Communications of the ACM
Abi Names Highest Scoring Organizations from 2016 Top Companies Program
Credit: Pairlosophy.com
The Anita Borg Institute (ABI), a nonprofit organization focused on the advancement of women in computing, has announced the 2016 Top Companies for Women Technologists Leadership Index. The national benchmark program named 25 organizations as leaders in recruiting, retaining, and advancing more women in technical roles. The winner will be announced in Houston on October 19 at the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing.
In its sixth year, Top Companies is a quantitative assessment that uses data supplied by participating companies and a rigorous statistical methodology to objectively score participants on a number of key metrics. This year, ABI evaluated 60 companies with more than 1.4 million U.S. employees, including 552,000 technologists across 10 industries, and found 25 companies that scored above the industry mean.
Leading Companies
All previous winners are included in this year's Index, including American Express, Bank of America, BNY Mellon, IBM, and Intel.
Reflecting the pervasive nature of technology today, more than three quarters (76 percent) of the Leadership Index are non-technology brands.
While companies in the Leadership Index have an average of 27,000 employees, the companies ranged in size from 700 employees to 180,000, demonstrating that organizations of all sizes can increase the participation of women in the technical workforce.
On average 47 percent of these companies' workforce were in technical roles demonstrating the growing importance of the technical workforce overall.
The 2016 Leadership Index includes Accenture, ADP LLC, Allstate, American Express, athenahealth, Bank of America, BNY Mellon, Capgemini, Capital One, Goldman Sachs, Google, Grubhub, IBM, Intel Corp., Intuit, Macys.com, Nationwide, New York Life, The New York Times, SAP, T. Rowe Price, Thomson Reuters, ThoughtWorks, USAA, and Visa Inc.
"The only way to drive change and improve how many technical roles are held by women is not through popularity contests, but through data, measurement, and accountability," says Telle Whitney, President and CEO of the Anita Borg Institute. "Top Companies gives the industry an independent apples to apples definition of the technical workforce, and a clear view of how current diversity efforts are driving change."
"Recently we reported the massive opportunity that improving gender diversity in the U.S. tech workforce represents — on the order of $320-to-$390 billion," says Andria Thomas, who leads research in gender and technology at Dalberg, a strategy advisory firm. "Making industry-wide progress on diversity will require gathering and sharing more and better diversity data. The Anita Borg Institute’s Top Companies for Women Technologists is an important step in that direction."
Compared to publicly released diversity data from companies where definitions vary, Top Companies provides a standard measurement of the representation of women technologists at entry, mid, senior, and executive levels, as well as the recruitment, retention, and promotion of women in technical roles. This year, the program piloted two new forms of measurement — programs and policies, and employee experience — to gain a deeper understanding of what makes a great workplace for women technologists. This included maternity and paternity leave, flex time, and leadership development programs. An insights report from the 2016 Top Companies program will also be announced in Houston on October 19 at the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing.
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