BUSINESS WIRE, July 18, 2019.
Advancing Women in Product (AWIP), the organization empowering high potential female product and tech leaders through professional education and executive mentorship, announced the release of its Future of Women 2019 report. The comprehensive study examines the current state of the gender gap in the workplace, exploring barriers to gender equality components and offering tools and tactics to overcome them.
“Despite programs and initiatives to increase gender equality across the tech industry, women and underrepresented groups continue to have inadequate representation at all levels,” said Nancy Wang, CEO and founder of AWIP.
“With this study, we set out to examine the perceptions and current realities of several gender identities in the workplace, releasing our first-ever foray to help organizations assess their strengths and development areas for change.”
In collaboration with Hugo, a productivity software company, AWIP gathered data from 580 technology professionals across 200 cities and 24 countries. The initiative was led by Ajantha Suriyanarayanan, AWIP Director of Growth, Swetha Salunke, AWIP Director of Marketing and Senior Product Manager at Amazon Web Services, and Pranava Adduri, AWIP Director of Programming and Engineering Manager at Amazon Web Services; and overseen by Samantha Reynolds, AWIP Head of Seattle Chapter and Director of Product at Microsoft.
The resultant study examines the current experience of professionals in tech, how the respondents approach and perceive diversity and inclusion at their organization and the impact gender distribution in an organization has on career progression. Additionally, the report offers guidance on programs and initiatives tech companies can implement to address key findings in the study, such as providing equal opportunity for all to advance and ways to ensure all voices are heard.
The report includes perspectives on the current state of the gender gap from AWIP Ambassadors, executives who have shown their support for the organization, including Sandy Carter, VP of Enterprise Workloads at Amazon Web Services; Tatyana Mamut, Board Member at AWIP and Chief Product Officer at Nextdoor; Barbara Saxena, AWIP Ambassador and Chief Data Officer at Postmark; and Kirsten Wolberg, Chief Technology Officer at DocuSign.
Key findings from the survey report:
THEME: Gender diversity impacts career mobility and effectiveness
- 28% of respondents believe that their workplaces are equal in gender distribution
- 71% of respondents reported that their organizations are male-dominated with a mere 2% reporting a female-dominated workplace
THEME: The impact of ethnic representation in tech
- Respondents who identified as races other than Asian / Asian American ranged between 9% to 24% higher than Asians in their self perception of being heard
- 81% of respondents that identified as Hispanic / Latino felt their voice was heard in their organization
THEME: Overcoming challenges related to pre-disposed characteristics
- Women that operate purely remote are 30% less likely to perceive themselves as being heard.
- Respondents with a mentor we’re more than twice as likely to perceive themselves as having an equal chance and 11% more likely to report an Ok chance.
- 47% of women respondents found it easier to identify at least one person to give them advice
For more information and to download the full report, please visit: www.advancingwomeninproduct.org
About AWIP
Founded by Nancy Wang as a product manager at Google, Advancing Women in Product’s (AWIP) mission is to empower tech leaders through equality of opportunity in career advancement for both men and women. Today, AWIP has grown to over 8,000 members and is active in 5 metropolitan areas – San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston, and Paris. AWIP believes in the power of education and community to propel the technology industry forward.
