Our country has had a long and tiresome fight with gender inequality. The tech industry, specifically, has continued to neglect using an intelligent and capable workforce to its full potential. Before the pandemic, studies showed that female identifying tech professionals were being paid lower salaries than their male counterparts (Perry, 2020). Since the pandemic hit, we suspect that it has affected certain groups of people disproportionately, dependent on things like gender, race, socio-economic status, and more. In this blog, we will specifically look into how COVID-19 has affected inequality towards women in the tech industry. We will review what women in the tech industry are facing during the pandemic, potential solutions in creating a more inclusive and diverse work environment, and why it’s important to address issues of gender inequality now rather than later.

The coronavirus creates new challenges at home for women in the tech industry. Many large technology firms, including Google and Microsoft, have closed their offices in favor of having their employees work from home for the foreseeable future (Stewart, 2020). With approximately half of students learning online as well, women in many cases will see their work duty and childcare collide (Liesman, 2020). Having to look after children during work hours will undoubtedly decrease the efficiency of work. This could have damaging long term effects on a woman’s career. It can take much longer to complete the same tasks in a home environment. This can lead to burnout from workers who feel they are working twice as hard for the same pay. While these issues could also affect men, women in the United States tend to have more childcare and domestic responsibilities. Women are also more likely than men to be married to another professional, meaning, women will be more likely to split home office space with their partner (Jolly, 2014). Because of this, women will struggle more often than men in creating a personal, distraction-free work space. This, as well as childcare responsibilities, is a recipe for distraction which can lead to inefficiency. When employers don’t see the barriers women face at home, inefficiency may be seen as laziness or lack of skill compared to their male coworkers.

Since the inception of the workplace, there has been gender inequality. During this unprecedented time, a pandemic has shed light on an issue that has been evident for years. Focusing on the tech industry, women are 1.6 times more likely to be laid off then men since the start of the virus (Fox, 2020). This issue stems from a history of problems in the fight against gender equality. For example, women having less seniority in companies than men. This lack in seniority makes their jobs more volatile (Kalev, 2020). This spirals into greater inequality and does not allow for an environment conducive to stability and growth. The pandemic did not create this divide. It has instead revealed what has been lurking and what needs to be changed. The regressive effects that this pandemic could have on women in the tech industry could be detrimental to the progressive work done in the past. Although this is disheartening, firms can take action now to prevent this backsliding into greater gender inequality.

After Covid-19, there is opportunity to develop a new culture and make new strides toward equality. Forbes found that 37% of women vs. 28% of men across industries have been laid-off due to COVID-19 (Fox, 2020). When these firms are ready to rehire, the firm has a chance to hire more women into their workforce. This process needs to start with how recruiters pick candidates. It is important for recruiters to welcome individual differences and see diversity as essential to an organization’s productivity (Hofhuis et al., 2016). If a recruiter views the differences among candidates to be unwanted, these candidates will not be hired. These unwanted biases can be the reason why women are hired at lesser rates. Along with this, the fight for representation of women in the tech industry also needs to happen internally. Upper management can implement policies that allow women to be successful in their positions and feel supported by their company. A firm can create a new work culture by tracking data and taking action (Deepa, 2020). Tracking data is important because it shows who’s being affected by company policy and what exactly is happening to these individuals. Upper-level management should especially pay attention to varying levels of layoff rates, who specifically are being laid off,  and at pressure that may exist in employees’ work and family life. This can be telling for what specific groups or gender a firm favors. The second step is to take action by creating policy that specifically boosts equality in the workplace. This can look like having ways to anonymously report harassment, paid pregnancy and parental leave, or requiring that all levels of management in a firm has a diverse gendered team. Policy implemented to change the culture within a firm can be beneficial for years to come. It is of utmost importance for managers to eliminate all gender inequalities within a firm. Not doing so can have detrimental effects on the tech industry in the long-run.

For far too long, management seeking to create workplace equality between men and women was simply a box to check and a task to be hurried through for fear of retaliation. With women’s and civil rights movements in recent years, we’re seeing an unprecedented shift from performative business measures to an inherent desire for equality between sexes. Tech industry managers are finally waking up to the innumerable benefits of closing the gender gap in their firms. As aforementioned, however, COVID-19 has been a huge blow to decades of efforts to specifically level the playing field for women in technology. While the country still flounders in its battle with a global pandemic, management would be foolish not to analyze COVID’s disproportionate, lasting effect on women. Our advice? Begin organizing gender inclusive plans for workplace recovery and the aftermath of coronavirus as soon as possible. To be sure, various managerial teams nationwide would find our research coherent but what will separate the mediocre from the excellent will be those that combat the virus’ lasting impact immediately. Consider the frightening implications of women failing to reenter the technology industry after this pandemic. For nine months now, women in technology have been asked to work from home where they are bombarded with the needs of their partners, children, extended family, and roommates. In five years, America will still be reeling from how COVID changed the way women work and if companies fail to take decisive action now, they will do extensive damage to their gender compositions. A rich, gender inclusive workforce is veritably better suited to identifying contemporary problems and generating creative solutions. When people with diverse backgrounds and genders are included in both managerial and employee roles, the product becomes greater than the sum of its individual parts. Ultimately, more and more tech managers are realizing that uniformity silences innovation.

References

Deepa Mahajan,  . (2020, September 16). Don’t Let the Pandemic Set Back Gender Equality. Retrieved November 04, 2020, from https://hbr.org/2020/09/dont-let-the-pandemic-set-back-gender-equality

Dwyer, S., Richard, O. C., & Chadwick, K. (2003). Gender diversity in management and firm          performance: The influence of growth orientation and organizational culture. Journal of Business Research, 56(12), 1009-1019. doi:10.1016/s0148-2963(01)00329-0

Fox, M. (2020, May 13). 4 Ways COVID-19 Has Negatively Impacted Women In Tech. Retrieved November 04, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/meimeifox/2020/05/13/4-ways-covid-19-has-negatively-imp

Hofhuis, J., van der Zee, K. I., & Otten, S. (2016). Dealing with differences: the impact of perceived diversity outcomes on selection and assessment of minority candidates. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(12), 1319–1339. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.wwu.edu/10.1080/09585192.2015.1072100

Hunt, V., Layton, D., & Prince, S. (2015, February 2). Diversity Matters. New York; McKinsey   & Company.

Jolly, S., Griffith, K. A., DeCastro, R., Stewart, A., Ubel, P., & Jagsi, R. (2014). Gender differences in time spent on parenting and domestic responsibilities by high-achieving young physician-researchers. Annals of internal medicine, 160(5), 344–353. https://doi.org/10.7326/M13-0974

Liesman, S. (2020, August 11). Half of U.S. elementary and high school students will study virtually only this fall, study shows. Retrieved November 18, 2020, from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/11/half-of-us-elementary-and-high-school-students-will-study-virtually-only-this-fall-study-shows.html

Perry, T. S. (2020). Black tech professionals are still paid less than their white colleagues: And women make less than their male colleagues, regardless of racial identity – [Spectral Lines]. IEEE Spectrum, 57(8), 4. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.wwu.edu/10.1109/MSPEC.2020.9150538

Stewart, A. (2020, October 22). Microsoft is extending its remote-work policy to July 2021 ‘at the earliest’. Retrieved November 18, 2020, from https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-extending-remote-work-to-july-2021-2020-10

Created by Taliah Coe, Nicole Crook, Matthew Hillis, Caven Sperry and Joshua Soto