Bài viết của Hội đồng: Nghề nghiệp STEM và phụ nữ: Chúng ta có thể làm thêm nhiều điều gì?

Gerry Poirier is CEO and Founder of AngeLink, a social crowdfunding platform powered by women.

In recent years, we’ve seen a push to bring more women and people of color (POC) into STEM fields. But although industry-wide discrimination against women and minorities has been acknowledged, a lot of work remains to be done.

Thankfully, we’ve seen a proliferation of initiatives aiming to bring more girls and children of color into the stream. Many programs are focused on getting more kids interested in STEM subjects, offering them mentors, creating more scholarships and solving what was deemed to be a pipeline problem.

There have been changes but not enough. Even now, women make up a very small percentage of all the people getting a bachelor’s in engineering, computer and information sciences.

Moving into the workforce, we can see similar numbers in these fields. In computer and mathematical professions, women hold just 28% of all jobs. In engineering and architecture professions, the number falls to a meager 15.9%.

Look up tech CEOs on LinkedIn, and you’ll likely go through multiple pages before you come across a woman. And you’d be lucky to find a woman of color in the C-suite of a tech company. And when it comes to entrepreneurship, in 2021, just 39.9% of businesses were started by women.

However, it’s safe to say that there are more women and POC in tech than a decade ago. There are more women working as developers, project managers, UI/UX professionals, hardware engineers, product designers and in many other roles.

But they’re not CEOs, COOs, CTOs or founders.

Even now, women and POC who manage to break into STEM careers face a glass ceiling. They often also face significant differences in pay compared to their colleagues in similar roles. Men make an average of $15,000 more annually than women in tech. The difference is even starker when it comes to startup CEO compensation.

If you’re working in tech, you don’t need to see these numbers. All you have to do is look around.

The numbers stand out even more when you place them alongside the growth of women- and POC-led companies. These companies have faced hurdles and overcome difficult situations—and have typically produced good results. Studies have shown that women-led companies are likely to generate more growth than those led by their male counterparts.

These results should encourage more investors and venture capitalists to invest in women founders. But unfortunately, the numbers paint a sad picture.

During the recent tech layoffs, surveys have shown that nearly 70% of people laid off were women. And female startup founders received only 2.3% of total venture capital funding distributed in 2020.

Yes, we need to encourage more women into STEM careers. We need more mentorship and scholarship programs for women and people from minority and underserved communities to focus on science, technology, engineering and medicine. But at the same time, we should create an environment where they prosper once they’re there.

So, how can do we better?

We need to explore why women struggle to break through the glass ceiling, and we need to create support mechanisms for women and minorities to achieve much higher professional levels in the workplace.

There’s hope on the horizon to some extent in the form of communities for women, POC and LGBTQ groups in tech. Many organizations have started employee resource groups to support their minority employees.

What we need is to accelerate the growing trend of investing in women-owned startups and businesses. We can talk all day, every day, about the pipeline, but it’s time we put our money where our mouth is. And the numbers point to the fact that there’s a high return on this investment.

We can also guide women entrepreneurs toward alternate forms of funding. Research has shown that women and people of color struggle to secure the capital needed to start new businesses. But crowdfunding platforms rarely show such discrimination. Most backers or donors care about the returns and less about the founders or their backgrounds. Crowdfunding platforms like AngeLink, the startup that I lead, can play a role in helping women entrepreneurs get a leg up.

Education can also play a major role in opening doors for women when it comes to STEM. But more broadly, we need to dismantle systems that keep women out of leadership positions and entrepreneurship. The fact that women and people of color remain uncommon in the top levels of organizations shows that there are still barriers against them in STEM fields. We need to continue our work to break down the glass ceiling.

Organizations have to actively push women and POC to the top and in front of the mic. It has to be made clear that they aren’t just welcome but needed in these roles.

Conclusion

It’s simple: If we want to guide more women into STEM roles, it’s not enough that we help women get into initial STEM positions but that they can thrive in them. We need to show not just that there’s a place for women at the table but that there’s a strong and long-term career path for them once they get there.

This can lead to a virtuous cycle of attracting more diversity and equity for women to seek a highly successful STEM career path. And having more women in tech, engineering and science will benefit us all.

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