4 Facts You Didn’t Know About Women In Tech

Year after year, studies confirm that women are paid less than men; this year, in honor of International Women’s Day, we’ve chosen to publish four insights from our internal data,  which confirms and helps to explain this trend.

Over 20,000 software developers using Woo have told us what they’re looking for in an ideal job, including salary requirements, remote work/flexible hours, and willingness to work in ‘risky’ environments (ie. startups).

With this data, we were able to compile a report on what women and men are looking for in the workplace and take a guess at why women suffer from workplace inequality from their first job search.

1. Expected salary of men and women, divided by years of experience (CA, NY)

   San Francisco

   

   • The average expected salary of female developers with 0-2 years experience is 8.2% lower than their male colleagues
   • Among developers with 3-5 years of experience, the gap is reduced to 3.19%
   • For senior developers with 6+ years of experience, the gap widens, peaking at 9.44%

   New York

   

   • The average expected salary of female developers with 0-2 years experience is 11.72% lower than their male colleagues
   • Among developers with 3-5 years of experience, the gap is reduced to 9.9%
   • For senior developers with (6+ years of experience), the gap is 11.22%

2. Women are more likely to be hired

   

    

   • Initial interview of identified candidates:
     Employers were 1.12% more likely to proceed with a female candidate;
   • Advanced interviews of highly-ranked candidates:
     After the initial interview, employers were 4.4% more likely to continue the interview process with female candidates.

3. Women are more willing to work from the office
   
   

   When discussing the pay gap, a basic assumption is that women would rather be paid less and have more flexible hours; however, men are almost 5% more likely to request remote work than women.

4. Women and men are almost equally willing to take risks
   
   
   

   Contrary to popular belief, women are just as willing as men to work in ‘less predictable’ environments.

Summary

Though the pay gap is often attributed to stereotypes of women not being risk-takers or wanting more flexible schedules, our study disproves those theories. Rather, the problem seems to be what women expect from their employers in the first place.

Fun fact about Woo: Over 50% of our team members are women