Only 30% of Google's employees are female.

An article on CNN reports that google lacks gender diversity. The women that they do manage to get jobs at the company work in lower paying, non-technical and non-leadership positions. Just 17% of Google's engineers are female, and women make up just 21% of the company's leadership. Only one of the company's top 12 executives (YouTube director Susan Wojcicki) is a woman.


Unfortunately, recent government diversity reports show that google is not alone in this issue. Cisco, Intel, Dell, Ebay, and Ingram Micro all struggle to maintain a gender diverse staff.


The article offers one popular explanation for this: that not enough women are graduating with the technical degrees required for the positions. CNN claims that the diversity problem starts in college. Intel's chief diversity officer Rosalind Hudnell states that "An engineering degree is probably the best you can get for finding a job, yet we don't have enough diverse students taking an interest." Data from the Computer Research Association backs up this statement; last year only 13.4% of those graduating with these technical degrees were women.


While this all makes sense, some might question if the problem really is women "not taking an interest," but instead the lack of opportunity for women in America.

In an article from USA Today, Coleen Carrigan, an anthropologist who researches high-tech cultures stated that "Women and underrepresented minorities have been denied access to resources and opportunities that would allow them to enter and succeed in computer science,"

However, I am skeptical about her claim. The article also offers that students coming from high schools where computer science isn't taught, are disadvantaged from those who do. But what is stopping women specifically from taking those classes along with the men at schools where they are offered? There is no proof that women specifically, in comparison to men, have been denied the opportunities to seek these degrees.

If that means the answer is that women just aren't taking enough interest, then why do you think that is? Leave a comment