The ‘women in tech’ discourse has, over time, shifted from general awareness around key issues to instigating meaningful and systemic reform. Each year, there are thousands of events, panels, initiatives and policies devoted to equalizing the experience between men and women – with remuneration a key part of this.
“It’s not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along. Because that’s good karma. It’ll come back because somebody’s going to know that’s the kind of person that I want to trust.”
Mind the gap
Speaking at the 2014 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, the then newly appointed Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella clumsily commented on how women should approach the question of unequal pay in the workplace.
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People immediately pushed back against his remarks, with widespread and universal condemnation. For example, the interviewer, computer scientist Maria Klawe, immediately pushed back, giving women the opposite advice.
You should, she advised, do your homework on fair salaries and actively practice negotiating. This was followed by media reports and social media commentary ridiculing the comments — drawing a swift apology from the Microsoft CEO.
Bridging the divide
Nadella addressed the controversy in an internal memo, as reported by GeekWire, and reaffirmed Microsoft’s commitment to positive action.
In the years that have followed, there’s been a mixture of changes across the tech industry – for better and worse. There is, for example, a higher proportion of women in tech now than more than ten years ago. But female leadership is declining.
There are also concerns that the pay gap is widening, and that women have disproportionately comprised over 45% of total job losses despite making up roughly 30% of the workforce. Despite a huge and very vocal push, the reality remains that progress on better representation, equal pay, and equal opportunity is patchy at best.
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