Women ‘face bias in tech firms’
US, September 14, 2014
The tech industry is hurting itself and the US economy by limiting opportunities for women in the most innovative fields, according to a Stanford scholar.
Women are ready to take on key problems and challenges in technology, says Vivek Wadhwa, a technology entrepreneur and fellow with Stanford's Rock Centre for Corporate Governance. But when women go to venture capitalists seeking financing for their new start-ups, they are often treated differently than men, Wadhwa was quoted as saying by Stanford News.
When asked what can be done to provide more job opportunities for women in high technology, he said that the job opportunities are there but the problem is that because of conscious or unconscious bias women are excluded from these.
The boards of technology companies are predominantly male. When asked why there are so few women, CEOs say it is a pipeline problem, that there aren't enough women engineers.
But a significant proportion of the male board members of technology companies aren't engineers either. They have degrees in fields such physiology, English, marketing, finance – or no degrees at all. Women are held to a different standard, the research said.
“In the lower ranks of technology companies, you find young men doing most of the interviews. They often ask immature, childish questions that other boys are likely to answer best. Women feel intimidated and discouraged and walk away from these opportunities,” Wadhwa said. – TradeArabia News Service