It is seen that most of the technology companies in Silicon Valley are not offering top level positions to the Women candidates, in their group only mail candidates occupy the high positions.
This can be understand with the example of the company Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley electric car maker has no women candidate in their top executives, they are having all male candidates in their board. 17 senior positions are there and on all of them men are sitting and zero women.
This is very extreme example of the gender imbalance among the top level positions in many Silicon Valley companies. However, innovation is required at utmost level in the area of technology, as it keeps on changing and updating from time to time as per the needs of the market and customers, but simultaneously it is closing doors for the women, which is just opposite of the innovation, as now a day’s women are working in every field at the top level positions and it also a great demand of the economy but in the technology companies women are lagging behind and it cannot be ignore.
According to the Catherine Ashcraft, senior research scientist at the National Centre for Women & Information Technology, a nonprofits group, there is a great scope for the improvement. This group’s main focus is to appreciate or encourage the women to start their careers in the field of technology, as mostly men are working so they wanted to see women should also work in this area, as today women are ahead of men everywhere.
According to a study conducted at the law firm Fenwick & West, it is known that in the largest publicly traded Silicon Valley companies only 11.5 percent of top executives are women and at the companies on the S&P 100, an index that covers a variety of industries states that only 14.7 percent of executives are female.
As per the study or research it is found that the differences in the gender can be seen more in the boardroom. If S&P companies are compare with technology companies, then it is seen that in the former case 19.9 percent directors are women and in the latter case, only 9.1 percent of directors are women.
In last few months, many complaints arose regarding the shortage of women among the top executives of the companies on the Twitter and it has become a major issue, which at the time had millions of women among its users and only one woman at the senior position.
Now the Question arises, why is it happening?
The answers are so many but all are complicated. Some executives say that they are interested in hiring females but among them qualified candidates are very less. Some said that there is less no. of women who are techno savvy or interested in making their career in technology. From the institute, it is known that only 18 percent of the women are computer-science undergraduates.
According to the studies, it is known that the females working on the top positions perform better than average. From the sources of the credit Suisse report, it is also found that in last six years, the stock prices of businesses with minimum one female board member rose faster than the market overall.
In contrast, another company auto giant General Motors appointed Mary Barra, as the chief executive and three women at the senior vice president level in the beginning of this month. When she takes over the post in January, 2014 she will be the first woman to lead a major auto company. In yahoo, there are several female candidates who are on the high positions including Marissa Mayer, the company’s chief executive. Shery Sandberg is Facebook’s chief operating officer.
In Silicon Valley Tesla is not the only company who lack of female leaders. But among a small group of public companies, Linear Technology and Cypress Semiconductor are also there who are not having even a single women in senior roles. Most of the companies have only one female official.
Ashcraft said closing the gender gap will likely take decades. Furthermore, it is also seen that girls tend to spend less time on technology than boys, who are encouraged to by social norms and the media.
