Tech's Glass Ceiling Looks Stronger Than Ever -- But Companies Aren't Telling

Though the tech sector prides itself on disruption, innovation, and a total disregard for the status quo, there's one part of it that appears impervious to change: the glass ceiling.

Even as other traditionally male-dominated sectors, such as financial services industry, have diversified their ranks by adding more female leaders, the tech industry has lagged behind in admitting women to top roles, as well as tracking their progress in the workplace, according to a Thomson Reuters report examining changes in gender equality between 2005 and 2010.

Tech companies have been worse than firms in other sectors at monitoring the number of women they employ, which makes analyzing changes in gender diversity "almost impossible," writes Thomson Reuters' André Chanavat in his analysis. Just nine tech companies out of 254 shared data on the share of their total workforce and management team that was female in 2005 and 2010. CNN Money's Julianne Pepitone previously highlighted this dearth of data, noting that more than a dozen of Silicon Valley's biggest firms, including Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Google, declined to offer data on the diversity of their workforce, or ignored CNN Money's request to do so.

Still, from what data was available to Thomson Reuters, the situation doesn't look good and the Silicon Ceiling looks as robust as ever -- if not more so.

"[W]hile there is only a relatively limited pool of data available from the technology sector, it nonetheless appears to signal that these companies have made less progress at helping their employees smash through the glass ceiling," Thomson Reuters' report reads.

The company's analysis suggests that the frequency with which women enter management positions in tech firms is actually declining. This was true for Intel, where the share of female managers dropped from 30 percent in 2005 to 15 percent in 2010.

Compare this chart for the tech sector...

via Thomson Reuters

...with this one showing female managers and employees in the financial services sector:

via Thomson Reuters
Healthcare and consumer goods companies boast the highest share of female managers -- 34 percent, in both cases, in 2010 -- while technology firms lag behind with women in just 15 percent of top leadership roles.

So why does this matter? Diversifying a company's management team makes good fiscal sense, and companies with a greater number of female managers (30 percent or more) have delivered better returns during economic downturns, Thomson Reuters concluded.

"Companies that are ahead of their peers when breaking through the glass ceiling tend to have share prices that outperform, particularly in tough market conditions," Chanavat writes.

These results concur with findings from Catalyst, a nonprofit focused on issues related to women in the workplace. Catalyst's study tracking return on sales, return on invested capital and return on equity found that companies with at least three female board directors delivered better financial performance than companies with only a few women on their boards.

Some investors are taking a stand in an attempt to convince companies to diversify their boards. The California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS), the second largest pension fund in the country and an investor in Facebook, wrote a letter to the social networking site encouraging its leaders to add women to its all-male board of directors.

"We are disappointed that the Facebook board will not have any woman members,” CalSTRS' director of corporate governance Anne Sheehan wrote. “This is particularly glaring at a time when there is clear evidence that companies with diverse boards perform far better than the companies with more homogenous boards.”

Like Facebook, Silicon Valley darlings Twitter, Foursquare, PayPal, and Zynga also have a boys' club board. Yet in the last few months, women have ascended to top posts at several tech companies: Hewlett-Packard appointed Meg Whitman CEO last fall, and IBM named Virginia Rometty CEO in October.

For more on these issues, check out our Women in Tech series here.

Comments

[jsern]

06:10 PM on 02/28/2012

Why do women automatically have to think its discrimination? Could it be that there just isn't much of an interest? Like there isn't very much men interested in becoming nurses..

[LemonMeringue]

09:07 PM on 02/28/2012

That's not it. In the eighties fully half the c.s. majors were women. I think women are discouraged and getting out, or choosing another field in the first place, because it's obvious it's a young man's field now.

[ykk9]

12:54 PM on 02/28/2012

When you reach a certain level of business, there is nobody above you to open a door for you. in fact there are no doors to these circles, if you want in you have to break through the wall. If your waiting around for somebody to let you in you dont have the mindset compete with the big dogs.

[MissTake1989]

08:09 PM on 02/28/2012

They expect someone to call on them and ask their opinion.

[LemonMeringue]

09:07 PM on 02/28/2012

Not so easy when there are 15 programmers and only 1 is a woman, and none of the senior bosses are women.

[ykk9]

11:12 PM on 02/28/2012

Who ever said it was supposed to be easy?

[Don Kiiskila]

11:19 AM on 02/28/2012

This is the biggest bunch of anti-men sexist claptrap I've ever seen so thinly disguised as "news" or some back-handed attempt at trying to "shatter the glass ceiling".... PUH-LEASE.... First of all, for the longest time, women and men seem to have forgotten the one thing about them that causes them to migrate to different career fields: *they are different emotionally and mentally*. What interests men may not interest women. That's first and foremost. Second, If women want to go high in the tech sector, there's NO SUCH THING as a glass ceiling anywhere!!! It's a lie perpetrated by women to have something to whine about and point at the "big bad boys club", when they can't get their act together and actually DO something like oh... I don't know, maybe *start your own company, maybe???* If you don't get out there and DO it, then don't complain that it's *not happening for you all magically*. Stop the whining and get out of this entitled mindset and realize it won't happen for you *just because you're a woman*. Heaven forbid you have to *gasp* work for it.... I am so sick and tired of hearing this "we're equal, BUT....." idiocy. Seriously, take some responsibility and be accountable.

[MissTake1989]

05:32 AM on 02/28/2012

Gender is all sexists see.

Did it occur to you that, unlike the boards of those larger, older companies where NONE of the current board members were likely involved in the companies founding, many of these new "tech" companies are run by those who started them?

Chicken and the egg. There are few women in tech, right? Well, that also means there are fewer qualified candidates to run tech companies.

I know...details, details...

Much easier to divide everyone by their "organs", count them up and check your quota.

[LemonMeringue]

10:52 PM on 02/27/2012

When I started in this field in the eighties, at least half the c.s. majors in my college were women. Until the nineties, at least half the IT people I worked with were women. Now there are hardly any women at all, and no middle-aged women at all. Where have they gone? Have they gotten fed up and removed themselves from the pool, since they don't get promoted?

[lkgilles]

10:50 AM on 02/28/2012

Got married, had babies, but their career on hold

[John Crane]

09:26 PM on 02/27/2012

If you want to head up your own tech company, do what Jobs, Gates, Dell, and Zuckerberg did. Start your own company.

[LemonMeringue]

11:00 PM on 02/27/2012

Not the point of the article, is it.

[jsern]

06:06 PM on 02/28/2012

But his point is most of the people that run these companies are the same people that started them.

[Lori Woods]

07:12 PM on 02/27/2012

Tech industry is not only a boy's club, it's a little boy's club. These young, arrogant males don't seem to care too much about their social responsibilities.

[John Crane]

09:29 PM on 02/27/2012

This attitude may be one reason why women don't move up the ladder in tech. But, I'll bet that Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina would agree with me in saying that corporations are not in business to fulfill "social responsibilities". They are in business to make a profit. To hire anybody, male or female and promote him or her beyond their abilities is stupid.

[LemonMeringue]

10:56 PM on 02/27/2012

There are plenty of men in IT promoted beyond their abilities, because they are able to have a certain kind of camaraderie with the men who promote them. It can't be a gender-based lack of ability that produces such extreme under representation of women in leadership roles. I'm surprised this has not been noted by the media. It's like tech's dirty little secret that it has become a men's club.

[MissTake1989]

05:33 AM on 02/28/2012

Yes, their "social responsibility" to hand women a piece of the success they earned.

Start your own Facebook.

[Lori Woods]

11:13 AM on 02/28/2012

I'm speaking directly to 1) the dearth of data they keep on diversity, "...more than a dozen of Silicon Valley's biggest firms, including Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Google, declined to offer data on the diversity of their workforce..."; 2) their seeming lack of concern for the conditions of their workers overseas; 3) the outsourcing of jobs; 4) the boy's club (as LemonMeringue points out in the comment above.) 5) Age, gender and race numbers that are appalling.(Diversity.)

It's not a matter of "giving jobs." It's a matter of creating atmospheres for diversity and understanding that companies that are diverse do better. Not to mention, that when you have such a large peace of the pie, yes, you do have social responsibilities.

[Lori Woods]

11:23 AM on 02/28/2012

And just btw, equal doesn't mean equal. Equal doesn't mean the same. Equal opportunity is something that isn't black and white, such as your tagline suggests.

[Daniel De Boulet]

06:34 PM on 02/27/2012

I'd also like to see how much women are applying. It would be one thing if there were droves of women applying, but from what I see, women are leaning more into the medical field. Though this is just of local neighborhood where women all want to be doctors/getting their MDs/ or are already doctors.Rarely hear any of them interested in technology.

[LemonMeringue]

10:57 PM on 02/27/2012

When we have a job search the ratio of applicants is about 1/3 women, 2/3 men. Oddly, I'm the only female tech person in the whole department.

[Daniel De Boulet]

05:05 PM on 02/28/2012

Well from that about 1/3 they seem to be getting those jobs, looks like the companies are trying. That's a good sign at least.