Why Women Quit - Part One
Earlier this year, as part of our Women in Tech series, we published an article exploring the issue of confidence, and whether a lack of it was one of the reasons for the very high attrition rates of women working in technology. Spoiler – it wasn’t. This two-part article examines why so many highly qualified and experienced women are turning their backs on a tech sector that needs them
A Lack of Data Part of the answer to the question of why so many women are quitting tech roles begins to form when researching female attrition rates. Very few organisations are even gathering data on the subject. Recruitment companies and sites such as Linked In publish reports by consultancies and analysts who have commissioned research into the subject and Linked In use their own data. But none of this data is disaggregated by gender so we can't zero in how many women are leaving tech.
The only way to find disaggregated data is to seek out research which has been conducted by organisations which specifically seek to improve the representation of women in the sector. Such a report was published last year by Accenture and the tech education organisations Girls Who Code. And the data is stark. Pre-pandemic, general tech employment attrition rates were around the 13 per cent mark. However, 50 per cent of women who go into technology roles will leave them before the age of 35.
The dearth of data on the employment of women in technology gives the impression that improving their representation is a niche interest. The number of women leaving technology before the midpoint in their careers matters. What matters even more is why. A systems integration specialist who recently quit her role at an enterprise technology employer told Computing that although her former employer records the numbers of employees resigning and the time they spend at the company, they don't conduct exit interviews. They don't find out why they are losing female employees and what they could do to retain more of them. She was keen to share her experiences with HR for the benefit of other colleagues, but nobody wanted to know. Technology employers cannot expect to be taken seriously when claiming to want to increase the numbers of women working for them when they actively choose not to listen to the ones who are leaving them.
Microaggressions
What would employers hear if they chose to listen? The vast majority of women working in technology will be wearily familiar with the day-to-day microaggressions that are experienced so regularly that they essentially just form a backdrop to our lives. Being talked over in meetings, patronised or simply ignored. A former colleague shares a choice anecdote with me about male colleague booking a remote lunchtime meeting over lockdown and being utterly unable to understand why she might struggle to make that happen whilst also having parenting responsibilities.
Being a consummate professional, she provided a self-service buffet for her children, accepted the meeting request and was greeted by the sight of her boss's wife bringing him a sandwich and a cup of tea.
The lack of understanding shown by predominantly male tech employers when it comes to domestic responsibilities is often given as reason that women eventually throw in the towel, and this explanation might well contain an element of truth. Certainly, the expectation of 24 X 7 availability tends to punish women more than men, and undoubtedly contributes to many women deciding that tech is no longer their preferred career option. Tech pays people well, but it often pushes them to extremes. A former software engineering leader who has now left the industry completely, explains why, after more than two decades working in technology, she decided she'd had enough.
"It's very confrontational. Nobody is allowed to have a life outside of work so you can do things at whatever hour and at the last minute. So, it doesn't really allow for different personality types or for different levels of energy, or for people that might have a life outside of work. I've noticed a lot of people at work are on the ragged edge of going, crackers, frankly, and it doesn't surprise me. In the end for me the money wasn't enough."
That said, some of the challenges faced by many women working in technology in progressing their careers are far more deep-rooted than the "busy working woman juggling" narrative acknowledges. A junior software developer tells me that male colleagues have a huge advantage when it comes to promotion to more senior development roles because they have the time available for all the out of hours reading and learning that is required for that transition. Time that she simply doesn't have. It is, she says, her single biggest challenge.
Glue Work
The standard response to complaints from women about the importance of activities which take place outside of a standard working day being so integral to career progression is to cite cultural and societal factors - predominantly the extra weight of childcare and domestic responsibilities carried by women. But this lets tech employers off the hook. Many women, as well as other groups under-represented within technology such as those who are LGBTQ+, find more of their working time absorbed by what's been termed "glue work."
Glue work can be defined as the work that holds workplaces together for the benefit of everyone who works there. Examples of glue work include volunteering to run workshops for new recruits, coming up with ideas for motivational or team building activities or simply acting as sounding board for ideas. The bitter irony is that women often volunteer for glue work early on in their tech careers, hoping that it will mark then out as being eager to go the extra mile. The trouble is that it then leads to them being passed over for promotion as they focus less on their core work than their male colleagues.
An excellent illustration of glue work is the existence of employee resource groups for under-represented demographics within large enterprises. A summary of the problems they can cause for those they are purporting to help comes from a data architect who recently switched employers.
"Employee resource groups can be a really positive thing if it's about support rather than driving a metric or a change. But if they're the latter, the employer is telling the people with the problem to go and fix the problem that they are disadvantaged by. And also, to do it for nothing because they won't pay you any extra. So, go and do two jobs, probably while you're studying as well."
It's interesting to observe that discussion of glue work and the expectations of round the clock availability come back to the same thing - women's time not being valued to the same extent as that of their male colleagues. Unfortunately, when examining the reasons that women are leaving technology, this is only the beginning. Those who dig their heels in can be subjected to far uglier treatment, and this will be covered in the next article in this series.