The cover story of the April issue of The Atlantic, titled “Why is Silicon Valley so Awful to Women,” focuses on circumstances that have led to women holding only about a quarter of U.S. computing and mathematical jobs – “a fraction that has actually slightly fallen over the past 15 years.”
According to the article, by Liza Mundy, despite tech companies spending hundreds of millions of dollars to improve conditions for female employees, “women are not only hired in lower numbers than men; they leave tech jobs at more than twice the rate men do.”
The writer interviewed women throughout the tech field and found that no matter how they love working in tech, they all had stories about incidents that “chipped away at their sense of belonging and expertise.” She found that “workplace conditions, a lack of access to key creative roles, and a sense of feeling stalled in one’s career are the main reasons women leave.”
The article also describes in details some of the pros and cons of unconscious bias training as companies experiment with and alter their approaches to eliminating unconscious bias.