In an industry with a culture that marginalizes women "on a fairly regular basis," it's no wonder that women in tech are quitting their jobs at more than twice the rate of their male colleagues, Gartner Analyst Christie Struckman told SDxCentral.

According to a report from Accenture, gender diversity in the tech industry has actually taken a few steps back in recent decades. In 1984, 35% of tech workers were women, and today that figure sits at 32%, with some estimates ranging even lower. Women are also leaving their tech careers at a 45% higher rate than men, the report noted.

While these issues aren't anything new, organizational approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) as a part of broader environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives certainly are. The widespread adoption of DE&I practices was catalyzed by the racial reckonings of 2020, with initiatives jumping from 29% in 2019 to 43% in 2021, according to research from Glassdoor.

But as recent layoffs at major tech companies have shown, those DE&I programs aren't as solid as they're made out to be. “If companies are laying off staff, they will also be cutting back on recruitment, and less recruitment means less need for HR staff,” Forbes’ Bernard Marr wrote. And despite ecosystem efforts to promote more female employees, women were disproportionately let go [56%], according to a report conducted by Women Impact Tech and Andiamo.

Struckman explained that women feel ready to leave the industry due to a lack of equal opportunity to work on projects that might lead to a promotion and organizational cultures that support or ignore marginalizing behaviors.

“Many women leave jobs due to a lack of career progression opportunities,” (ISC)2 CEO Clar Rosso told SDxCentral. “And professionals have told me they lack a sense of belonging when they are the only woman in the room,” she said.

On a daily basis, situations arise that "teach women [in tech] they're just not valued," Struckman added. These marginalizing behaviors, including the use of nicknames like honey or sweetheart, deserve such designation because men in tech are far less likely to experience them.

She added that in addition to having ideas overlooked or being asked to take notes in a meeting otherwise stocked with men, the conflation of confidence and competence is a significant challenge facing women in the tech world.

“I feel like you are competent to do something if you exhibit confidence in a way that I'm expecting. So therefore, if you don't exhibit it the same way, I think, oh, she's not exhibiting confidence. She must not be competent,” Struckman said. But those two characteristics aren’t as closely related as they seem, and “it’s very easy to conflate them,” she warned.

“Not a single woman is asking for charity,” Struckman clarified. “But sometimes we're excluded from the opportunity just because of an unconscious bias – this conflation of confidence with competence.”

That’s why the elevated rate of women leaving tech makes sense to Struckman. “We're smart. We're aspirational. We know our value,” she said. “When it becomes clear that I am just not going to be given the same opportunities as my male counterparts, why would I stay?”

Diversity Makes Good Business Sense

While enterprise diversity and inclusion are different – the former refers to the amount of diverse individuals represented, and the latter to the support of diverse groups and their desire to be involved with that organization – both can have significant impacts on an enterprise’s ability to innovate.

Inclusion has the potential to significantly impact tech companies by bringing problem-solvers, analytical and critical thinkers, and diverse backgrounds “to the table to solve challenges and build opportunities,” Rosso said.

On top of its organizational culture benefits, gender diversity and inclusion translates into concrete business values like increased innovation, which tends to be rampant in more diverse organizations.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business found gender diversity leads to increased share prices at tech companies, and Gartner noted last year that IT organizations with high overall diversity churn out more innovative products and strategies, are more productive on metrics that matter to business leaders, and increase profits. And according to research from Accenture, innovation mindsets are six-times higher in organizations that are more balanced from a gender perspective than those that are less balanced.

If an enterprise is striving to be more innovative and generate more revenue – which are items on most corporate to-do lists,“I would use every tool that I thought could get me there, and diversity is one of those tools,” Struckman told SDxCentral in an earlier interview.

Measuring Gender Diversity, Inclusivity

Struckman highlighted two types of metrics – lagging and leading indicators – as crucial for understanding an organization’s DE&I posture.

Lagging indicators are the more obvious measurement. “What actually is the representation of women in your organization? … What is the promotion rate? Is it equitable?”

Enterprises need to determine a set of lagging indicators and “hold the entire leadership team accountable” for performance on those metrics. “I might be the one who's leading the effort, but my seven peers [and I] are held accountable for those results, because I'm not the one making the hiring decisions,” Struckman explained.

While lagging indicators are fairly simple to narrow down, leadership teams don’t focus enough on leading indicators – the metrics that let enterprises know they’re “moving in the right direction,” she said.

Leading indicators, like the number of women who submit resumes or apply to internship programs, help organizations direct their focus “and see what's giving us the most bang for our buck,” she noted.

“Let's just say that previously, we realized 95% of the resumes were male. And then we do different outreach. We partner, we look at different organizations, and then we find that we've moved it to be 20% [of resumes] are female. That's a leading indicator to let you know that at least you've got more women to look at,” she explained.

How to Build an Effective Women in IT Program

Embracing and supporting DE&I is how modern organizations successfully attract and retain talent. “Employees want to know they work for an organization that is more reflective of today’s social discourse,” Struckman added.

According to research from (ISC)2 focused on the cybersecurity workforce, organizations with DE&I programs boast smaller workforce gender gaps than organizations without a dedicated program. The types of programs with the most impact center around pay equity, eliminating biases in hiring and promotion practices, and prioritizing inclusion rather than exclusivity, Rosso explained.

Struckman noted Women in IT programs “first and foremost” need to be a legitimate program rather than a “side-of-the-desk job.” Furthermore, these programs need to be resourced, acknowledged, and rewarded just like any other corporate initiative.

Women in IT programs also need to be led by an individual who will stay active, accountable, and committed to “making sure this doesn't become the thing that we talked about in Q1, but we never really talked about it ever again,” she explained.

Struckman suggested Women in IT programs focus on retention and development; attracting women and assessing hiring practices; and measuring lagging and leading indicators. “That adage of 'what gets measured, gets managed' is still relevant,” she said.

But overall, she suggested enterprises wait to kick off any gender diversity initiatives until they’ve spent adequate time to understand the experiences of women in the IT organization and how program activities will actually affect the individuals in the organization.