The share of women in the high-tech industry has barely budged over the past two decades even as the number of lucrative jobs in the field has soared in that time, according to a new analysis from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
In 2022, women made up 22.6 percent of workers in high-tech roles, wherever they occurred — far less than the 47.3 percent share they had in the total American workforce but similar to the 22 percent they represented in 2005, according to the EEOC analysis. Women fared almost as badly in the core high-tech sector, made up of companies that have a large percentage of employees in mathematical, engineering and science-oriented roles.
“Our analysis found that there remains persistent and significant underrepresentation of women, of African Americans, of Hispanics in this industry, and the representation of Black workers and women in high tech … has really barely moved in a generation,” EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows said in an interview with The Washington Post.
“The takeaway is that we have an industry that looks to the future and a workforce that still, unfortunately, looks like the past,” she added.
The statistics illustrate the uphill battle women and people of color face in the industry as many companies pull back from diversity, equity and inclusion programs amid growing conservative cultural and legal attacks. Organizations and companies have rebranded their diversity programs or eliminated requirements for job applicants to discuss equity. Meanwhile, prominent tech leaders have increasingly criticized diversity efforts as lowering the bar for employees and productivity.
“The fact that we’ve had women’s participation in this industry stuck for the last 20 years is concerning enough, but certainly to have it go backward would be deeply, deeply troubling,” Burrows said. “I think, as this report shows, this is not a time to pull back on efforts to create more inclusive and equitable and diverse workplaces.”
The report also found that while overall racial diversity in the high-tech workforce increased from 26 percent in 2005 to 40.1 percent in 2022, Hispanic and Black workers remained significantly underrepresented in the field. Though they make up nearly one-fifth of the overall U.S. workforce, Hispanic workers made up only 9.9 percent of the high-tech workforce in 2022, compared with 5 percent in 2005. Black workers, meanwhile, made up just 7.4 percent of high-tech workers — a small increase from the 6 percent share in 2005.
Asians are not underrepresented in high-tech jobs, the report found, but while they make up 18.1 percent of the high-tech workforce, they account for just 15.3 percent of managers. One problem, Burrows said, is that many Asian tech workers have H-1B visas, which are sponsored by employers to hire foreign guest workers with science, math and computer skills.
With an H-1B visa, “you can’t jump from employer to employer. Your ability to stay in the country is tied to staying with that employer,” she said. It’s “much more difficult to rise or certainly to complain if there is discrimination because you’re … in a more precarious position than if you were a permanent part of the American population.”
The EEOC’s analysis found that between 2014 and 2022, the high-tech workforce increased by 3 million workers — reflecting an annual growth rate several times higher than that of the American workforce overall. Those workers were far more likely to be between ages 25 and 39 than they were to represent older demographics, according to the report.
The report underscoring the lack of progress in diversity comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decisionin June 2023 that held race-based preferences in college admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina were unconstitutional. Since then, hundreds of lawsuits have been filed challenging government and corporate programs that aim to fight demographic disparities in the labor market by considering race, gender and other characteristics.
The Supreme Court decision created “some confusion” about the legal context of industry diversity and equity efforts, Burrows said, but did not change Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in employment based on “race, color, religion, sex and national origin.”
Workers at several tech companies have filed discrimination claims with the EEOC. In 2020, an African American manager and two job applicants who were rejected by Facebook filed a complaint with the federal agency alleging that the company is biased against Black employees in evaluations, promotions, pay and hiring practices. Last year, two Black ex-employees of TikTok owner ByteDance filed a complaint alleging the company retaliated against them after they complained about racial discrimination in the workplace. Both cases are ongoing.
The EEOC analysis found that retaliation was the most common discrimination charge filed by tech workers in 2022, followed by claims about disability, race and sex.
“We have some serious disparities,” Burrows said. “It does raise the question and a serious implication that there is discrimination as part of what’s contributing to” the lack of diversity in tech.