Who are the women in the Stack Overflow Survey 2020?
Stack Overflow has been publishing its Stack Overflow Annual Developer Survey every year since 2011. Over the years, the survey has developed from understanding the users’ demographics to seeking information about their diverse representation. As a woman engaged in programming, I was interested in the female view within the latest Stack Overflow survey from February 2020. Keep in mind that Stack Overflow completed this survey before Covid-19 dramatically started to influence our lives.
Stack Overflow publishes the public data of the Stack Overflow survey 2020 online, but they are also part of this Github repository with the code used to derive the following insides.
What is the proportion of people who identify as women?
The first question which comes to mind is the proportion of females who answered the Stack Overflow questionnaire. Around 78% of all people responded to the question of their gender identification. They could identify as more than just binary and could even select more than one answer, giving people the possibility to show all their gender identifications. Out of all people who answered this question, 91% identified at least as male, 8% at least as female, and 1.2% at least as non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming.
Even though women are still underrepresented in the tech industry, not to mention the non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming, I want to focus on this survey’s female side. However, it is worth noting that the percentage of women in this survey illustrates a reasonable proportion based on personal experiences of working in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).
Who are these women?
So, let us characterize these women. Women in this survey live in 124 out of the 195 countries we currently have on earth. More than a quarter of them lives in the US, and 10% in India. Summing up all women from European Union countries, they represent the largest group of female participants with 30% in total.
The IT world is a relatively young and rapidly evolving one, depicted in the participants’ age. With 57%, most female participants responded to be between 21 and 30 years old, whereas the second largest group, representing 26%, belongs to the age group between 31 and 40.
An interesting aspect is the distribution of occupations age group. In the age group 11–20, 66% of the woman are students, and 27% are employed. Nevertheless, there are also unemployed females (7%). In the next age group, 76% of the women are full-time employees, and only 12% are students. An explanation for this shift can be the change from secondary and tertiary education to employment in the population. On average, people finish their Bachelor’s degree at the age of 24. Thus, in the following three age groups the percentage of full-employed stays above 60%. Retirement shows up in the age group 51–60 and increases up to 57% for women over 70. Nonetheless, there are still women in this group who are employed. In total, most women in the survey are full-time employees (71%). The second-largest group responded to be students (12%).
After mentioning academic education, it is also worth looking into their received levels of education. Half of all women answered that they had earned a Bachelor’s degree and another 25% stated that a Master’s degree is their highest level of formal education.
Furthermore, 52% of all women have a degree in computer science, computer engineering, or software engineering, followed by degrees in information systems, information technology, or system administration (7.4%) as well as degrees in natural science (6.6%) and engineering disciplines (6.3%). This survey also shows that people with seemingly unrelated degrees to programming are represented as well, including examples such as studies of humanities disciplines (5.7%) and social science (4.8%). Interestingly, apart from the youngest and the two senior age groups, all academic disciplines are represented in every age group. Computer science, computer engineering, or software engineering are the dominant choice.
Most women in the survey are not just young, but 68% of the women stated that they have been programming for less than 15 years. These 15 years perfectly match the time interval of learning to code in school/university and the circumstance that the majority of the women in the survey reported being between 20 and 40 years old. Furthermore, when subtracting 15 years from each age group, you derive the majority’s coding years. Therefore, the majority of people have learned how to code in school. Nevertheless, there are women in every age group who have known programming for less than five years.
What are their jobs?
Next up, I wanted to know about women’s occupations. Here people could select all options that applied to them. Most women work as developers because the top five listed jobs account for 61% of all answers, and there are even more developer jobs. Furthermore, 71% of the women state that they are currently professional developers, fitting the high percentage of women working as full-time employees.
Since many women who took part in the survey represent a relatively young workforce, the question arises after women’s essential factors to choose a job apart from prominent topics like compensation, benefits, and location. The most named aspect relates to the office environment or company culture (17%), followed by a flex-time or a flexible work schedule (16%). Next up were the languages, frameworks, and other technologies (14%) related to the job, the opportunities for professional development (14%), and remote work options (11%). Furthermore, more than 60% of all women are satisfied with their job, and more than a third of these people are very satisfied.
To sum it up
In summary, even though women are a minority in the survey, most of them are part of the young and full-time employee workforce. Even though most of them have or pursue a degree in computer science and related fields, programming is also part of life for people with other degrees and jobs. Jobwise, more than half of the women are satisfied with their jobs, and their highest-ranking job factors are related to the working culture, but they also focus on the technical aspects of their work.
A year has passed since the last Stack Overflow survey, and a lot has changed since then. Assuming that the next poll will have a similar questionnaire, what features of the following study are you interested in most? What do you expect to have changed?
