For over 40 years, the tech industry has been working to attract more
women. Yet, women continue to be underrepresented in technology jobs
compared to other professions. Worse, once hired, women leave the
field mid-career twice as often as men. In 2013, Karen Holtzblatt
launched The Women in Tech Retention Project at WITops.org, dedicated to
understanding what helps women in tech thrive. In 2014, Nicola Marsden
joined the effort, bringing her extensive knowledge and research on
gender and bias for women in tech. Together with worldwide volunteers,
this research identified what helps women thrive and practical
interventions to improve women's experience at work.
In this book, we share women's stories, our research, relevant
literature, and our perspective on making change to help retain women.
All the research and solutions we share are based on deep research and
user-centered ideation techniques. Part I describes the @Work Experience
Framework and the six key factors that help women thrive: a dynamic
valuing team; stimulating projects; the push into challenges with
support; local role models; nonjudgmental flexibility to manage
home/work balance; and developing personal power. Employees thinking of
leaving their job have significantly lower scores on these factors
showing their importance for retention.
Part II describes tested interventions that redesign work practices to
better support women, diverse teams, and all team members. We chose
these interventions guided by data from over 1,000 people from multiple
genders, ethnicities, family situations, and countries. Interventions
target key processes in tech: onboarding new hires; group critique
meetings; and Scrum. Interventions also address managing interpersonal
dynamics to increase valuing and decrease devaluing behaviors and
techniques for teams to define, monitor, and continuously improve their
culture. We conclude by describing our principles for redesigning
processes with an eye toward issues important to women and diverse
teams.
