Could STEM scholarships for women be the key to closing the gender gap in tech?

The numbers aren’t encouraging.

Despite women making up 59% of the US labor force and almost 51% of the entire US population, according to the US Census Bureau, only 30% of workers in the tech industry are women. That figure drops to a paltry 16% when you look at the engineering workforce within the tech industry. If you’re wondering about open source, women make up only 6% of users on GitHub.

Many women are unfortunately deterred from entering the field, noting that the scarcity of women seems isolating and that subtle discrimination still exists in the sector. While the ethical imperative for gender equity is quite clear, recent research has also demonstrated that gender balanced teams tend to outperform predominantly male or predominantly female teams, offering a strong business rationale for closing the gender gap in tech as well.   

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