Problem

According to research from the National Center for Women & Information Technology (2016), women make up 26% of the workforce in the tech sector, with women of color comprising only 4% of those women. 74% percent of women in tech report “loving their work,” yet 56% of women in tech are leaving their positions in the field early. However, 80% of women stay in the workforce and half continue to use their tech talents in other sectors. Some of the same hardships apply to the women pursuing new tech careers, as shown through the stories of TC CMLTD students.

Numerous factors have been shown to affect the lack of women in STEM fields, including ineffective efforts to recruit and retain women in the tech educational pipeline and at tech companies and marginalization of women's achievements and “tech identities,” especially when their experiences don’t match mainstream notions of what it takes to develop STEM competencies (Walker, 2012).