Diva Tech Talk celebrated International Women’s Month on the “live” M2 Podcast in March. Diva Kathleen Norton-Schock shared cogent statistics outlining women’s status in the technology field, dating back to the 1980’s through 2016. Her overview highlighted the current low number of women (less than 24%) holding key roles in the technology industry. The discussion went on to address the problems with unconscious bias, the low percentage of female venture capitalists, and how a number of organizations are trying to make a difference to change this situation. Kathleen was aided by Inforum’s Rachele Downs, Vice President of Entrepreneurial Strategy, and Terry Barclay, Inforum’s CEO, who offered their observations on ways this can be corrected, with a lot of help from forward-thinking corporations and nonprofits, as well as enlightened investors.
Kathleen went on to share the good news about Detroit, with an increase in tech jobs up to 33% over the last 3 year, and the fact that 45% of them are being held by women. According to a recent study, Detroit is third only to the District of Columbia, and Kansas in terms of being a great place for women technologists to work since in Detroit, salary parity has often been achieved here.
Kathleen also recapped some of Diva Tech Talk’s major podcasts focused on both budding technology leaders and entrepreneurs as examples of how women can and do achieve great things in tech.
The segment ended with a review of the good work being done by The Michigan Council of Women In Technology. Kathleen discussed how that organization is increasing the number of girls entering the technology field through its many programs including summer camps focused on 4th through 7th grade girls, the annual girl high school Website development competition, and the scholarship programs for college and post-graduate girls/women pursuing technology degrees. She also touches on some of the upcoming MCWT events imminently coming up.
Take a listen here: https://soundcloud.com/podcastdetroit/m2techcast-episode-25
