Women feel burnout from male bosses during pandemic, Girls in Tech study finds
Male bosses are burning women out at a lot more alarming rates than female bosses in tech workplaces during the pandemic, reports Girls in Tech group in their Tech’s 2021 study, “The Tech Workplace for Women in the Pandemic,” published Monday.
Girls in Tech, a San Francisco-based global nonprofit, works to erase the gender gap in the technology work sector.
“The results from our study were abundantly clear: women in technology are burned out from COVID and organizations must recognize this is at crisis-level,” said Adriana Gascoigne, founder, and CEO at Girls in Tech, adding “we were particularly stunned to learn the impact a supervisor’s gender has on women’s burnout rate.”
The study found that, among 552 members of Girls in Tech and other respondents between September 15, 2020 and October 22, 2020, 63 percent of women with male supervisors reported feeling burned out, as compared to 44 percent of those with female supervisors.
Moreover, 79 percent of working mothers with children in the household, reported feeling burnout, while 76 percent of full-time employees prefer working from home over working in the office.
In parallel, 87 percent of full-time employees expect the workforce to look very different after the pandemic; of those polled 76 percent of full-time employees prefer working from home over working in the office. Many do not anticipate returning to the office in-person once COVID restrictions are lifted.
Additionally, nearly 41 percent of respondents say there is racial inequity at their workplace; more than one in four women (27 percent) report being sexually harassed in the workplace.
As part of efforts for Women’s History Month, International Women’s Day, and Equal Pay Day, Girls in Tech board members penned an open letter to tech leaders demanding that corporate boards be composed of at least 50 percent women by 2025.
“For this Women’s History Month, we call upon organizations to acknowledge this disparity, dig deeper to better understand the issue, and take real, meaningful action towards positive change,” stressed Gascoigne, amidst persistence of racial inequality and sexual harassment in the tech workplace.
While the technology sector was once heralded as a workplace that would level the playing field between men and women of equal competency, this has not been the case.
In a variety of studies – including the recent Girls in Tech – both the reality of gender treatment, and the perceptions among women are in the lower percentile.
The Harvard Business Review, among gender expert observers, continue to note, that between corporate inclusion programs, mentorship, and long term followup there continues to be marked split between the number of capable women advance into the Tech Sector and their mail counterpart.
Showing support among corporates for Girls in Tech, the number of big-time sponsors has been lining up including with names such as Amazon, Nike, Cisco, Hewlett Packard, S&P Global, Trend Micro, and McKinsey, to name a short list.
For more information, visit www.GirlsInTech.org or follow on their Instagram and LinkedIn pages.
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