Bridging The Gap: Navigating the Rough Waters of Women in STEM Amidst Financial Crisis

There is a serious global challenge to work on closing the gender gap in the STEM fields. Right now, one of the earliest and most successful efforts to promote and hire women into tech jobs is falling apart – financially. After years of operation, Women Who Code and Girls in Tech, the #1 and #6 organisations in the US focused on recruiting, mentoring and supporting women engineers, have closed their doors. The UK’s Tech Talent Charter, a coalition of 600+ tech organisations that have pledged to diversify their workforce, recently announced that it was suspending operations. If there weren’t so many reasons to be so very worried about what is happening to the nascent field of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in tech, it would be a remarkable coinky-dink that organisations devoted to recruiting more women into tech fields are closing at the exact same time that tech giants, including GOOGLE, Meta, X and Zoom have cut DEI budgets or cut staff. In this essay, I’ll examine the problems and implications of this backsliding, and explore what might be done about it.

The Alarming Trend of DEI Budget Cuts

The Consequences of Reduced Support

Major forces like GOOGLE’s retreat from DEI are not fads, but have real world ramifications. Women Who Code, which supported women returning to technology, and Girls in Tech, an organisation for any women working in technology, were among organisations that closed after significant funding cuts. A culture of support for women in tech is disappearing. This has a deeper significance than the loss of funds. Even if the money had stayed, it would have been a significant blow to a community of women hoping to work in technology, or who are already doing so.

GOOGLE and Other Tech Giants: A Closer Look

It’s noteworthy that GOOGLE, long a darling of the tech sector, is among those pulling back. This sends a message across the industry that others may emulate – and could encourage smaller tech firms and startups to scale back their DEI efforts. The implicit message is that the tech sector, which has played a key role in widening the gender gap across all sectors of the economy, is now taking a leading role in reversing this trend.

The Doom Loop of Tech's Gender Disparity

The Stagnation of Progress

Tech finds itself caught in a bind. Progress in achieving greater gender equality in austerity years can easily slip into stagnation or—even worse—backslide as financial forces exert pressures on DEI policies amid the tenuous economic climate that would likely see such initiatives curtailed. The numbers for women’s representation in tech jobs continues to skew decidedly masculine, with women holding less than a third of jobs in behemoths such as GOOGLE, Microsoft and Apple.

The Ripple Effect on Future Generations

The absence of girls in STEM classes, and the broader lack of women in tech roles, aren’t just individual problems. More precisely, they’re individual symptoms of a collective problem: they discourage the next generation of women in tech and are part of a similar, self-fulfilling cycle. Not only is this bad for the women who are excluded from tech, but it also leaves the tech sector bereft of the valuable insights and innovation that women can provide.

The Financial Dilemma and Its Broader Implications

The Blame Game

The data is scant but when tech companies plan to cut DEI investments, it’s usually blamed on falling short on revenue targets. Frances Cairncross at the BBC argues that cultural currents, perhaps amplified by pundits with large social media reach, are also significant factors in the reversal. As a result, investments over multiyear periods, as well as one-time gifts to groups that provide women in tech with support networks, have all shrunk – further showing just how deep the financial crisis runs.

The Pay Discrepancy Issue

Adding insult to injury is that an entry-level woman salary in STEM fields makes an average of 80 cents for every dollar earned by her male counterparts (the pay gap is even wider for Latinas and Black women). These systemic hurdles are a reminder that it’s not just the starting line of tech that women are challenged in, but the entire course.

Glimmers of Hope Amidst the Crisis

Initiatives Still Making Waves

Yet there is hope: events such as Tech4Girls, or the Women in Tech and Entrepreneurship (WTE) in Florida, illustrate the rapid course correction of those committed to women’s progress in STEM. They reflect the necessary work of righting a wrong.

The Enduring Importance of GOOGLE's Role

GOOGLE: A Pillar of Potential Change

Even if tech giants such as GOOGLE and others are now being lambasted – mercilessly – for their recent retreat on DEI, it is worth recalling just how much power these organisations hold. They are pacesetters in their industries, and should – could – be leading the charge once again for diversity and inclusion, using their resources and visibility to revitalise and sustain the movement for women in tech.

Conclusion: The Road Ahead

The financial crisis crippling these women-in-STEM organisations is an eye-opening situation, showing just how delicate DEI work is in the tech community, and how cuts from large companies such as GOOGLE could undo much of the work. But, more than that, it is a call to recommit to these programmes. The future will not be easy, but only with concerted efforts from tech companies, non-profits, government agencies and us – society – can the push for gender diversity in tech continue to push forward so that we can start to see a more diverse and equitable future in our STEM sectors.