More than a week after the Academy Awards broadcast, people are still buzzing about Best Supporting Actress winner Patricia Arquette’s acceptance speech, punctuated with a poignant and resounding call for wage equality and equal rights for women.
Arquette’s rallying cry struck a chord with both audience members and viewers at home — a reaction shot of Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez whooping and clapping in agreement has since become an Internet meme. But more than providing a “GIF-able” moment, Arquette’s sentiments on the issue of wage inequality allude to a larger, more nuanced challenge faced by female professionals across all industries 45 years after Congress first began debating the Equal Rights Amendment.
The issue of the wage gender gape is especially close to my heart. In 2012, I created the non-profit organization Girls Who Code specifically to close the gender gap in technology and engineering. Why? Because despite the fact that women make up the majority of the general workforce, we comprise only 25 percent of technical jobs. Because we’re missing the mark on tapping into a diverse talent force: statistics show that only 2.7 percent of venture-backed companies have a woman at the helm, and African-Americans and Latino/as make up only 5 percent of employees at top-tier tech companies; less than 2 percent of VCs are people of color. The New York Times yesterday released analysis showing that for every woman CEO there are four men named John.
Last week, when pointing out how only four women are included in Forbes’s list of the top 100 venture investors in tech, Hillary Clinton remarked, “We are going backwards in a field that is supposed to be all about moving forward.”
I believe strongly that getting more women into STEM fields is the right place to start addressing this problem. Why? For starters, STEM jobs see a smaller gender-related wage gap than non-STEM jobs: 14 cents on every dollar versus the 21 percent gender-related wage disparity in non-technical industries.
Women are becoming the primary breadwinners in households across the United States at a quick clip. By educating, inspiring, and equipping young women of all backgrounds with the skills and resources to pursue academic and career opportunities in computing fields, we are incubating the multifaceted and incredibly diverse 21st century female workforce. The time has arrived to further develop their talents in what are by far the fastest-growing STEM verticals: technology and engineering.
Granted, empowering the next generation of innovators is no easy feat. But out of the thousands of participants who’ve excelled at our Girls Who Code programs most tell us that they believe learning how to program will lead to job security and a rewarding professional life. This optimism flies in the face of available statistics illuminating just how deeply flawed and sorely lacking our current education system is at equipping young women with the tools needed for the careers of the future.
By 2020, 1.4 million computer specialist jobs will be available in the U.S., and yet we’re only on pace to filling 29 percent of them with specialized graduates—a mere 3 percent of which will be women, even less of which are women of color. Women make up a smaller percentage of STEM degrees than they did nearly three decades ago. By exposing girls to tech careers through school, community-based programs and corporate internships, we can reverse that trend—and probably with a lot more speed and ease than waiting for lawmakers to legislate equality.
Girls should learn to code, program, design and engineer because this is where opportunities will be ample, financially viable, and impactful to modern society—and we simply can’t allow girls to be left behind. We need to galvanize young women to be curious about ideating and building products that problem-solve and make the world a better and more inclusive place. It’s in everyone’s best interest to make sure we equip them with the skills to do so.
Increasing the exposure and access young women have to STEM jobs and skills can no doubt be an effective component of any effort to close the gender-related wage gap. I know I’m inspired every day to change the world by the talented, ingenious, and driven young women we serve at Girls Who Code. They are going to code a better future for all of us.
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