Communications of the ACM
Why Women Quit Tech
Why are so many highly qualified and experienced women turning their backs on the tech sector that needs them?
A report published last year by Accenture and Girls Who Code found that 50 percent of women who go into technology roles will leave them before the age of 35.
A systems integration specialist who recently quit her role at an enterprise technology employer said her former employer doesn't conduct exit interviews. It doesn't find out why female employees are leaving and what it could do to retain them. Technology employers cannot expect to be taken seriously when claiming to want to increase the numbers of women working for them when they actively choose not to listen to the ones who are leaving.
Women working in technology experience day-to-day microaggressions like being talked over in meetings, patronized, or simply ignored so regularly that it's become a backdrop to the workplace. A lack of understanding shown by predominantly male tech employers when it comes to domestic responsibilities contains an element of truth. The expectation of 24/7 availability tends to punish women more than men, and undoubtedly contributes to many women deciding that tech is no longer their preferred career option. Tech pays people well, but it often pushes them to extremes.
"It's very confrontational," says a former software engineering leader who has left the industry. "Nobody is allowed to have a life outside of work so you can do things at whatever hour and at the last minute. A lot of people at work are on the ragged edge of going crackers, frankly. In the end for me the money wasn't enough."
From Computing
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