MUMBAI: Belong survey looked at all tech companies in the country and found that there is one woman engineer as against three men engineers, leading to the fact that the Indian technology industry has just 26% women in engineering roles.
This reinforces the assumption that science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs attract less women, the survey added.
The Belong survey was done with ITES companies with over 50 employees and the data was collected from around three lakh women.
“The average number of women (irrespective of their function) in tech companies, we found that the overall representation was 34%,” according to survey by Belong on the gender gap in the tech industry in India.
After analysing the career trajectories of techies, who moved into managerial positions and data, the survey found that the transition of men on an average to managerial positions is usually after six years of experience while women move to these roles after eight years of experience.
After quitting engineering, these women mostly move to marketing, product management or consulting, it added.
Among the tech talent in India, there are more women in software testing roles (a less sought after skill) compared to core programming roles.
Key finding of the Survey
- As many as 45% of women move out of core engineering roles after close to eight years.
- Absolute number of jobs in software testing are significantly less than programming.
- When it came to hardcore programming roles, the ratio changed to 25:75.
- Every 100 testing jobs, there were 34 women compared to 66 men.
- 29% women start working in a given year, the percentage drops to a dismal 7% after 12 years.
- The biggest drop-off in pure numbers is after the first five years.
Finding reveals that women often take a break to start a family around this time in their lives, and many do not return to the workforce.
From leadership development programmes and special incentives to refer women candidates, Indian IT companies are using innovative techniques to hire and retain tech talent of the opposite gender.
There have been initiatives by many big companies to tap these lost talents and bring back these women, it said.
