Women in Semiconductors: A Critical Workforce Need
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The percentage of women in the semiconductor industry is stubbornly low. According to a report released in April, 51 percent of companies report having less than 20 percent of their technical roles filled by women. At the same time, fewer of these companies were publicly committed to equal opportunity measures in 2024 than the year prior, the same report found.
This lack of support comes at the same time that major workforce shortages are expected, says Andrea Mohamed, COO and co-founder of QuantumBloom, which helps companies attract, retain, and advance early career women in STEM. The company focuses on the transition from higher education to the workforce, a critical point during which many women leave STEM.
[...] I understand the pressures that companies are facing around anything that's related to DEI. We need to change the conversation from DEI to talent management. This is retention and avoiding turnover costs. This is about needing every available brilliant mind in the United States that wants to be in semiconductors. We have offshored this industry for so long. Other countries have existing talent bases. We have to build it.
So there are semantics in all of this, but it's not just relabeling. This is about business. You are not going to be able to compete on a global stage in the United States if you are not finding ways to attract and retain new communities of workers, and women are one of those communities. That means understanding what women need from their employer, because if you do not provide it, they will go somewhere else that does. The concern by companies about, if they run a program like QuantumBloom, does that create a risk? It's the wrong question about risk. Your big risk is that your fab is empty, because you can't find workers and retain them.
In other industries, there are organizations that are very intentional about attracting and retaining their youngest talent. They are dedicating resources to investing in them, which is very rare - most organizations invest more the higher up you go. Really, we need to be thinking about flipping that script and investing more sooner.
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