According to an article published by the management consultancy firm McKinsey, many women find it challenging and quite stressful to be the only woman at the workplace. It might help if women working in the above-mentioned fields were more visible, just so everyone could see it is perfectly possible for women to be successful in such roles.
If prominent women in STEM were to share their journeys and challenges, they could become role models and advisors for future generations. They should also reflect on the mentorship and other forms of support they were given.
Gender diversity at the core of hiring
The tech world is still to a large degree male-dominated. According to McKinsey research, in the US the percentage of computing roles held by women has seen a considerable decline over the past 25 years. Start-ups that do well on gender diversity are those which devote extra resources to taking on diverse candidates from the very beginning.
Encourage entrepreneurship
In the US in 2018:
- All-male teams of founders received 85% of total venture capital investment
- All-women teams received just 2%
- Gender-neutral founding teams received 13%
This is the reason why women tend to perceive entrepreneurship as a riskier endeavour than males. It might be worth emphasising to women that an even greater risk is perhaps not trying to start a business at all.
What can also help is support of nonprofit social enterprises that:
- teach women tech skills (e.g. coding)
- help to make recruitment more female-friendly
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