Retaining Women in Tech – A Community Publishing Project
The COVID-19 pandemic distancing measures have created an opportunity to pull back from the day-to-day grind and discover/reflect upon issues that have long suffered from inaction. The retention of women in technology careers has been one of these issues for decades. For over 40 years, we’ve been encouraging women to choose technology careers. But even with extensive recruiting, 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. High tech knows it needs women to fulfill necessary jobs and to increase innovation. It’s time for a new approach focused on retention. With that in mind, we’re asking you to get involved. Karen Holtzblatt (WITops and InContext Design) and Nicola Marsden (Heilbronn University) have been researching the retention of women in technology for years and have begun work on a new book that will be the foundation of a new plan of action. |

Retaining Women in Tech: Shifting the Paradigm |
Karen Holtzblatt ( WITops and InContext Design) Nicola Marsden (Heilbron University) You can access the first chapter of the book via the link above (use the download link on the page, not the shopping cart) to see an introduction to the myriad issues women are facing in technology careers, as well as practical interventions for successfully shifting the paradigm. Here’s where the unique community publishing project comes in. We need you to help by taking our “Valuing and Jerk” survey . https://keyingress.rz.hs-heilbronn.de/goto/Jerk-Project2 This author-generated survey will help us find out which valuing behaviors are experienced as the best and which “jerk” behaviors are experienced as the worst. If we get enough participation we will be able to see if job type, company type, gender or other characteristics have different responses. And we will start to explore if the behaviors have changed due to more people working in a remote context. These latter open ended questions will help shape our new research on the impact of remote work on stereotyping and interpersonal behavior in a real world setting which will also be in the book. All results will be in the book along with self-awareness techniques and intervention suggestions. Community involvement in generating and publishing this content ensures we provide the tech community with a book containing the very best in data, individual and organizational experiences, and successful programs that can be implemented to solve this critical issue. |