A new study found that the gender pay gap and percentage of women in Atlanta's technology workforce slightly worsened from 2021.
SmartAsset's eighth-annual Best Cities for Women in Tech study found that Atlanta women in tech earn 83.7% of what men earn. A little over a fourth of the city's tech workforce is comprised of women. Both those percentages are on par with the national average.
In 2021, SmartAsset found that women in tech made about 88% of what men earned. Plus, about 27.1% of the tech workforce included women.
Those disparities come as Atlanta continues to capture major growth in tech jobs. In a three-year period, technology jobs in Atlanta grew by 41.77% compared with the national average of 16.96%, according to the study. Corporations, including Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc., have brought thousands of tech jobs to the city in that time frame. The startup ecosystem is coming off a record year for venture capital, which often leads to hiring sprees. Though the economic downturn has led to at least five startups laying off employees, corporate expansions haven't seemed to slow.
The SmartAsset study ranks Atlanta as the 18th best market for women working in tech, down three spots from last year. In the Southeast, Durham, North Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, and Jacksonville, Florida, ranked ahead of Atlanta.
SmartAsset compared 59 U.S. cities of at least 200,000 residents with data available on gender pay gap in tech, income for women in tech, women as a percentage of tech workers and growth in tech employment. The data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Surveys in 2020.
Christy Brown, president of a training program for female entrepreneurs, says the disparities start at the collegiate level. She suggests women's liberal arts universities, such as Spelman College or Agnes Scott College, can implement more tech programs.
“I can look across a college campus and see a disparity between women and men in STEM, so it's going to be really hard for us to see an equilibrium,” said Brown, who leads Launchpad2X. “I won’t be surprised if we see several points decrease over the coming years if we don’t create momentum to attract women into this job force.”
But Brown does see more female entrepreneurs leading early-stage startups. And the City of Atlanta hosts the Women's Entrepreneurship Initiative to support women-owned businesses. Those new companies could help curb the disparities.
“We're likely going to see more equality among startups because a female coming in as a CEO is going to set this normalcy across the gender gap,” said Brown. “For corporate organizations, that's where we see a lot of unruly results because they’ll be making up for past time.”
SmartAsset's Best Cities for Women in Tech — 2022 edition:
