From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Diversity in the Technology Sector

Description: Tech companies are a major source of high-paying U.S. jobs.
But do minorities have an equal chance at these opportunities? We looked
at the numbers that tell part of the story.

Related GAO Work: GAO-18-69: Diversity in the Technology Sector: Federal
Agencies Could Improve Oversight of Equal Employment Opportunity
Requirements

Released: November 2017


[ Background Music ]

[ Cindy Brown Barnes: ] We found that women received far fewer
tech-related degrees than other degrees.

[ Jacques Arsenault: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for
news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm
Jacques Arsenault. In recent months, several news stories have
highlighted a lack of diversity in the tech industry. Some have
questioned whether tech companies really are committed to equal
employment opportunity. I sat down with Cindy Brown Barnes, a director
in our Education, Workforce, and Income Security team, to talk about
GAO's new report on diversity in the technology sector and federal
agencies' efforts to monitor companies for compliance. I asked Cindy to
tell me about the minority employment trends that this report uncovered.

[ Cindy Brown Barnes: ] One of the key challenges is, how do you define
this sector? People define it many different ways, and the way that we
defined it is workers who are in occupations such as engineering,
computers, and mathematics.

[ Jacques Arsenault: ] And so when we looked at representation of
minorities and women right now, what does that picture look like for the
sector?

[ Cindy Brown Barnes: ] The picture looks like this. Black and Hispanic
men and women were not as represented in the tech sector compared to the
general workforce. They had a lower representation. Or in the case of
females and blacks, it was flat.

[ Jacques Arsenault: ] From what you look at, what do we know about why
these groups are so underrepresented in the field?

[ Cindy Brown Barnes: ] Well, one thing that we looked at in our work --
and there are a number of factors in play here -- but one key thing is
the pipeline. So this is the preparation of those that have the skills,
the training, the other background, the degrees, the academic
preparation to go into these type of fields. Those that have earned
technology degrees in tech-related type fields, this is an important
pathway to these careers. As far as women, we found that women received
far fewer tech-related degrees than other degrees. For example, in 2014,
women earned 58 percent of all degrees but only 24 percent of
tech-related degrees. And aside from the pipeline issue, there may be
other factors as well, such as recruitment practices, that favor a small
number of universities and colleges that's limiting the pool of
applicants. We also heard from some of the reviews and other studies
that we looked at that the internal culture can also be another factor.

[ Jacques Arsenault: ] So then, can you talk to me about the federal
role here? What are the federal agencies that play a role in looking at
these employment trends, and what do they do?

[ Cindy Brown Barnes: ] There are two federal agencies that primarily
operate in this space, and that's the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, and they look at individual complaints that workers filed
against companies, and then there's the Department of Labor Office of
Federal Contract and Compliance, and they oversee federal contractors in
this space and work with the contractors to remedy any problems or
situations that arise.

[ Jacques Arsenault: ] So there's no kind of overall federal agency that
looks at the sector as a whole, but EEOC does it through individual
complaints and labor does it as it relates to federal money going to
those--

[ Cindy Brown Barnes: ] Those federal contractors, that's correct.

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[ Jacques Arsenault: ] Giving the continuing underrepresentation of
minorities in tech companies, I asked Cindy to tell me about her team's
recommendations for the agencies that gather employment data and monitor
companies for compliance.

[ Cindy Brown Barnes: ] We made six recommendations in all. We made one
to EEOC and the other five to the Department of Labor. As far as EEOC,
EEOC has not been consistently capturing industry information, industry
codes. They do it for roughly maybe half of their investigations now,
but it would be helpful if they have it, then they could identify more
readily different sectors, such as the tech sector, and do more
broad-based analysis. As far as Labor, there were five recommendations
to Labor, and one key one I wanted to point out is that we recommended
they move towards requiring contractors to develop placement codes for
specific minority groups when they discover underrepresentation of a
certain group.

[ Jacques Arsenault: ] And finally then, what would you say is the key
takeaway from this report?

[ Cindy Brown Barnes: ] A key takeaway is that the tech sector and the
relatively high-paying jobs that this sector offers is continuing to
grow, and everyone should be a part of that. But what we found was that
female, Black, and Hispanic workers are not making the gains that the
rest of the population is within this sector, and so they're not reaping
those benefits. And the two federal agencies responsible for overseeing
requirements and enforcing nondiscrimination could improve their
processes to help any discrimination that might be taking place in this
sector.

[ Background Music ]

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[ Background Music ]

[ Jacques Arsenault: ] For more from the congressional watchdog, the
U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at GAO.gov.