Why we need more women on data teams and how companies benefit from diverse teams.
International Women's Day 08.03.2021 - IT is a man's world. Currently, only about one Sixth of all German IT jobs are held by women. Yet hardly any area of life remains untouched by the digital transformation, and in the coming years it will shape the economy and professions just as much as the invention of the assembly line once did.
Companies that focus on training their employees to become Data Analysts and Scientists will be ready for these changes and an increasingly competitive job market. Compared to their competitors, teams with high gender diversity achieve better returns and work more effectively.
According to renowned studies, companies that not only hire more women but also specifically promote them automatically gain a competitive advantage. An advantage that extends to everyone involved. We have summarized why women are urgently needed in data professions and what opportunities arise from this in four reasons.
Women in Data - A look into the past
Data is fundamental to our information society and increasingly we depend on data to make important decisions - whether in business, politics, healthcare or education. But how do we make the right decisions when our data is incomplete?
What if every second person in this world, meaning every woman, was not properly represented in this data? But let's take a step back and look at why women are so important in data collection and data professions.
Until now, men have been used as the standard for product development. But when data is collected and analyzed without gender-sensitive scrutiny, it can lead to strong biases and misconceptions. Let's take an example from everyday life. Office spaces tend to be too low temperature for women. Due to the naturally lower muscle mass, the female metabolic rate is lower and thus women usually feel cool faster.
Supermarket shelves are adjusted to the size of the average man, making upper shelves inaccessible to many women. Everyone has noticed the longer lines outside women's restrooms at least once when going to the movies. These are inconveniences, but there are also cases in which an incorrect data starting position can become life-threatening.
Many people are familiar with the signs of a heart attack in humans: pain in the left arm, in the chest and shortness of breath - symptoms that for the most part occur exclusively in men. As a result, a heart attack in women is not detected in time at a 50 percent higher rate.
This "A Man's Size Fits All" approach also showed its failures in car production with life-changing consequences. Crash test dummies are predominantly oriented to the male anatomy. This has consequences for seat height, distance from the steering wheel and body weight.
These apparently minimal differences ensure that women are 47 percent more likely to be seriously injured, 71 percent more likely to be moderately injured, and 17 percent more likely to die in a car accident than men.
The use of artificial intelligence in particular reveals the lack of gender-specific data - and exacerbates it further. AI helps doctors with diagnoses or scans the CVs of job applicants. However, this is often done on the basis of incomplete data sets - data sets that do not contain any gender-specific data.
A well-known saying goes "garbage in, garbage out" - along the lines of if my data starting point is "garbage," the results based on that foundation are also "garbage." So it's critical for both economic success and women's everyday lives to include women. Not only should they be considered, but they should be actively involved in this development. This is important and worthwhile for several reasons at once.
The future belongs to diverse teams
The IT industry is one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy and its technical innovations have an impact on the entire global economy. Already today, there are more open positions in IT than there are graduates to meet this demand.
Although we need to address the notorious skills shortage, the number of women in IT over the next ten years will, according to a Accenture Study is even expected to shrink if women are not actively promoted. The underrepresentation of women in technical professions is undoubtedly not a new issue, and although progress has already been recorded, progress is slow.
This is becoming a social problem and a fundamental challenge for business. This is not about favoring women, but about promoting and building mixed-gender teams. Numerous studies have clearly shown that these teams perform better because the members can challenge each other and bring in new perspectives.
We reveal the top four reasons why more women on IT and data teams is a win-win for everyone.
1. performance boost
In the Delivering Through Diversity Report. from 2018, McKinsey found that mixed-gender teams made companies 33 percent more likely to be profitable. A Harvard study came to the same conclusion and additionally found that mixed teams achieved far better results than same-sex teams - and that, by the way, regardless of gender.
Data science teams in particular are responsible for important, strategic decisions in the company and are of central importance for many business processes. That's why numerous studies have increasingly addressed the question of what factors make a team particularly successful. Teams with a balanced proportion of women and men perform better by building meaningful relationships, taking different perspectives into account, and thus creating more successful work processes.
In 2017, the Boston Consulting Group and the Technical University of Munich found in a joint Study found that companies with a high level of gender diversity were able to generate 34 percent of their revenue from innovative products and services within three years. The Furtune 500 companies observed that had at least three female executives were able to increase their ROI by as much as 66 percent.
2. thinking out of the box
The more diverse a team is, the more team members are challenged to better prepare for collaboration and adapt to alternative viewpoints. Whether men and women or entirely different cultures - our experiences shape how we perceive our environment.
For some years now, the negative effects of filter bubbles in social networks have been heavily discussed. In filter bubbles, content is shown that corresponds to our views and preferences without us being aware that others are not shown the same content. Social networks in particular thus support the confirmation bias. This ensures that we are more inclined to confirm our preconceived opinion than to find valid counter-theses and question our own view.
This makes it all the more important that the same dynamic does not occur in one's own workplace. Working together in a diverse team counteracts this dynamic, leading to a closer look at results and enabling better problem solving and collaboration.
3. recruiting made easy
A company known for its diverse workforce has a powerful recruiting and employer branding tool at its disposal. By promoting female data experts, more girls and young women can be encouraged to pursue their interests and careers in a technical career field in the future.
This in turn can increase the size and diversity of the talent pool. On the one hand, this has positive effects on the shortage of skilled workers, and on the other, it offers the opportunity to create externally effective role models. Representing diverse people and their backgrounds gives others the opportunities to identify with them and shows them that success is possible for everyone.
Women do not need to be given preferential treatment, as the acute shortage of data experts and IT specialists offers enough vacancies for all genders and demographic groups. Accordingly, the shortage of skilled workers could be remedied quickly if women identified more strongly with technical professions and were thus more likely to take them up.
4. an invisible buyer base
We all use the same power to purchase computers, cars and other products: our purchasing power. Women make up about 50 percent of the buying public worldwide, and it is still women who are responsible for the majority of spending decisions in the home. Yet they are rarely included as a variable in supposedly gender-neutral products.
After the launch of the iPhone X in 2018, Apple came under criticism from its female customers, claiming that the smartphone was too big for the average woman's hand. This could have been prevented by involving more women in product development. This is especially true for data teams, where data layers that use male attributes as the default can be challenged from different angles.
Every person - man or woman - has individual experiences with products and services in their everyday lives. In order to continue developing really good products and innovative services in the future, it will be crucial to translate these individual experiences into data analyses. The best and fastest way to do this is through diversity.
Closing the data gap
Many are aware of the need for greater diversity in data teams, and many are already actively addressing it. Gender equality is an important issue and it is not an easy task. It must emerge without jeopardizing the meritocracy in the process.
To make this possible, we need to start at schools and companies so that diversity in STEM fields can be promoted. Preconceptions still exist that boys and men are inherently superior in these fields. These beliefs, which have actually already been disproved, still shape school grades and career decisions today.
Today, technological innovations determine the market. Driven by the digitalization and automation of activities, they are shaping and changing many job profiles in the long term. Women must not only be included in this development, but also promoted. Until men and women are on an equal footing in terms of qualifications and opportunities, many women will need support with this qualification.
The technology industry now places a lot of emphasis on recruiting, retaining and developing female talent. That's an important signal, but the efforts shouldn't end there. In today's working world, a qualification with the right skills at the right time is crucial to advancing one's career.
Data Science and Data Analytics are skills in massive demand. We encourage women to apply now for to promote our "Women in Data" raffle and prepare to pursue exciting career opportunities in the data science field. Currently, women make up only about one-sixth of the workforce working with emerging technologies. We strongly believe that the industry needs more women and more diversity to strengthen teams and make them more innovative, diverse, and productive.
The technology industry needs you!
Sources:
SWE Magazine (2020): "Media: Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men." [22.02.2021]
Forbes (2020): "Top Three Reasons We Need More Women In Tech." [22.02.2021]
Developer.com (2021): "Women in Tech: The tech industry is becoming more open, diverse and flexible every day." [15.02.2021]
Gender Action Portal (2013): "Business teams with an equal number of women and men perform better in terms of sales and profits, than do male-dominated teams." [15.02.2021]
Training Journal (2019): "Why mixed-gender management teams perform better" [22.02.2021]
The Economists (2012): "The impact of gender diversity on the performance of business teams: evidence from an eld experiment." [15.02.2021]
Forbes (2020): "Top Three Reasons We Need More Women In Tech." [22.02.2021]
Accenture (2021): "Cracking the gender code" [23.02.2021]
McKinsey (2018): "Delivering through diversity" [23.02.2021]
BCG (2017): "The Mix That Matters" [23.02.2021]
Süddeutsche Zeitung (2020): "School, parents and advertising keep girls away from IT". [23.02.2021]
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