Elena Panzera - 5 Novembre, 2018 - 4 ’ read

Women in tech: what about Imagicle.

Computer science, Equality, Tech Women, technology

…if Technology is still a male-dominated field? Well, yes sir, no doubt. And what does this depend on?

The seeds of resilience are planted in the way we process the negative events in our lives.

Sheryl Sandberg – Facebook COO

The problems that make difficult for women who work in male-dominated fields to gain advancement and respect have many causes, coming both from the past and the present. Some of these can be traced back to the scarcity of female mentors in the tech industry, but, most commonly, young girls are discouraged from pursuing STEM as early as elementary, even if, as reported in this article by The Guardian, research “converge on the idea that there is little to no difference in boys’ and girls’ average ability at Stem subjects”.

That’s too bad.

But do all tech companies prevent women from pursuing a tech career?

No sir, I can’t say that. Perhaps some of you have heard the name of some high profile in the tech scene. Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook since 2008, previously a vice-president at Google; Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo; Susan Diane Wojcicki, CEO of Youtube with a net worth of nearly $500 million.

But leaving aside the leading roles, there are other big players in the technological field that are committed to smoothing the gender gap within their workforce. As a beautiful Evia infographics shows, companies like Intuit and Salesforce have taken steps to address the gender pay gap and offer flexible work policies. They’ve actively invested in recruitment and retention of women and encouraged leadership development among female recruits.

And that’s brilliant.

We are programmed to crack the code.

HackerRank, a technology hiring platform, conducted an interesting research on 2018 women in tech. They surveyed over 14,000 professional software developers (nearly 2,000 of which were women) to identify trends in developer education, skills and hiring practices.

And guess what’s came out of it? Computer Science is growing in popularity with young women. In fact, it seems that young women today are 33% more likely to study computer science compared with women born before 1983.

But the good news is not over. The gender gap in age of learning to code is shrinking, and where there was a 20 percentage point gap between men and women over 35 who began coding before 16 years old, today that gap has shrunk down to just 7 percentage points.

Moreover, the most common programming languages that women say they have proficiency in are Java, Javascript, C, C++, and Python, which, according to HackerRank 2018 Developer Skills Report, are the exact same languages that are most in-demand for roles across front-end, back-end, and full-stack.

Yes, you heard that right, sir.

And what about Imagicle?

First of all, there’s something you should know.
1. Imagicle develops and produces software (which makes it a technological company).
2. I am a woman (and listen up: I’m not the only one!)

Is it a happy island? Yes, it is. But the only way to make it no longer an exception but the norm is to start from the good things that already exist and make them known.
It’s not only about sharing good labor policies – option of working remotely, flexible working hours, maternity leave, promotion of respectful behaviors – although important in itself, but something subtler, a general attitude. Such as the fact that having a family is not something to which you are (more or less tacitly) discouraged by your managers, but good news to share and celebrate all together; or again, the fact that gender is never an obstacle to the expression of creativity and professional opinions or to advancement of role.

If it seems obvious, know that the corporate environment is still one of the main causes of gender inequality. Badass researches like Women in the Workplace 2018 – which, since 2015, surveyed 462 companies employing almost 20 million people – state that women “receive less support from managers” and “this is a problem because manager support is tied to positive outcomes like higher promotion rates and a stronger desire to stay with a company”.

All right, now. Enough talking. What was that? “Be the change you wish to see in the world”? Right!

So, ladies programmers of software, engineers, developers, IT, what are you waiting for?

Make your way into the tech: apply here.

We are slowly colonizing almost every department with positions of any level, from interns to team leaders: administration and back office, sales, marketing, advanced services, the legal department.

We are just waiting for some of you out there to colonize the R&D department.