Highest paid women in tech could catch up to men by 2059

Dive Brief:

In 2018, women make 80 cents for every $1 a man makes, according to Comparably's Equal Pay Day report. Women in tech also feel stifled in their ability to grow their careers. About 60% of women in engineering and 63% of women in IT feel inhibited by their gender.
Women who are DevOps engineers earn $106,843 annually, but male DevOps engineers make $9,239 more each year, according to Comparably. Across industries and jobs, experts do not expect women to reach full pay parity with men until 2059.
In the C-suite, it is more common for women to be CIOs than hold the position of CEO or CFO. About one in five CIOs are women across top 1,000 U.S. companies by revenue, according to Deloitte Insights. However, "it will take 100 years for women in technical and nontechnical roles combined to reach parity with men at the C-level."

Dive Insight:

Where there's a glass ceiling, there's a young girl somewhere with a sledgehammer ready to take it down. But while there are evident cracks in the glass ceiling, women still face challenges in the workforce and the tech industry is no exception.

About 34% of women CIOs in Fortune 500 companies have MBAs, but it took about 25% of them to make their way from very low level positions to the CIO role. These "lifer" situations often reflect both perceived and real roadblocks for women in the industry.

But having a gender-diverse technology department better equips members with problem-solving skills, cuts project costs and even leads to higher employee bonuses, according to Deloitte. Cultivating better dynamics among colleagues is imperative to advancing a company's agenda.

The pay gap varies from city to city. Washington, D.C. is the top location for women in tech followed by Kansas City, MO, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Almost 40% of the available tech jobs in Washington, D.C. are held by women, compared to 25% around the rest of the country.

Changing the stigma attached to the tech industry — that it's a boys only club — starts with just having more role models and female faces to see. It is well known that women typically will not apply for a job unless they meet 100% of the listed requirements. But side-stepping that mentality can lead to a greater peak in positions filled by talented women, thus presenting a more equal workforce.