DEI Hiring

If you are reading this thinking it’s a merry read praising women and saying women are better than men, this is not for you. However, before you get mad at me for writing this, I request you to read till the end before you get all riled up.

Not all opinions are the same, but some people wish they were. Remember the Google engineer James Damore and his memo about ”why men are naturally better at computers than women”? It took the tech world by storm and every large company started coming out with their own statements about how they are a diverse organisation and how they support gender diversity.

I don’t necessarily disagree with him. The skills of a developer, however, don’t depend on the gender. So, why are women lagging behind and why did Damore feel that way?

This is because of generations of people who have passed on this mindset and generations of holding women back. Yes, on average, women are not better than men in STEM, but did you ever question if women get the same number of opportunities men do? Research shows that diversity in a team leads to better problem solving but women make up less than 25% of the STEM workforce in the United States.ESA calculations on gender share

Potential reasons why fewer women choose to pursue careers in STEM while considering the long term were discussed in a recent article on Code Like A Girl by Kriti Khare.

The nature of jobs does not permit them to continue them for a long time, as usually it’s the woman in the family who has to take care of the family. If there’s more studying involved, and a child is on the way, there would most likely be a break that would make it tough to manage a higher academic degree. — Kriti Khare

Diversity has nothing to do with how good a team can be in terms of skills but if you look at it from an organization perspective, organizations with women leaders and team members do better than those that don’t. The 2015 "Women on Boards" study by MSCI on gender diversity shows, "Companies in the MSCI World Index with strong female leadership generated a Return on Equity of 10.1% per year versus 7.4% for those without." This is because women make up a large segment of the customers. Diverse teams and leadership thus help in diverse thoughts and strategies, and deliver better performance.

Being a woman, I don’t want someone to see me as a unicorn or pity me and give me special treatment of some kind. I do not want to be a woman developer. I just want to be recognized as a developer and earn the respect my skills deserve. I don’t want to be caught between two words “woman” and “developer” and then be judged by the rest of the world.

The only way to change the world of women is by creating more and more opportunities to showcase their skills. This is not going to be easy, changing the thinking and fighting generations of stereotype that we have in our society. We have to accept that no one is going to come and speak for us. If we want things to change, we have to take every chance we get and punch stereotype in the face. Women can change the world for women.

As Dinah Davis mentions in her article Girls need Role models, “Let’s get started and deluge girls with STEM Role Models!” I believe that you can be the role model she speaks of. HackerEarth and Schlumberger brings to you International Women’s Hackathon 2018, which is a great platform to help you be that role model.

We should try and show everyone that we can change our own world. Maybe somewhere out there, there is a little girl who will see you doing your bit to make a difference in the world and realize that she too can grow up to be a brilliant, successful engineer or developer.

Cursing the society won’t make a change but calling out capable women to inspire the next generation of women will.

A vestige of a by-gone colonial era, our modern-day education system, with its outdated teaching methodology and questionable assessment modules, is in dire need of an overhaul.

Although it permeates our everyday lives, technology in education is yet to impact our systems in an effective and meaningful manner.

If one were to compare today’s classrooms to those 20 or 30 years back, there wouldn’t be any substantial difference in the way subjects were taught or the assessment methodologies adopted to gauge its effectiveness.

The latter in particular has been completely unaffected by technology, and we are going to explore the reasons behind this.

Why the unwillingness to adopt online assessment in education?

A majority of professors use technology in education primarily to better plan their lessons and make more engaging presentations.

When it comes to tests or assessments, however, they opt for the same antiquated pen-and-paper routine.

While it is understandable that you shun technology to assess a literature paper, it is difficult to understand why technology is not judiciously used to assess students of engineering or similar technical streams.

Let’s look at some of the reasons and possible solutions to address them.

1. Lack of training

   According to a 2006 study by Hew and Brush, one of the primary obstacles to adopting technology in education was inadequate knowledge and skills.

   A prerequisite for using traditional software tools was a fair amount of technical know-how and skill.

   Those unfortunate ones who weren’t in possession of such skills had to be trained to use these tools, which was a time consuming and expensive affair and might explain the reluctance that most educational institutions have towards adopting such technology extensively.

   However, the newer breed of technology tools, with their intuitive designs and interface, and faster onboarding experience makes it effortless to adapt and adopt.

2. Pressure to confirm

   The brave souls who do try to do things differently are almost always frowned upon by traditionalists, who are reluctant to change their ways.

   There are two possible outcomes to being subjected to this sort of pressure — they either keep fighting the good fight till others see merit in their newer ways, or they succumb to the pressure and give up.

   However, a technology that is effortless to operate can help in turning even the hardest cynics into supporters of technical assessments

3. Changes needed at a policy level

   In any classroom, there are typically two forms of assessments conducted — formative, conducted over the course of teaching to monitor student learning, and summative that are the standard tests or exams conducted at the end of a term or semester to evaluate student learning by comparing it against a benchmark.

   While colleges or schools can take liberties by conducting formative assessments to gauge how well a student understands a concept, it cannot substitute a tech assessment with a summative one that is conducted in accordance with the board of education, unless thus approved by the board.

   Changes at a policy level to technically transform traditional assessment, however, can ensure that our students are assessed effectively and comprehensively.

4. Test-centric mindset needs to change

   At a very fundamental level, we define academic achievement by how well someone does on a standardized test.

   Our education system is also designed to help achieve better test results rather than helping students understand a concept clearly.

   Introducing a tech assessment model requires a shift in mindset where we assess the student to better understand his weak areas and strengths and then use those parameters to design teaching to be most effective.

   Most technical assessment tools come built-in with data-driven analytics that allows its users to comprehensively analyze the progress made by each student.

   Such comprehensive and relevant reports can go a long way in convincing our educators to change their approach towards assessments in general.

Benefits of online assessment tools in education

Creating assessments for the entire class, not once or twice a year but repeatedly year after year is a tedious routine that our teachers/professors undertake.

However, their work doesn’t end there.

After creating these assessments in a variety of forms, the next task is grading them and providing appropriate feedback for the entire class and that too, in a timely manner.

It is in this context that digital tools come in handy.

Assessment and feedback lifecycle as described by Ros Smith and Lisa Gray

Authors Ros Smith and Lisa Gray’s 2016 guide on enhancing assessment through technology explains the lifecycle of assessment and feedback.

According to them, most educators use technology mostly during the ‘Supporting’ stage of the lifecycle, whereas, technology can add considerable value at the ‘Submitting’, ‘Marking and production of feedback’ stages as well.

For instance, during the submitting stage, not only can the software give reminders of upcoming submission date, but students can also conveniently submit their assignment online without having to physically hand-in their assignments.

During the marking and feedback stages, educators are presented with the advantage of not having to carry around the bulky bundles of assessments, and instead access it online anywhere.

Tech assessments also ensure consistency in marking, along with the option to provide written, audio or video feedback comments.

Let’s explore a few other advantages of using online assessment tools.

1. Built-in flexibility to assess an array of skills and competence

   The design flexibility that most tech assessments come with, presents educators with the opportunity to assess a wide range of skills and competency in their students that are far and beyond what any standardized test can offer.

   Apart from testing students on a range of skills, this type of online assessment tool closely simulates real-world scenarios.

2. Transparency in marking

   Tech assessments typically come programmed with the option to specify marking criteria, based on which tests are typically graded.

   These criteria are transparent to all and make for an unbiased and impartial grading system.

3. Delivery schedule can be timed

   Online assessments tools can be customized to deliver assessments as per a specific schedule (bimonthly or weekly, for instance) with minimal input from teachers, thus offloading a lot of their workload.

   Apart from a delivery schedule, these assessments can be customized to automatically mark or grade the submissions, further reducing the workload for the teachers and making the grading system more efficient.

4. Enables deeper learning

   Thanks to the efficiency of such assessments coupled with its precise feedback, students, and teachers can target both strengths and weakness and promote deeper learning of concepts.

   This form of learning builds genuine interest to pursue a subject which also reflects in improved results in subsequent assessments.

5. Customizationfor students with disabilities or learning difficulties

   Technology can make it simpler for students with disabilities or learning difficulties to perform better during assessments by customizing it as per their needs or requirements.

   For instance, one can opt to take the assessment in an audio/visual format, or customize the presentation of the assessment by tweaking the font, text size, etc as per individual need, thus ensuring a level playing field for all those involved.

6. Other benefits of online assessment tools

   Apart from the above-mentioned benefits, tech assisted assessments also gives students the opportunity to access it from anywhere or anytime.

   Ease of customization also ensures that based on statistics of performance, each course module can be tweaked as required.

   The timely manner in which results are published also enables teachers to review their lessons and courses much more effectively.

Using the right online assessment in education for the right purpose at the right time

While the merits far outweigh any drawbacks that this form of online assessment has, the main concern many expresses is regarding the technical support required in an event of a software issue cropping up.

This would delay a scheduled assessment from taking place and throw a spanner into a process that has been set in motion.

There is also some concern about how technology can bring about a more pronounced student-teacher gap because of the high levels of automation possible in these tools.

But what we all need to realize is that technology is a double-edged sword, there are bound to be several concerns over such a large-scale implementation, but if used judiciously and with discretion, it has the power to unlock a gold mine of opportunities.

While top companies like Amazon, Walmart, Accenture, and other fortunes 500 companies are building campus recruitment strategies.

It is essential for school and universities to train their students for the assessment of futures.

Learn how HackerEarth had helped Universities develop their learning and development program with online Assessment

"...chances are high that recruiting and retaining talent end up in the top three challenges an organization faces.” – Sachin Gupta, HackerEarth CEO and co-founder

Consciously or unconsciously, hiring bias is often attached to decisions we make.

Making the right hiring decision is crucial—it determines whether the new hire will align with the required skills, team attitude, and company culture.

Technology and data now play a huge role in helping recruiters make informed choices.

Despite these tools, final decisions are still made by people—vulnerable to emotions, assumptions, and personal experiences.

As an HBR researcher said, “bias causes us to make decisions in favor of one person or group to the detriment of others.”

Recruiters often unconsciously favor candidates based on age, race, gender, or background—leading to missed opportunities to hire the best match for the job.

Do’s

• Look for knowledge and talent
• Match the necessary skills
• Select for attitude

Don’ts

• Check the gender of your candidates
• Focus on age, race, or ethnicity
• Look for similar backgrounds

7 Types of Hiring Bias

1. Confirmation Bias

   Occurs when recruiters form an assumption (e.g., Ivy League education = top performer) and seek data to support that belief, ignoring contradictory evidence.

2. Affinity Bias

   When recruiters favor candidates with similar education, hometowns, or experiences, often at the cost of the right skills or qualifications.

3. Halo and Horns Effect

   The halo effect assumes someone good at one thing is good at others. The horns effect does the opposite—focusing only on faults based on a bad first impression.

4. Expectation Anchor

   A recruiter is biased toward a favorite CV during interviews, unintentionally comparing all others to that one.

5. Intuition

   Relying on gut feeling without complete data can lead to risky and inaccurate hiring decisions.

6. Beauty Bias

   Assuming good looks equal capability. For instance, 60% of U.S. CEOs are over 6 ft tall while only 15% of the population is—this suggests aesthetic bias.

7. Effective Heuristic

   Judging candidates based on appearance, body type, or tattoos. Research shows this bias underestimates obese candidates and overestimates those of average build.

How to Avoid Hiring Bias

According to Harvard Business Review, bias can be reduced by:

• Simplifying and standardizing interview questions
• Going blind during resume review (ignore demographic info)
• Giving a work sample test to objectively measure skills

Also read: Enabling workplace diversity through blind recruitment

Role of Talent Assessment Software (TAS)

Most hiring bias stems from first impressions or personal assumptions. To avoid this:

• Use blind pre-screening
• Use work sample tests

Technology and data can help recruiters make better decisions. Talent assessment software removes unconscious bias by evaluating only skills and qualifications before a candidate’s background is revealed.

Read: 5 reasons you should use talent assessment tools

With platforms like Recruit, you can test technical skills, generate performance data, and make decisions based on merit—free from prejudice.

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Why You Need to Avoid Hiring Bias

Legal-Based Reasons

• Equal Employment Opportunity laws protect candidates and require unbiased hiring.
• Violation of corporate ethics policies may lead to lawsuits and damage employer branding.

Performance-Based Reasons

• Bias-free hiring fosters diversity, which enhances team performance.
• Unbiased decisions lead to more accurate job-candidate matches and reduce hiring errors.

Bias is common—but it’s manageable. Rethink your recruitment process and use assessment software to remove subjectivity and evaluate what truly matters—skills.

Use HackerEarth to recruit without bias

This article has been updated on March 7th, 2023.

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Anonymity might be the only way to guarantee a truly diverse workforce that organizations are striving to attract. A diverse labor force—diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, thinking style, and disability—means more creativity and innovation, a broad spectrum of perspectives on problem-solving, positive performance, lesser attrition, greater market share, and higher revenues.

In 2023, you can no longer put diversifying your workforce on the back burner; it has become a priority for employers if they want to attract and retain top-tier talent.

The new generations of potential candidates highly value workplace diversity. 40% of tech employers surveyed in Lever’s DEI Report say candidates are looking for more inclusive, diverse work cultures.

Recruiters seeking to level the playing field and prevent discrimination of all kinds need to step up their hiring game. Consequently, they are increasingly shifting to the “blind hiring” approach.

Read on to find out all about blind hiring, why it’s an effective way to cut down on hiring biases, and how technology can help you carry out blind hiring effectively.

What is blind hiring?

Hiding all personal information of a candidate including names, photos, addresses, education, hobbies, etc from the hiring manager is called blind hiring. This is done to ensure that a candidate is assessed and selected on ability and skills alone. Instead of being unconsciously biased by where they came from, their gender, or their pedigree.

For instance, let’s look at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s blind audition process in the 1950s. Claire Cain Miller’s article in the New York Times Magazine explores this idea in depth. Long story short, in the 1970s, the Boston Symphony Orchestra decided to test the results of blind auditions.

Back then, white men dominated orchestras. The judges had no idea who was auditioning as both male and female musicians, were asked to audition behind screens.

Once anonymity was embraced, the results were a lot fairer than before. Women musicians became more likely hires than men (between 25-46%). Now that’s a much more level playing field than before!

In the same vein, organizations have taken a leaf out of the Boston Symphony concept. They have integrated “blind elements” in various stages of their hiring process. Blind hiring techniques include blind resume screening, blind pre-employment testing, and blind interviewing.

If done correctly, this method can greatly reduce the effect of cognitive biases on hiring decisions.

How do tech recruiting tools help you make fairer hiring decisions

Recruiting software platforms like Blendoor and HackerEarth help you implement blind recruiting accurately. There are three options to help improve workforce diversity through this recruiting technique:

Blind screening

To minimize discriminatory recruiting barriers, remove information that reveals the candidate’s race, gender, age, names of schools, links to social media, hobbies, etc. This technique helps mitigate unconscious bias and “first impressions” that creep into hiring decisions.

Tools like Blendoor exclude revealing data from resumes and CVs like:

• Candidate’s name
• Candidate’s headshot
• Candidate’s education
• Candidate’s zip code/address
• Candidate’s hobbies or personal interests
• Candidate’s age and other biographical info

Blind pre-employment testing

Recruiters use pre-hiring screens such as cognitive aptitude tests, coding assessments, personality assessments, sample job tasks, or language proficiency tests to evaluate applicants depending on the job role.

Pre-employment testing is fair, saves you time and money, and gives you data that ensures you have made legally defensible hiring decisions. It allows candidates to showcase their talent in a controlled environment.

Say, you want to hire a Java developer. You have tons of resumes where one candidate looks as “attractive” as the next in terms of qualifications. You can easily conduct an automated coding challenge for programmers.

For example, a platform such as HackerEarth Assessments offers the option to mask the personally identifiable information (PII) of candidates to anonymize screening. Companies can create highly accurate coding assessments with minimal technical know-how by choosing from a rich library of 17,000+ questions across 900+ skills.

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Also read: Tips to Identify and Remove Unintended Bias In the Assessment Process

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Blind video interviewing

This is perhaps the most difficult to achieve in terms of anonymizing a candidate, recruiters use chats or written Q&A tests to hire. Additionally, there are tools that allow for blind interviews by obscuring the candidate’s identity and/or using voice masking technology.

Our intelligent coding interview platform, FaceCode supports your pursuit of truly unbiased tech recruitment. FaceCode allows you to mask any and all candidate PII at the flick of the switch, before or during a live coding interview as seen above.

How effective is blind hiring?

As the numbers show, hiding personal candidate information does have a positive impact on resume screening. The Boston Symphony experiment opened up more doors than before for women musicians and reduced gender bias.

Another study shows that candidates who change their first names to make it sound more “white” have a higher chance of being shortlisted for the next round than those who don’t.

So yes, blind hiring is effective—to an extent. It maximizes chances for a more diverse candidate pool to get through the initial screening process. But experts are divided on the efficacy of blind hiring to reduce the overall bias and promote objective evaluation of skills.

Most employers worldwide are focusing on bettering the diversity ratio at their workplaces. And blind hiring is one of the various strategies they are relying on to address issues such as discrimination, a homogenous workforce, and attrition.

Still, putting all your eggs in one basket and expecting it to solve your diversity hiring problems is simply not enough. You have to do so much more for moving the needle on your diversity initiatives.

Some additional ways for your organization to reduce recruiters’ bias include:

• Write gender-fluid tech job descriptions so that they attract candidates from minorities and underrepresented groups in tech
• Use blind hiring tools to hide personally identifiable information (PII) of candidates on job applications and résumés.
• Consider using blind recruiting software like HackerEarth that allows you to objectively assess developers with ease, solely based on their skills
• Evaluate candidates based on pre-defined scoring parameters and standard interview questions
• Ensure in having an interview panel that is diverse and brings multiple perspectives to the table
• Focus on building a company culture where inclusion is at the heart of everything you do
• Train employees/managers about the common hiring biases and how to lead inclusively

Take the first step to increasing diversity with blind hiring

Blind hiring may not be the “end all be all” for reducing discrimination in tech. But it is a great starting point for building a more inclusive workforce.

At least as a “first cut”, anonymous recruitment methods can positively impact hiring. They enable you to objectively screen and push the right applicants through the door. Blind recruiting can prevent you from missing out on qualified candidates.

Bias can occur at any and every stage of the recruiting cycle be it at the interview stage or the final decision-making stage. Then, companies can go about fixing errors due to flawed human judgment. Arrange DEI training sessions, create a diverse interview panel, and conduct workshops on unconscious bias.

Here are a few resources to help you meaningfully diversify your workforce and recruit unbiased –

1. For those looking to build a diverse engineering team – we have a free template for you to pick and choose from this list of diversity-focused interview questions so you can conduct the best interviews and make objective hiring choices
2. For those looking to bake blind pre-employment testing into their hiring – we performed an exercise to determine if there was any bias in HackerEarth Assessments against people from different ethnicities, races, and genders and if there was a disparate impact

When you read about famous women in tech talking about their experiences, you’ll have an anecdote about how she was the only woman in the male-dominated room of tech wizards. At times ignored, women had a tough time getting their voices heard and opinions valued, and that’s putting it mildly. Many of their stories have a common thread of growing up battling stereotypes at the workplace, parental pressure at home, and a myriad unconscious biases.

Well, that’s how it was. Things must have changed. Surely. We are living in such a progressive age, for heaven’s sake.

But have they?

Reading about the recent gender discrimination fiasco at Uber, you can’t be faulted for being skeptical. Uber’s tech teams have very few women—an appalling 15.1%. And to make matters worse, the “underrepresentation” came under public scrutiny only after Susan Fowler, a reliability engineer at Uber, published a traumatizing post about sexual harassment.

It is just more proof of how many battles women have to fight, to couch in nonchalant smiles...

Statistics paint a dismal picture.

In the tech world, sexism seems to be taking much longer (than one would like) to disappear. Elevating their voices is a struggle. The awareness is there. There’s enough talk about lack of gender diversity at workplaces. But where is the conversation, huh? This post is not a feminist rant. We’ll just look at what the numbers are telling us.

Data says that women don’t really enjoy equal representation.



Source: Fortune.com (February, 2017)

• In 2014, women added up to only 17% of tech workers at Google, 15% at Facebook, and 10% at Twitter according to the American Association of University Women.
• In 2014, 11 global software giants published data that only 30% of the IT workforce is female.
• In 2015, professional computing occupations in the US workforce held by women was 25%. This was the same number in 2008, whereas in 1991, it was 36%.
• In the UK, a 2014 study showed that only 1 in 21 IT job applications were women.
• In the US, 25% of the women with IT roles “feel stalled in their careers;” in India it is 45% percent and the UK it is 37%.
• In the US, a 2014 study said that “unfriendly” policies, poor pay, unfair promotion, and a bro-grammer culture resulted in 45% of women leaving their tech jobs after a year.
• Women hold only 26% of digital industry jobs; it is 16% in IT, and 13% in STEM.
• A Stack Overflow survey says that only 8% of the software developers are women.
• Women constitute just 5% of the programmers in the video game industry. However, IGDA’s survey shows an 11% increase since 2009.
• Catalyst, a nonprofit organization focused on expanding opportunities for women, reported that "women in business roles within tech companies are more likely to start at the entry level compared with men.”
• In Silicon Valley, women earn significantly lesser than men in similar roles.

Look at the findings of another study validating much of the stats above.A Study by the Center for Talent Innovation (U.S.): The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology (2013)



There’s a reason it’s a boy’s club, and should be.No, there really isn’t.

• After surveying leaders in the IT industry, a Nominet-commissioned report, Closing the Gender Gap, revealed that the UK economy could find itself richer by £2.6 billion if it gave more IT jobs to women.
• In 2015, this is what research found while analyzing code approved by GitHub: “Women’s acceptance rates dominate over men’s for every programming language in the top 10, to various degrees.” Unfortunately, this finding held true only when the women did not disclose their gender.
• CodeFights found that women and men do almost equally well in coding challenges. Look at this infographic.
• Stats show that in specialized coding academies, women students comprise 35%.
• A McKinsey study showed that companies with over 15% of the women in top management roles had noticeably higher debt-to-equity ratios and payout ratios.
• McKinsey says that the annual global GDP could go up to 26% in 2025 if women participated equally in the economy.
• The Peterson Institute for International Economics surveyed 21,980 firms from 91 countries to conclude that increasing the representation of women to 30% in a company that had none to begin with could lead to a 15%-increase in revenue.

Getting back to the original question, no, the numbers don’t quite add up, at least not in Uncle Sam’s country. It is getting worse.

With 57% of the workforce being made up of women, women account for only 5% of tech leadership jobs, 19% of developers, and less than 30% of IT jobs. Microsoft reported in 2015 that women comprise 29.1 percent of its workforce, with only 16.6 percent in technical positions and 23 percent in leadership roles. Only 21% hold leadership positions in the already poor representation of women at Twitter. Only 21% of women in its 17% women workforce have managerial roles.

Except in the UK, US, and Canada, girls do better than boys in science and math at school. But somewhere along the way, this phenomenon gets buried under layers of stereotypes and circumstances, and now we have only 3 of the Fortune 500 tech companies with women as leaders.

3 out of Fortune 500 companies with women as leaders

And you thought scaling Mount Everest was tough.

In the U.S., the percentage of women majoring in computer science fell from 36% in 1985 to 18% in 2012. Girls hold themselves back for so many reasons. Self-perception is often skewed. They are even told that looking geeky with their noses in books is a major turn off for the boys.

Data shows that a whopping share of girls are interested in the problem-solving aspects and the creativity STEM offers. But they typically pick medicine or healthcare as a career choice over computers and engineering. These girls are conscious of the pervasive bias against women; they fear the isolation, sexism, and the lack of recognition they could face at the university or workplace. Some women also find programming boring. Some others believe that programming serves a male master. And stories of a viciously misogynistic Silicon Valley can’t be helping matters.

Women don’t seem to have enough role models. If they could interact or look up to more women playing starring roles in STEM related careers, it will encourage persistence. Who is going to tell them that their contribution will make a difference in the world?

However, we are in an age where fighting for their piece of the pie has been much easier for women than ever before. And, there’s mounting evidence proving how successful skilled women can be and how the world economy can only grow with more women at all levels.

Fairness is not about statistic quality —John Bercow

Fairness is about cleaning out the closet filled with centuries’ old prejudices and fears.

It is about boys at school knowing that smart girls are not intimidating or ugly; it is about girls at school knowing that the world is as much theirs; it is about parents encouraging their daughters to bravely storm male bastions; it is about skilled young women in universities believing in themselves, dreaming, and taking for granted the opportunities that will come their way; it is about women employees knowing that they can work in a safe environment unaffected by sexism, unequal recognition, and condescension; it is about not making men feel guilty for no reason; and it is about companies recognizing that gender disparity has far-reaching consequences and making a conscious effort to mitigate them.

For female programmers, HackerEarth’s International Women’s Hackathon is an opportunity to compete with other skilled developers in an algo-intensive challenge on March 8. So, get your coding hats on and get ready to save the world. (Maybe that’s a bit much. Still.)

“I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.” — Sir William Gerald Goulding

“When I joined Microsoft in 1987, I was the only woman in my hiring class. Nearly 30 years later, the landscape for women in computer science hasn’t improved—in fact, it’s gotten worse.” — Melinda Gates

These polar opposite updates sparked curiosity about where women stand in tech today. Despite progress, the gender diversity gap remains wide. Women still represent only 25% of the tech workforce, the same as in 2014. How is this still a thing?

According to a 2015 study by LeanIn.org and McKinsey,

we are 100 years away from achieving gender equality

This post explores problems at various stages of the pipeline and what small and medium-sized companies can do to achieve gender diversity.

Gender diversity - Why is it important?

A gender gap undeniably exists in tech. Overlooking talented candidates based on gender is not only unethical, it’s a loss for the company. Gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to outperform their peers financially.

What is the underlying problem?

The gender diversity issue is a pipeline problem, seen across four key stages:

• Educating women
• Recruiting women
• Paying & promoting women
• Retaining women

How can SMEs make a difference?

SMEs make up 45% of U.S. employment. Their collective efforts can shift the gender diversity needle significantly.

1. Educating women

Only 18% of Computer Science majors are women. While nonprofits like “Girls Who Code” and “Black Girls Code” are helping, SMEs can support by donating, mentoring, or volunteering.

2. Recruiting women

Try these strategies:

a) Blind résumé reviews

• Concealing applicant identity can increase fairness and reduce bias.
• Studies show anonymized résumés boost chances for women and minority candidates.
• Use tools like TalentSonar and GapJumpers to automate this process.

b) Mandatory gender bias training

Make all employees aware of unconscious bias through regular training sessions.

c) Women-only hackathons

Events focused on women provide a platform to identify top talent. Companies like Amazon and WalmartLabs have used this strategy effectively.

3. Paying and promoting women

For every $1 men make, women make $0.79.

a) Audit your pay and promotion practices

Evaluate total compensation (salary, benefits, stock options) and assess promotion data for gender parity.

b) Create a salary range structure

Define transparent salary bands across levels to ensure fair compensation.

c) Implement fair policy & ensure accountability

Assign KPIs related to gender diversity to HR roles to create accountability and progress.

4. Retaining women employees

Men are 45% more likely to be retained than women. Causes include:

• Unfavorable work policies
• Sexism
• Bias against motherhood

a) Create favorable policies and inclusive work environments

• Enforce a zero-tolerance sexual harassment policy.
• Embed inclusivity into your company culture.
• Design policies with women’s needs in mind, including flexibility.
• Include women in leadership and hiring decisions.

b) Implement a good maternity policy

Despite no national paid leave law in the U.S., tech giants offer generous policies. SMEs should aim for at least 12 weeks of paid leave or offer maternity insurance.

Need a guide to get started?

It might seem daunting, but with intention and commitment, gender diversity is an achievable goal.

Why not make it one of your 2017 business goals?

**Interested in organizing a women-only hackathon? Check out HackerEarth Sprint. HackerEarth has supported over 100 companies globally with hackathons.

Interested in conducting an exclusive hackathon for women?