Top Companies Winner To Be Announced at GHC 16

This year, AnitaB.org saw record participation in Top Companies for Women Technologists, the only program of its kind building a broad national benchmark and industry statistics around the gender gap in technical roles. Today, we announced the 2016 Change Alliance which includes all participating companies in Top Companies. This year, a record 60 companies participated in Top Companies (up 71 percent from 2015), representing more than 1.3 million employees and over 540,000 technical workers.

In early October, we will announce the Top Companies Leadership Index which lists those participants whose representation of women technologists is above the mean. We will also announce the Top Companies winner — the organization with the highest representation of women technologists — on the main stage at the 2016 Grace Hopper Celebration on October 19, 2016.

Measure What Matters

The lack of diversity, especially women, in the technology industry is hardly a new story. But simply reiterating the problem isn’t going to solve it. Real change requires data that can help us understand whether or not the industry is improving, which organizations are committed to change and advancement and what methods are most effective in driving change. ABI’s Top Companies for Women Technologists is the only program to provide this kind of insight. This year, Top Companies is also piloting two new forms of measurement – programs and policies and employee experience.

The 60 members of the Change Alliance have made the critical commitment to measure their technical workforce and share that data with ABI.

This year’s Change Alliance goes beyond the traditional tech sector to include companies from a wide range of industries including Consulting, Finance, Insurance, Media, Research, Retail, Hardware, Software and Information Services. We’re excited to see the range of companies participating, from familiar technology names like Google, Facebook and Microsoft alongside retailers like Target and Macy’s, media giants like The New York Times and financial services providers like Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. See the full 2016 Top Companies Change Alliance.

This range underscores the fact that today, every company is a tech company, and recruiting, retaining and advancing more women in technical roles isn’t just something to aspire to, it’s a business imperative that will determine how well an organization can compete in today’s fast-moving, diverse business climate.