage more than the majority, the roles will reverse, causing a never-ending cycle of imbalance. What many fail to realize is that providing women and non-binary tech workers with a safe space for more tech-related opportunities does not diminish men’s presence in the industry. At the moment, women and non-binary people continue to be a largely underrepresented presence in the STEM field, which contributes to a large number of them quitting their jobs. According to a report from Accenture, women are 50% more likely than men to drop tech roles before the age of 35, which is three times more than in other industries. This is due to the fact that women are less likely to obtain leadership roles than men within their respective companies, causing other minorities to feel underepresented. Seeing the lack of women and non-binary tech workers demotivates them and makes them less inclined to keep their current jobs.
“It definitely makes sense that women in lower-level positions would be discouraged from lack of representation,” senior Ashima Bhatia said. “If companies conducted a fair evaluation of both men and women considering that women will have less experience than men due to lack of representation and decreased employment, women would likely have more leadership roles in tech, which would slightly level the playing field.”
It was not right for the men to come to an event specifically targeted toward minorities in the tech industry and then put a larger spotlight on themselves rather than who it was originally intended for. The only way for women and non-binary people to hold an equivalent position to men in the industry is to foster an environment where they are given opportunities to network, find job prospects and most importantly, feel supported. An encouraging setting was present at the start of the expo when women in the lines were building each other up and offering words of advice and motivation to one another. This connection symbolized unity within a group of people who feel insecure within their job setting, and just when they started to feel more encouraged, they were overshadowed by the sweeping population of men at the event. It was very unsettling to women and non-binary tech workers, who came to the expo to find a job that is more accessible to men, just to be treated the same as they usually are by members of their industry. “I know exactly what it feels like to finally be comfortable in a certain environment, just for it to get disrupted by an unwanted force,” senior Lia Osipyan said. “That is probably what the women at the expo were going through. I also want to go into STEM, so it is heartbreaking to see how women constantly feel inferior in their own careers, [a place] that should be a safe space.”
