Advancing Young Women of Color in Technology
Challenge
Increasing the enrollment of young women of color into our training program, leading to placement into technology careers. Black and Latina women make up on 4% of the technology workforce. With this vast under-representation of women of color, technological innovation is being developed by a monolithic workforce and therefore will not truly address the problems of our whole society. Critical groups, often those most marginalized, will continually be left behind.
Actions
NPower, with the support of the Citi Foundation, sought to address the immense and widening gender equality gap by uncovering the societal, education, economic and cultural barriers limiting young women of color from pursuing and thriving in careers in tech, and dismantling them through an initiative called 40by22.
40by22 is a programmatic effort to increase women of color in NPower’s tech training program to 40% by the year end 2022. In addition, we seek to increase the composition our women of color on our instructional staff to 40%.
Our comprehensive approach in reaching this goal includes:
- Help young women to see themselves in the field of technology so they are more apt to pursue
- Provide the skills and credentials they need to land jobs at equal pay as men; and be positioned for long-term career trajectories
- Leverage partnerships to address student barriers during their time in our program (i.e. emergency fund for childcare needs, social services, etc)
- Hire from our own pipeline of graduates. Many of our instructors start out as former students
- Help to educate corporations how to deploy the support infrastructure to retain diverse female talent (i.e. mentorship, bias training, childcare)
Outcomes
Two years into this four-year goal, NPower has moved the needle and seeded a movement. We started with 25% female representation in our program in 2018 and as of 2020 have reached 30% classroom enrollment. As cited in our research report, Breaking Though, Rising Up: Strategies for Propelling Women of Color in Tech, female alumni are earning an average salary of $55,600 a year with no significant different between male compensation.
Additional, with the launch of the National Instructor’s Institute, we are on track to reach our 40% female instruction goal in 2021.
Our work is more relevant than ever. We are developed more partnerships, attracting new funders and are on course to launch a nation-wide coalition in 2021 to bring influencers together to change the future of tech for good.
Quote
We sought out an ambitious and worthwhile goal to increase access to tech careers for countless young women of color—many of whom are taking a non-traditional, non-degreed path to employment—and in the process we became a catalyst for change, spotlighting solutions that inform best practices not only for training providers but employers, funders and policy makers. It will take cross-sector awareness and action by practitioners and executives alike. At its core, this is a human rights issue and a business imperative.