Closing the Gender Gap in Tech: Insights from Lori Rodriguez, CDO of WOMEN IN TECH - Global Movement
As the Chief Diversity Officer of WOMEN IN TECH - Global Movement, Lori Rodriguez has gathered insights and experiences on the gender gap and female representation in the tech industry. During hub.berlin 2022 we met up with her for a quick chat.
hub: What’s your 60 seconds pitch for (the initiative) Women in Tech?
Lori Rodriguez: Women in Tech is this amazing women’s organisation that helps girls and women get into technology aswell as help organisations use technology to empower women in general. We have 23 chapters across the world and we look at local needs in each of this chapters, assess what they need and then support them through technology aswell [...] as members joining the organisation.
hub: What’s your favourite fact when it comes to women in tech?
Lori Rodriguez: I have two. The first is organisations that have at least a third of their leadership be women, have ten times increase in profitability. The second favourite statistic or maybe it is tied for the first [place] is startups that have women founders are two times [higher] the revenue return on investment. For every dollar invested, they return twice as much as male-only founded startups. So this is my two favourite statistics.
hub: What should decision makers in the industry start and stop doing when it comes to promoting equality?
Lori Rodriguez: The number one thing to start doing is just promote women. It’s fallacy to say that is lowering your standards. All the data proves otherwise. Go do the research. And you can do it by just literally by looking at your tenured women in the organisation and if they are above the length of time without being promoted, go offer them a promotion. Sounds way too simple, but there are lots of data and facts before that. So that’s the number one to start doing.
The number one thing to stop doing is stigmatizing fatherhood. Give dads a break, let them go play ball with their kids, let them pick them up from daycare, let them go to teachers’ conferences. Don’t make fun of them if they do some of the housework. This is the number one thing to stop doing, because when you create environments at work and at home that are more enriching for women they’ll stay and you’ll end up getting that two statistics, ten times increase in profitability and two times the revenue if you start up an organisation.
hub: Please tell us about your experience at hub.berlin so far.
Lori Rodriguez: Having these fantastic conversations in this environment really helps you think differently how to transform your organisation.
Do you want to learn more about women in tech and how each of us can contribute to close the gap?