Stackoverflow results show how the gender gap is still alive in the tech industry

Each year, Stackoverflow publishes results of the information shared by the users. This includes, “where they work, what they build and who they are”. And each year, it comes as no surprise, that the gender gap between men and women in tech industry grows. And not in a good way.

Stackoverflow recongnizes that the results above have excluded key respondandts, as the survery had underrepresented people where women developers are thriving , such as Asia, South Korea, India and China. However, even if the women from those countries would have answered the survey, how much of the results could have been improved? This only makes one think, yet again, that gender inequality in tech is a alive and kicking.

What are the roles that women occupy in tech? Women would embark onto Design, Quality Assurance roles or Front End Developer. One can argue that women are advantaged on the creativity side, therefore a designer job would flourish this trait. But is it so really? Are we so gender biased that women and men can excel better in certain roles?

In the open literature, the information which states that the first programmer was a woman, namely Ada Lovelace, a mathematican of the 1800’s. It is argued that she wrote an algorithm to compute Bernoulli numbers. Even with undeniable references, there are people that doubt this fact, quoting that “she did not have the knowledge to do so”.

It is my strongest believe that with work, motivation and thouroughness, anything can be achieved. Therefore excluding the tech jobs as a woman, just because of the fear of the unknown, is a thing to be considered twice. But also, noone should be forced to do a job or embrak on a path that they do not enjoy. There are many movements trying to encourage women to study in the STEM field. And there are many other companies that are encouraging women to apply for leadership roles, in order to increase the diversity in the companies. But, is being a woman in the tech field a thing of “diversity” ?

The question remains: when will this gap be filled? How do we need to work in order to encourage girls to discover technology?

The booming tech field gives enormous opportunities to study, so why not take advantage of that?