Women represent an untapped labor market needed to fill out the Nashville technology workforce. The Greater Nashville Technology Council reported there was a more than 1,500-person labor deficit in technology jobs in the region in 2014 — and the sector has grown 30 percent since then. In 2018, the number of tech jobs in Middle Tennessee, defined here as Davidson and 14 surrounding counties, totaled 49,465, according to research by Middle Tennessee State University Professor Amy Harris.
That was an increase of 7.3 percent from the mark of 2017 and grew the tech sector’s share of all jobs in the region to nearly 4.3 percent.
Women’s representation in those roles is not growing at the same rate, however. Females make up half of the population and 48.6 percent of the overall workforce, but they held just 36 percent of Middle Tennessee tech jobs in 2018.
Still, Middle Tennessee is actually ahead of the curve nationally. While there is still a long way to go to reach gender parity by tapping a talent pool needed to fill job deficits, the number of women represented in the region’s tech workforce was 3.2 percentage points ahead of the national average.
Prior to the dramatic economic shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, technology jobs in Middle Tennessee were projected to grow 15 percent by 2023, beating the national average by six points. According to the National Center for Women and Information Technology, new additions to the labor force will be able to fill only about 30 percent of those jobs, making it necessary for the Nashville region and many others to tap talent pools not already making their way into the IT jobs pipeline.
Local colleges and universities house nearly 125,000 students in the surrounding area but only 6,000 of them are enrolled in tech-related majors. And women aren’t well represented in that group: The National Center for Education Statistics says women earn more than 61 percent of associate degrees and 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees across all U.S. post-secondary schools, but those numbers fall dramatically when analyzing tech programs: Only 20 percent of graduates are female.
The diversity picture drawn by recent admissions data is even more bleak. Of all technology degrees sought in 2018, only 2 percent were from Black women, 1.8 percent were from Hispanic women, 3.5 percent from Asian women and 0.0002 percent from Native-American women.
The education system isn’t the only driver of workforce equity, but it certainly is a basis for development. The Tech Council has been working to fill the labor deficit by adding to the region’s technology education initiatives and community outreach work. Its Apprenti Tennessee program was born with the mission to fill mid-tier tech jobs through apprenticeship programs built for compatible workers despite their educational background — with an extra focus on recruiting women, minorities and military veterans to diversify the local workforce. The council also offers summer camps and internship programs for high school and college-level students, reaching deeper into the future of Nashville’s workforce and driving students’ interest in tech before they choose their post-secondary specializations.
Women in Technology in Tennessee, a community-based organization founded 20 years ago to support women in the technology sector, provides programming and leadership development for members and companies seeking to drive gender equity. The group also launched a mentorship program in partnership with Lipscomb University and MTSU that pairs professional women technologists with female undergraduate students to keep them engaged in the science.
According to recent workforce development research, girls typically become interested in STEM futures around the age of 11 but many lose interest by age 14, citing a lack of mentorship and gender inequality as the main contributing factors. WiTT’s mentorship program looks to change that, and last November, the program enjoyed record enrollment.
“I’m always just intensely proud of the dedication and commitment of the tech community here to improving gender representation,” Harris says. “You won’t get this looking just at the numbers, but there’s just a different culture here. I think tech in general gets a bad reputation because of a lot of the stereotypes that come from Silicon Valley, and I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t those cultural elements here. But it is different and better here.”
Harris says the most successful diversity initiatives come from private businesses themselves. In Nashville, she points to AllianceBernstein and Asurion as companies that have shown a big commitment to bridging the gender divide in tech jobs. As with many other diversity initiatives, such strategies can also be highly profitable: A recent Bloomberg study found female-led private technology companies are more capital-efficient, achieve 35 percent higher returns on investment, and, when venture-backed, bring in 12 percent more revenue than male-owned tech companies.
While growth projections have mostly been thrown out the window amid the economic uncertainty caused by COVID-19, Harris says the tech sector has remained strong relative to other industries. As growth returns to Middle Tennessee, she hopes the community will continue breaking down societal divides and recruiting a diverse workforce in which innovation can thrive.
“The numbers show we are at a minimum consistent and in some ways ahead of gender representation,” she says. “But I also think that part of the secret sauce of that is that we’ve got a community here that is committed to improving on the status quo.”