This collection of lists is predominantly skewed towards gender diversity in tech. I don’t mean to imply that racial diversity is less important, but this collection sprung out of discussions related to James Damore’s memo.
This article by Rachel Thomas touches on many of these issues (with citations), and I recommend it.
We have a problem with institutionalized sexism in (at least) the tech industry which reduces gender diversity. This has multiple aspects:
- Hiring. Male candidates receive more call-backs than female candidates. This may be due to expectation mismatches between female applicants and male screeners.
- Promotion. Women are assessed on their performance whereas men are assessed on their potential.
- Diversity efforts. Women and underrepresented groups are penalized for promoting diversity.
- Sexual harassment. Sexual harassment reports are often ignored, including when reported by women to women. Uber is not unique.
- Retention. Women leave tech 45% more frequently than men, but only 27% of time citing family as a reason.
Gender diversity in tech is important. Here are some reasons why:
- Economics. Higher diversity balanced companies have seen better financial returns. 15% for gender-balance, 35% for ethnicity-balance.
- Access to a wider hiring pool. There is a labor shortage with 627,000 open tech jobs as of April, 2017. Getting more women to apply to your jobs increases your odds of finding a great qualified candidate. 10,741 women graduated with Computer Science Bachelor’s degrees, 48,840 men in 2014-2015. Improving your funnel could increase your pool of candidates by 18%.
- Problem-solving. Diverse teams solve problems more quickly. Like in this study of cognitive diversity.
Are there any links I should add? Please let me know!
[…] managed to write a couple of things here, like this Gender Diversity in Tech Reading List and my Manager README, the latter of which I hope to present this year at […]
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