By Freada Kapor Klein (Partner, Kapor Capital & Founder, Level Playing Field Institute) & Allison Scott (Director of Research, Level Playing Field Institute)
Women are vastly underrepresented in technical roles -– we only account for 20% of all computer software engineer and computer programmer positions nationwide. And as the Level Playing Field Institute just revealed in a new report, these women encounter negative experiences such as bullying at rates significantly higher than their male colleagues, are less satisfied with their jobs, and are more likely to want to leave their jobs in the coming year.
Our report, The Tilted Playing Field, found intriguing data showing a vast difference between women at large companies and those at startups with a critical mass of women in senior/technical roles.
According to survey participants, these tech-based startups in our sample offered far better work environments. For example, 65% of women in large companies encountered exclusionary cliques, versus 26% of women in startups. While 26% is way too high, it is a dramatic improvement over the treatment of women in large tech companies.
Startups with women in significant leadership and technical positions illuminate the path for how all tech companies can become more welcoming and productive places to work. While women are doing better in startups than at large IT companies, we still see significant gaps between the experiences and perceptions of women at startups and those of their male colleagues.
As Figure 8 (below) of our study shows, we found a significant difference between men and women’s satisfaction with development opportunities and career path -– even though they are both much higher than large company employees.
It looks like these startups get the “work environment” piece much better, but still have issues on perceptions of diversity and job satisfaction. We found a large discrepancy between men and women in startups on whether their companies are spending adequate amounts of time paying attention to issues of diversity.
Important side note to this discussion: Neither startups nor large tech companies had a sufficient number of underrepresented men or women of color to explore how their leadership might change the work environment and practices of their respective companies. Projecting from the data, however, it seems likely that the same dynamic might unfold.
So what can startups learn from this?
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