From what I read in the article, layoffs were higher in the non-techy departments of these tech companies.
Departments like marketing, and HR, that have a higher demographics of women, as stated in this article.
I don't think the article is fair to say that it drags us back many years regarding efforts in equity, when said efforts were targeted towards tech and engineering departments.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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There's a distinction to draw between industry and position. The article says that the industry laid off more women than men, in proportion to the number of jobs held by the respective genders.
The article says this could put the years long effort of a push to equity in jeopardy. I think this is fair to state, given that a minority group was more heavily affected by layoffs. I also think its fair to recognize that certain fields/positions have different kinds of issues to overcome and different diversity of talent. If you let go of women proportionally more often in the industry as a whole, it's reasonable to assume that all sectors in that industry also similarly suffer from the drop in diversity. Of note, the linked article on equity also talks about efforts in the tech industry, not tech/engineering departments within said industry.
So women are more disposable and companies cut "soft skills" first. Great, working with tech companies is already full of people with absolutely no social intelligence, let's cut the "fluff" departments (yet what hires on the tech spots? Insurance and the other underpinnings of the compensation packages), and then people show up with "wElL iTs NoT wOmEn iN TeCh".
It's the same energy as when an article gets posted about racial equality. So many ways to talk around a big societal problem.
The article doesn’t even provide enough detail to make an informed decision if this is a problem or not. They state 45% of layoffs in the tech industry were women, then only contrast with Metas 63% male workforce to get to the conclusion that women were more affected by the layoffs. Without noting if metas male dominant workforce is on to high or low side for the industry.
Then the article goes on to explain that the positions most affected were the traditionally female dominated roles, HR, recruitment, etc. (I.e., the non “tech” roles that one would expect tech companies to inherently value less as a core part of their business).
This isn’t to say the tech industry isn’t male dominated, doesn’t have issues with recruiting and retaining women in tech roles, etc. I just wanted to know more about this and was left with more questions be because the framing of the article is so poor.