This Chart Shows How Sexist Silicon Valley Really Is


Tech companies often chalk up their lack of gender diversity to a “leaky pipeline,” or a surge of women leaving engineering. But a new LinkedIn analysis of its members’ data suggests that the lack of female engineers working in tech can’t be so easily explained away.

The report, released last week, found that the tech sector employs proportionally fewer female engineers than several other industries, including healthcare, retail, government, education, and nonprofits.

The tech sector also lags in the proportion of women taking on leadership roles, according to LinkedIn’s report. The professional networking site measured the “leadership gap” in industries: the difference between female representation overall and the percentage of women in leadership roles. By this measure, the healthcare, retail, and financial services industries are doing the worst job of promoting women to top positions. But as shown in the chart below, the tech sector isn’t much better: Of the nearly 31 percent of women in the tech sector overall, just 21 percent are in leadership roles.

LinkedIn

This latest data highlight some of the misconceptions associated with solving the persistent lack of women and minorities in Silicon Valley. LinkedIn’s report suggests that the so-called “pipeline” isn’t leaking all that much: In fact, a good number of female engineers continue to work as engineers—they’re simply choosing to take their skills to industries outside the tech sector. As Karen Catlin, a former vice president of Adobe Systems, told Fusion last week, some women avoid tech because they believe they won’t have opportunities to grow professionally: “Either there’s a very leaky pipeline and women are leaving jobs in tech,” Catlin said. “Or they are seeing they cannot have the careers they want in this industry and looking elsewhere for jobs instead.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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