Dive Brief:
- Washington, D.C. is the best city for women in technology, touting both the smallest gaps in gender pay and the highest number of female tech workers in relation to male tech workers, according to an analysis by SmartAsset. Kansas City, MO, Baltimore, Indianapolis and New Orleans, round out the top five.
- D.C. saw the percentage of tech jobs filled by women jump by about 1.5% between 2014 and 2015, and female employees now make up 41% of the tech workforce. Washington D.C. also ranked first in the 2015 and 2016 editions of SmartAsset’s analysis.
- The bad news is, even in D.C., women make less than men. The female-to-male earnings ratio in D.C. is 94.8%, down from 99.3% last year. Overall, SmartAsset found the average woman in tech makes 84.8% of what a man does. Last year it was 86.7%.
Dive Insight:
SmartAsset pulled data on men and women in computer and mathematical occupations and looked at 59 of the largest U.S. cities with enough tech workers to provide statistically reliable data. It then ranked them on the gender pay gap in tech, income after housing costs, women as a percentage of the tech workforce and four-year tech employment growth.
There doesn’t appear to be much of a pattern as to which types of cities ranked best for women tech workers. Fore example, East Coast cities weren’t decisively more female-friendly than West Coast cities.
New Orleans was a bit of a surprise, however. The number of tech jobs in New Orleans grew by about 32% between 2012 and 2015, the largest four-year change in tech employment growth in the study.
Experts say getting more women and minorities interested and involved in tech careers could go far in helping solve the current tech talent gap. Yet despite efforts by many tech companies to improve gender diversity among their ranks, the needle doesn’t appear to be moving much. Overall, women are still the minority in technology, making up only about 26% of computer and mathematical jobs nationwide, according to SmartAsset.
