No, the Tech Sector Didn't Hire More Women Than Men This Year

In one form or another, headlines affirming The Tech Sector Hired More Women Than Men This Year circulated through the blogosphere this week, suggesting that the much-fretted gender gap in the technology industry was finally narrowing.

The story spun off from a report on the tech news and career site Dice, which cited data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The trouble is, it isn't really true—at least not the way the perpetuated stat suggests.

It certainly seemed suspicious. Even if progress is being made in the effort to increase gender equality in STEM fields—and I'm optimistic it is—it doesn't make sense that an industry that's only about one-third female would do a total 180 and suddenly hire more women. Sounds a bit like lies, damned lies, and statistics to me.

Indeed, as is so often the case, a deeper dive into the numbers (hat tip to the New York Times and CNBC for diving in) shows the issue's more nuanced than that. Dice reported that 60,000 new jobs were added to the tech sector, and a startling 60 percent of those positions were filled by women. It published this infographic to illustrate the change:

But, the 60,000 figure actually refers to the overall change in the number of employees, not just new hires. So while the net change in female employees—36,000—represented 60 percent of the overall net change, "it does not necessarily mean that the tech industry hired more women than men," the Times explained. "The numbers reflect new employees and those who left. More men than women probably left their jobs—because there are so many more men working in the tech industry."

Also important, the government data used to generate that number was based on info specifically from the "Computer Systems Design and Related Services" category. The broad industry consists mainly of contract IT work and computer engineering, but also includes fields like CAD design, e-commerce, and technology retail. And the specific jobs within that include positions in sales, public relations, customer service, and HR—jobs more commonly held by women, rightly or not.

Indeed, speaking to CNBC, a Bureau of Labor statistics spokesman admitted there's no way to tell if more women are in fact getting hired in tech-specific jobs by looking at that data. On the other hand, there's plenty of data showing the suggestion isn't true. A recent survey that found the number of female Fortune 500 execs hasn’t changed much at all, and another study found that female employees in Silicon Valley held mainly administrative positions. Yet other data showed that Google, the biggest tech behemoth of all, did not hire more women than men this year, nor did Microsoft or other large tech firms.

The STEM gender gap is a red-hot topic these days, and consequently there are countless examples, statistics, research, and surveys I could rattle off showing that—not to be a buzzkill—it’s not time to break out the gender equality champagne just yet. And really, that shouldn't come as a surprise to most people—especially to anyone that works in the tech world.

The reality is, programmers, engineers, computer experts, IT professionals, scientists, researchers, and CEOs—whether in startups or giant firms—are still positions very much dominated by men. And in all likelihood, significantly less than half of this year’s new hires in the space were female. Whether that inequity springs from sexism in the workplace, pervasive gender stereotypes, or simply biological differences between the two sexes, it's something worth fixing. Or at the least, talking about—preferably with all the facts straight.