NORTH IDAHO ALLIANCE: Women in Technology

According to an article in Forbes, gender equality remains a major issue in the corporate world, and women remain significantly underrepresented in the corporate pipeline.

Despite massive research confirming that companies are more profitable when they have more women in the C-suite, we still have gender gap in most companies. Diversity and inclusion cannot be part of a one-time campaign; rather, they are causes that require continuous work that needs to be developed, maintained and cultivated.

Information technology is one of the fastest-growing U.S. industries, and technical innovation will play a crucial role in almost every sector of our country's economy. We have more jobs in computer science than graduates available to fill those positions, and the number of women in the U.S. computing workforce will shrink in the next 10 years unless we take action right now. The underrepresentation of women in tech is not a new topic, and even though progress has been made, it is moving at an extremely slow pace, and this issue will become a fundamental economic challenge for the U.S. economy if unaddressed.

The tech world is still pretty much a man's world and some of the reasons include the lack of female mentors, gender inequality in STEM jobs, and not having enough hands-on experience with STEM subjects.

We need our young women to gravitate to this field and big tech companies know this. What they are finding is having a diverse workforce generates more revenue. Women, by our nature, think differently and this adds to a more robust product. The key to innovation is to draw young women into this field, and to do this we need more mentors, more women leaders and more educational programs ear marked to attract them. We need our local, state and national politicians to establish and promote financially accessible information technology education for young women if we wish to forge past other countries technology competitors to once again lead in the technology field.

The Women of Impact Leadership Roundtable February discussion was based on this hot topic of technology. Our speakers Erica Norris of fast Talk Social, a TikTok marketing firm in Spokane along with longtime social media expert Jamie Morgan and Facebook video producer Bretta Provost shared their insights on how to attract more women in this field and shared how they, as women based businesses, work to be successful in our ever changing fast paced information technology world.

NIA, The Women of Impact Leadership Roundtable meets once a month for a nine-month series, and we base our monthly agenda on the word IMPACTED. Next month “E” for Education. Save the date for the Annual Onward & Upward Women’s Conference on May 24, information at www.theniallaince.com.

Forbes credit by Elaine Montilla.

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Marilee Wallace, IOM, is president/CEO of the North Idaho Alliance Women of Impact.