Scientists, educators, and anthropologists have been saying it for years: We need more women in STEM. This male-dominated field encompasses most aspects of our lives, yet only reflects the perspectives and attitudes of half of the population. That’s not to say that STEM is completely lacking in powerful women; YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood, and many other women in STEM have been challenging gender roles for years. However, the numbers speak for themselves: as of 2019, only 15% of physical science and engineering jobs go to women.

Despite STEM’s growing field and ample job opportunities, factors like social bias, a lack of accommodation for women in STEM spaces, an environment that negatively shapes girls’ interest in STEM, and a lack of role models steer qualified and intelligent women away from careers in STEM. Here, we explore a few of the many ways that a female perspective is essential to the future of tech.

It is important to note that while this article takes a binary approach to gender for the purposes of clarity and cohesion, we at DS3 acknowledge and celebrate that femininity and masculinity are constructs, that there are more than two genders, and that there is a marked difference between sex and gender.

Women Want to Collaborate 

In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2013, researchers found that women place a higher value than men on careers that help people and involve collaboration, but careers in tech tend to place more emphasis on competition than collaboration, with many courses considered to be “weed-out classes.” This competitive, rather than collaborative, environment discourages women from pursuing careers in tech. Universities are starting to catch on to the demand for classrooms that foster a synergetic environment; both Harvey Mudd College and Dartmouth University have designed science and engineering curricula that focus on problem-solving and collaboration. As a result, both universities have seen an increase in science and engineering classes that are majority female.

Women are Socially Sensitive

According to an article written by Derek Thompson for The Atlantic, research has found that just as some individuals are smarter than others, some groups are more intelligent than other groups of people. This group intelligence, or collective intelligence, can be determined by a “c factor” that is “correlated with the average social sensitivity of group members, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group,” according to a research article in Science Magazine.

But what is the “social sensitivity” mentioned in the article? Social sensitivity is an individual’s ability to perceive and understand non-verbal cues; in common conversation, we’d call it the ability to read between the lines. As it turns out, several studies have shown that social sensitivity is a skill much more common than women than in men, which makes women invaluable assets to group settings. One of these studies, “Reading the Mind in the Eyes,” found that compared to men, women are much more skilled at determining an individual’s emotion from a picture of said individual’s eyes. The study also found that even when participating in online collaborative efforts that do not require face-to-face communication, women are still more adept at determining the thoughts and feelings of their colleagues.

Women Grow and Develop Markets

According to research conducted by the Harvard Business Review, there are two kinds of diversity: inherent and acquired. Inherent diversity is exactly what it sounds like; aspects of an individual’s identity that are uncontrollable, such as race or sexuality. Acquired diversity, on the other hand, refers to skills that an individual has gained through experience. These researchers found that organizations with leadership that expressed three inherent and three acquired forms of diversity are “45% likelier to report a growth in market share over the previous year and 70% likelier to report that the firm captured a new market”. Although inherent diversity can take forms other than gender, these statistics are evidence that women in leadership positions are likely to contribute to market growth. The same study found that without diverse leadership, women are 20% less likely than straight white men to have their ideas endorsed.

Sign on the XX

Instead of talking about needing more women in tech, it’s time to start hiring women in tech jobs. Here at DS3, our entire team is female, and we like to think that we get quite a lot done! For answers to questions regarding tech or employing women in tech, check out our Twitter @sogds3 or our help desk