On December 8, 2015, Kansas City Mayor Sly James declared it to be Girls in Tech KC Day in part with KC STEM Alliance’s Girls in Tech Movement. The movement addresses an increasing demand for a qualified and diverse workforce to fill tech jobs in the Kansas City region. Women are greatly underrepresented in the technology field. According to a report from the National Center for Women and Information Technology, women held 57 percent of professional occupations in the U.S. in 2014; however, they only comprised 26 percent of the jobs in the tech industry.
In an article covering Girls in Tech KC Day written by the Kansas City Business Journal, Mayor Sly James said, “We will never achieve true integration until we involve everyone.” James also unveiled the new logo for the Girls in Tech KC movement.
New logo for Girls in Tech KC movement. Photo Source: KC Stem Alliance
Recently, Kansas City was also ranked number two of 15 best cities for women in tech in a report by Smart Asset. To find the best cities for women in tech, Smart Asset used data from the U.S. Census Bureau to compare women as percent of the tech workforce, the gender pay gap in tech, income after housing cost and the three year employment growth for women in tech.
A look at the top five cities in Smart Asset’s report. Photo Source: Smart Asset
According to Smart Asset, Kansas City, “…has emerged as a leading city for tech startups, and perhaps is the top tech city not on the West Coast or in the Northeast. Women have played an important role in that development, and today Kansas City offers one of the country’s best environments for women in tech. It is one of just two cities in our study in which women in tech face no gender pay gap and women make up a relatively high proportion of tech workers in Kansas City, nearly 33 percent.”
Kansas City custom software development company, Twentyseven Global, is a big supporter of women in tech. Laura Brown, senior consultant at Twentyseven Global, is an advocate for women with an interest in technology. In a recent blog, Laura says, “Instead of viewing my gender as a challenge or an obstacle, I’ve viewed it as an opportunity to provide a unique perspective, as I often look at problems and their solutions from a different angle than my male counterparts.”
See what else Laura had to say about her experiences as a woman in tech here.
To find out the rest of the cities on Smart Asset’s top 15 cities for women in tech, click here.
