The Business of Tech podcast updates our Diversity Report of IT leadership each quarter. Across 300 IT services-focused companies with three thousand nine hundred thirty-one leaders, 89.3% are White this quarter. 20.8% are female. These numbers are nearly identical to those last quarter.
An additional set of data to report on this quarter. We examined the CRN Channel Chiefs for 2023, which contains 563 humans. In this sample set, roughly 96% are white, and 24% are female.
Let’s tell more of the story here.
According to recent research from Info-Tech Research Group, black professionals working in the tech industry are less satisfied than their colleagues and often face different barriers. The survey finds that only 23% of Black respondents feel very satisfied in their current role, compared to 34% of all other professionals. Black respondents were 55% more likely than all other professionals to report that they had no career advancement or promotion opportunities. The top three barriers to career advancement, according to Black respondents, are microaggressions (54%), racism (50%), and gender-based bias (39%), while all other respondents cite the top barriers as gender-based bias (45%), microaggressions (34%), and racism (23%).
According to a recent study, Bloomberg Law is reporting that corporate diversity roles have been eliminated at a greater rate than other positions as companies seek to lower headcount and costs amid stubbornly high inflation and rumblings of a possible recession.
The relative representation of women in technical roles declined between 2018 and 2022, according to LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Company data.
Nearly one-third of women in technical and engineering roles at work is often the only woman in the room, according to a survey of 40,000 employees and 333 organizations employing more than 12 million people.
In data from Catalyst, a women’s advocacy group, About 51% of women in marginalized racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. and four other countries said they’d experienced racism or discrimination at their current workplace. Women with darker skin tones were far likelier to say they’d experienced racism at work.
Every time I look at the employment data, I see how tight the job market is for technical talent. And every time we look at this data – a measurement of how businesses invest in their people –we come up short. Want to keep people? Companies have to invest. The top-line data I researched on leadership is low because of the rest of the data explored here – a lack of investment in making the workplace work for everyone.
And that’s why we care – there continue to be opportunities to be different.
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