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OUR INSIGHTS
The following is one of several insights available in the newly released Women Corporate Tech Executives in America Report from the WBC
The need for diversity in technology is well understood and is now a foundational component of recruitment, retention, and talent management for all organizations at all levels. Technology teams with strong gender and racial diversity, while advancing equality and economic opportunity, also ensure businesses develop products and services that reflect the needs of the customers and communities they serve.
The case for advancing women in technology, in particular, is clear:
Leaders in technology must evaluate not only how gender diverse our technology organizations are overall but how diverse we are in specializations, from application development to information security. Nowhere is inclusivity more important than in data science and data analytics.
Women play a critical role in data science and analytics. Hillary Mason, a data scientist and founder of Fast Forward Labs, was quoted as saying, “Data is a tool for enhancing intuition.” Individuals and businesses now create and collect more data than ever before, and advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning have accelerated our ability to process vast amounts of data. But the data and tools alone cannot provide true business insights without the human aspect of data analytics.
It is the people leading data analytics who have an intuition for the stories the data might be telling us. They develop the data sets and questions that bring data insights to life. Women bring unique perspectives and benefits to this data “storytelling” against the rapidly increasing volume and variety of data that organizations are now managing in big data environments:
For women in data, there is some good news. A 2020 Burtch Works Executive Recruiting study found that the number of women in data science and predictive analytics jobs was slowly increasing. The most notable increases are coming at the individual contributor level 1 category, followed by the managerial level 1 category. While these numbers signal an increase in women in data science and analytics, much more needs to be done to encourage women in the early talent pipeline, middle management, and the senior leadership level in a space still largely dominated by men. BCG found that women pursuing STEM careers are disproportionately deterred from choosing careers in data by the negative image of data science as being overly abstract and competitive.
To attract more women to careers in data science and analytics, organizations must clearly communicate the purpose, the importance, and the tangible benefits that these roles bring to critical business decision-making. Then, organizations must actively develop and promote those women to senior data leadership roles. That change will foster a more inclusive and collaborative data community that produces data-driven business insights and innovations, leading to business process improvements, risk reduction, and, ultimately, revenue growth.
While advancing equality and economic opportunity, diverse technology teams make sure that companies create goods and services that meet the needs of the clients and communities they serve.
