Why So Few Women Break Through Tech’s Bro Culture – Bloomberg

Silicon Valley prides itself on its progressive views on climate change, same-sex marriage, transgender rights and other cultural issues. Why does it have such trouble with gender equality?

Source: Why So Few Women Break Through Tech’s Bro Culture – Bloomberg

This is a very interesting article to read. Technical communications is probably considered a STEM-related field in that, for many, there are science, tech, and engineering aspects of their jobs. It’s thought that women actually dominate this field more than men, although I don’t have the stats to back up that rumor–I know I’ve heard it. With the STC, the top leadership is definitely dominated by women, which is a good counterpoint to the rest of the STEM world. But I do wonder if there are still pay discrepancies between male and female technical communicators, and whether there are still biases against female technical communicators in the STEM fields at large. It seems to me that while technical communications may lead the way in gender equality, I don’t know of proof that this is, indeed, the case. I wonder if it also affects different aspects of tech comm. For example, are there more male or female UX/UI designers and writers? Are there more female or male content strategists? How about API writers?

I don’t know the answers. I wish I did. I just know that where I am, and from my experience, women still have a ways to go, and thankfully, tech comm is one of the more progressive fields, from my view, in terms of gender equality–or at least making it a field much more so.

What do you think? Include your comments below.

–TechCommGeekMom

Author: TechCommGeekMom

Danielle M. Villegas is a technical communicator who currently employed at Cox Automotive, Inc., and freelances as her own technical communications consultancy, Dair Communications. She has worked at the International Refugee Committee, MetLife, Novo Nordisk, BASF North America, Merck, and Deloitte, with a background in content strategy, web content management, social media, project management, e-learning, and client services. Danielle is best known in the technical communications world for her blog, TechCommGeekMom.com, which has continued to flourish since it was launched during her graduate studies at NJIT in 2012. She has presented webinars and seminars for Adobe, the Society for Technical Communication (STC), the IEEE ProComm, TCUK (ISTC) and at Drexel University’s eLearning Conference. She has written articles for the STC Intercom, STC Notebook, the Content Rules blog, and The Content Wrangler as well. She is very active in the STC, as a former chapter president for the STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter, and is currently serving on three STC Board committees. You can learn more about Danielle on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/daniellemvillegas, on Twitter @techcommgeekmom, or through her blog. All content is the owner's opinions, and does not reflect those of her employers past or present. View All Posts

One thought on “Why So Few Women Break Through Tech’s Bro Culture – Bloomberg”

It’s a complex question. I don’t know the answers either, but I can add a couple of data points: the male-to-female ratio for membership in STC — which we can reasonably assume reflects the profession as a whole — has been running about 40-to-60 percent for at least the last 10 years. In the company where I work, two-thirds of our InfoDev group (including the manager) is female; the large majority of the engineering, customer-support, and marketing groups we work with are male.

I’d love to know if women’s pay in tech comm is equal to men’s, but I’m pretty sure STC’s annual salary survey doesn’t break it out by gender. Perhaps it should.

A final thought: What if every male manager in Tech were forced to watch the movie “Hidden Figures”? It might open a few eyes.

Larry Kunz says:

June 7, 2017 at 5:16 PM

It’s a complex question. I don’t know the answers either, but I can add a couple of data points: the male-to-female ratio for membership in STC — which we can reasonably assume reflects the profession as a whole — has been running about 40-to-60 percent for at least the last 10 years. In the company where I work, two-thirds of our InfoDev group (including the manager) is female; the large majority of the engineering, customer-support, and marketing groups we work with are male.

I’d love to know if women’s pay in tech comm is equal to men’s, but I’m pretty sure STC’s annual salary survey doesn’t break it out by gender. Perhaps it should.

A final thought: What if every male manager in Tech were forced to watch the movie “Hidden Figures”? It might open a few eyes.