Old divide carried out online
Giant tech companies are normally known for their progressive and innovative approaches to work, but new figures show the 21st century companies uphold some fairly 19th century gender divisions.
Computer engineers Ri Liu and Tracy Chou have compiled data to show the size of the gender gap at some of the biggest tech companies in the world.
Several firms manage to have over 100 male engineers on their team while employing less than ten female engineers.
Dropbox has 134 male engineers, but only nine women.
Mozilla employs 457 male engineers and only 43 female engineers.
Mozilla did have the highest contingent of female programmers, according to iu and Chou’s list, but it also has the largest engineering team overall.
Companies with smaller teams, such as Activision, Learnist and Bitly, usually have just one female engineer on their staff.
The two tech insiders have compiled a spreadsheet of the data and converted it into an infographic titled “We Can Do Better,” visually represents the vast difference between the employment rates of engineers by gender.
The gender divide in what should be the most forward-thinking of industries is sometimes explicitly demonstrated.
Engineer Julie Ann Horvath recently spoke about her departure from programming network GitHub, which she says was the result of a sexist internal culture.
Similarly, the CEO of online start-up Locket, Ms Yunha Kim, says she received sexual advances in response to job offers made to male engineers.