How tech industry is doing diversity wrong
Report offers companies a how-to on improving, from kindergarten up
SAN FRANCISCO – Why doesn’t Silicon Valley look more like the rest of America yet?
Hundreds of millions of dollars, scores of initiatives and four years later, the technology industry is still staffed largely by white and Asian men in striking contrast to the billions of people it serves around the globe.
Tech is doing it wrong, says Freada Kapor Klein, a partner with Kapor Capital and founder of the Level Playing Field Institute. A hodgepodge of one-off efforts has wasted time and money and done little to increase the low numbers of women and underrepresented minorities.
“I have been working on diversity in tech for many decades. It’s sobering to see the lack of progress,” says Kapor Klein. For an industry capable of churning out technological marvels, “it’s appalling.”
This outspoken technology veteran and diversity advocate has called out the tech industry many times before. This time, she’s pushing a comprehensive approach to boosting diversity. And she’s come armed with reams of data on the complex set of structural and social barriers that are the roadblocks to progress.
A new report and a companion website from the Kapor Center released Wednesday gives tech companies, government, philanthropic organizations, non-profits and educators a how-to manual on plugging the leaks that spring up all along the tech “pipeline,” from kindergarten to college and from the tech workforce to venture capital. Think of it as Diversity for Dummies.
It’s time for everyone in tech from CEOs to the rank-and-file to step up and say: “We have a problem, and we need to work together to solve it,” Kapor Klein says.
But will anyone pay attention? The report lands amid growing tensions over the lack of progress in changing the demographics of tech.
Privately, diversity advocates say technology leaders still have not made diversity an urgent business priority with few CEOs giving the mandate or the marching orders. Diversity staffers are given little in the way of resources and authority. Few companies link compensation to diversity goals. And, when crafting
strategies to boost diversity, the industry has thumbed its nose at decades of social science research, they say.
After years of resistance, Google began annually publishing the demographics of its workforce in 2014. The release of information that the Internet giant had kept under lock and key rippled through the industry. Soon most major technology companies ponied up their own racial and gender breakdown. The first concrete look at the state of the tech industry revealed an industry at odds with America’s growing diversity. Nationwide, the industry is 75% male, 70% white and 20% Asian.
In Silicon Valley, blacks and Hispanics make up between 3% and 6% of workers, and women of color are 1% or less. Tech’s customers? Half women, about 13% black, and nearly 18% Hispanic, according to 2016 U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
Not only are women and people of color hired in lower numbers than white men, they also leave tech at a much higher rate. A recent analysis by the non-profit Ascend Foundation indicated that the number of black and Hispanic professionals in Silicon Valley’s tech sector declined over the past eight years. These groups are represented across other industries at much higher rates consistent with their proportion of the overall U.S. population. The disparity inside companies extends to the world of start-ups and tech investing, both of which are dominated by white men.
Kapor Klein says much of the current debate on how to increase diversity in tech centers on too few computer science graduates from underrepresented backgrounds and on the prevalence of workplace bias, ignoring underlying causes such as disproportionate access to high-quality schools and teachers and computer-science courses, wealth gaps, gender and race stereotypes, and limited access to social networks dominated by white men.
Sticking to the status quo isn’t an option, she says. Women and minorities are being shut out from technical and non-technical positions in one of the nation’s wealthiest, fastest-growing and highest-paying sectors. And research is piling up that shows companies with a diverse workforce fetch a higher market value and greater returns in an increasingly heterogeneous world.
This isn’t the first time the Kapor Center has tried to shake up the status quo with research. Last April, it issued a first-of-its-kind report on how toxic workplaces — where harassment, stereotyping and bullying occur — are driving away women and people of color from the tech industry and undercutting efforts to increase diversity at an estimated cost of $16 billion a year.
She isn’t the only one agitating for change.
“The data makes it clear that women and underrepresented minorities face a vast and complicated array of barriers keeping them from careers in tech,” Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and investor, said in a statement. “The better we understand these barriers, the faster we’ll be able to break them down.”
The lead author of the Kapor report, Allison Scott, chief of research at the Kapor Center, identified four main rea- sons women and underrepresented minorities haven’t made much progress in tech.
From preschool through high school, underrepresented students are denied access to a high-quality education. By the end of high school, only 16% of students who participate in AP computer science courses are African American, Hispanic or Native American, or Alaskan natives.
Wealth gaps hinder college preparation and admission as well as the pursuit of computer-science studies. The report found underprivileged students encounter unwelcoming classrooms and stereotypes and too few role models.
Biases in recruiting and hiring in the tech industry exclude women and people of color, the report said. Harassment, inequitable pay, bias in promotion and toxic corporate cultures lead to decreased satisfaction and higher turnover.
Pervasive bias and limited access to social networks dominated by white men keep women and underrepresented minorities from launching tech startups or getting into tech investing.
The report proposes solutions in several categories, including:
Increase access to preschool and improve the quality of K-12 education for underprivileged children, including access to rigorous classes such as Advanced Placement courses.
Expand computer-science education in all schools with financial investments and education reform.
Create better pathways to technology careers, including overhauling community college curriculum to match the industry’s needs and offering apprenticeship and internship programs within companies.