While the likes of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are the icons of a male dominated tech industry, women are rapidly entering both regular and high level positions. Data from the top 8 tech companies reveals a growth rate of 238% faster than men, with no signs of slowing down.

Inspired by the rising trend of women in tech, Coupofy has aggregated the data from 30 trusted sources and looked at the most successful women in the industry and their roles as founders, leaders and venture capitalists.

Here are some startling findings revealed about powerful women in tech, reaching to leadership roles and top positions with a speedy growth rate as in comparison to men.

Fact #1: 20% of all tech start-ups across the world are founded by women. Cities with the largest number of tech start-ups founded by women are Silicon Valley, Toronto, London, Moscow, Chicago, Montreal, Paris, Los Angeles, Boston, Tel Aviv, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

In comparison to 2009 figures, wherein only 9.5% of the tech start-ups in US were founded by women, the figures have almost doubled in 2014 to 18%. According to the survey, eight of the world’s largest tech companies, women leadership in tech positions are growing at an accelerated growth rate of 238% faster than men.

Fact #2: According to Forbes, the top 5 Most Powerful Women in Tech 2015 are: Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook; Susan Wojcicki, CEO, YouTube; Ginni Rometty, CEO, IBM; Meg Whitman, CEO, HP; and Marissa Mayer, CEO, Yahoo.

Fact #3: While in 2012, there were only 61 female CIOs in Fortune 500 companies, the numbers in 2014 show a significant increase of 43% over the two year period 2012-2014, to rise to 87 female CIOs. Top six of Fortune 15 companies have female CIOs. Top industries where female CIOs lead are Financial Services, Manufacturing and Energy.

According to 2015 Anita Borg Institute Research, BNY Mellon was rated the best company for Women in Tech.

See: Automation, Immigration and Women Workforce will determine the Global Future of Work

Fact #4: Women represent 7% of the 100 richest tech billionaires. Interesting trivia here:

• Google’s first female engineer and the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company – Yahoo, Marissa Mayer.
• Janice-Bryant Howroyd, Founder and CEO, ACT-1 Group is the first African-American woman with $1-billion business.
• Stephanie Hannon, CTO, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign is the first woman to manage technology for the US presidential campaign.

Made by: Coupofy

• Jenny Lee, Managing Partner, GGV Capital is the first ever woman to make it to the Number 1 spot on the Forbes list, as the top venture capitalist for 2015.
• Sandra Kurtzig, Founder and CEO, Kenandy is the first female entrepreneur to take a Silicon Valley company public (ASK computer systems)
• Ursula Burns, Chairman and CEO, XEROX is the first African-American female at a Fortune 500 company.
• Elizabeth Holmes, Founder and CEO, Theranos with a net worth of $4.5 billion in September 2015 is the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire at age 31.
• Angela Ahrendts, Senior Vice President – Apple Retail is the highest paid female executive in the US.
• Valerie Wagoner, CEO, ZipDial (acquired by Twitter in 2015) is the only foreign lady tech CEO in India.

Fact#5: Only 4.2% of venture capital investors in the US are women and only 5 out of 100 investors in the Forbes Midas list of top venture capitalists are women.

Fact#6:  56% of women in tech positions leave their companies in mid-career due to: Working conditions (30%), work-life balance (27%), loss of interest in work (22%) and company environment (17%).

Furthermore these women post quitting their careers in tech, choose to do a non-technical job in a different company (24%), self-employed in a tech field (22%), 20% take time out of the workforce and 10% join a start-up company.

Tips for Companies to Retain Women in Tech

• Mentoring Programs – This is one of the best ways to retain female top talent, as constant up gradation of knowledge and skill sets help such talented workforce seek new challenging roles within an organisation for professional growth prospects.
• Flexible Work Hours – Most women look to maintain work-life balance and hence flexible work hours is an attractive proposition and one of the top employee benefits to retain top talent.
• Networking Opportunities – Organising events, wherein female talent are allowed to express their viewpoints without any gender bias and allowed equal opportunities for career growth in an organisation, the women tend to stay back with the company for longer-run.
• Personal Development – Along with professional development and up skilling talent, HR managers should seek at grooming employees on personal front as well, irrespective of race and gender. When an employee is given all support to accomplish his personal goals working with a company, this act as a motivator to retain women workforce, boost performance and thus enhanced productivity at work is the consequent outcome.
• Workforce Diversity – Diversity and inclusion initiatives has been the focus area for many HR managers today, reputed organisations are making sincere efforts to cultivate a workplace culture to manage multi-generational talent at work and encourage workforce diversity.

Infographic credit: Coupofy.com

Also read: Women in APAC Leapfrogging Barriers to Reach Top Positions

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