Dive Brief:
- Altogether, only 23% of C-suite officials in the U.S. are women, a slight decrease from 24% in 2016, according to a Korn Ferry report of 1,000 companies across various industries.
- Only 16% of CIOs in the U.S. are women, emphasizing the undiversified nature of the tech workforce. However, "women CIOs rank just as competitive as their male counterparts on key competencies," said Craig Stephenson, managing director for Korn Ferry. About 26% of the financial industry's CIOs are women, the highest of any industry.
- A mere 11% of CFOs are women, but Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) saw the most gender equity with 55% being women. Again, the financial industry had the highest percentage of women in CFO and CHRO roles.
Dive Insight:
While nine tech executives, including Ginny Rometty, Sheryl Sandberg and Meg Whitman, were named some of Fortune's Most Powerful Women this year, it is clear female leadership in tech still has room to grow.
Tech companies often face social and sometimes legal ramifications for a lack of diversity, but there are also financial costs.
Silicon Valley-based companies without a fair representation of women and minorities in their workforce face losing more than $16 billion annually from employment turnover, some of which is prompted by harassment. But certain sectors of the tech industry are also suffering from the gap.
For example, about 1.8 million cybersecurity jobs will be unfilled by 2022 because of an unqualified candidate pool. Hiring managers are expected to turn to women, who only make up 11% of the security workforce currently, to close the gap.
But gender and race are not the only barriers in diversity. Age causes some tech employees to fear they will lose their job. Although 60% of Baby Boomers claim their ages are a point of contention in the workplace, companies and federal agencies that struggle with modernization often look to onboard a workforce with knowledge of outdated coding languages or legacy systems.
