“Women hold up half the sky” in our culture and many others. Women get 60 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 50 percent of doctorates in the United States, for example. Something similar would seem to apply to the cutting-edge information technology business. There were certainly evidence of a movement toward some form of gender equality at one point.
Information technology, a cutting-edge business that “fancies itself the rising center of the world,”1 is America’s most dynamic economic sector. Information and American inventiveness “created the modern world” together. Information technology, on the other hand, is the industry that hires the fewest women. In addition to boosting women to high executive positions, information technology is the caboose. And when it comes to selecting women to business boards of directors, information technology is the locomotive.
Along with the glass cliff idea, the uneven success of women who have led Silicon Valley firms is another prediction of their eventual destiny as IT CEOs. This track record contains a slew of dreadful performances. The historical experiences of female CEOs along the road indicate how quickly trends and fads, no matter how fleeting, impact the business.
Conversations with female tech executives helped us understand why women face challenges in the industry. While research has long established that there is no difference in general intellect between men and women, we think that two major impediments impede women from reaching their full potential in STEM fields, which are essentially two sides of the same coin.
The first is women’s self-imposed limitations. Men and women appear to have an extraordinarily significant confidence gap. According to an internal Hewlett Packard research, women will only apply for a job if they satisfy all of the requirements, but males will only apply if they meet 60%. Furthermore, if a woman prioritizes her profession over her family, she is more likely to feel guilty, since tech jobs frequently entail long hours and the sacrifice of family time. “There’s not just a “glass ceiling,” but also a “sticky floor,” as Chang Meng, Director of BOSS Zhipin’s Career Science Lab, put it: “There’s not only a “glass ceiling,” but also a “sticky floor,” where women prefer to stay in positions for which they are overqualified.”
The social gender stereotype is the opposite side of the coin. Ma Yuling, the worldwide CTO of FreeWheel, was once questioned about her technical abilities due to her gender. Some academics may not want women in the lab, according to Merritt Moore, the “Quantum Ballerina,” because they are concerned that males would be sidetracked from achieving scientific advances. Jian Lili, Founder & CEO of MyTherapist (Jian Dan Xin Li), believes that in order to be successful, female entrepreneurs must occasionally act more masculinely. Many people also mentioned that women are traditionally expected to take care of housekeeping and childcare, which makes balancing family life with a rigorous STEM profession more difficult. Gender stereotypes are so firmly embedded that even women who advocate gender equality are subject to unconscious gender prejudices.
It is up to everyone of us to change this course. Because more women and girls in science, technology, engineering, and math are desperately needed in the globe. To construct a more egalitarian future, we need their views, talents, curiosity, and ideas. Women may be left behind if they are not participating in the development of new technology. Women and girls can make a difference not only for themselves, but for every woman and girl whose life may be impacted by their contributions – and for society as a whole – by pursuing the path less traveled in STEM.
