Youth4Work Computes Gender Diversity in Computing World

With 1.3 billion people, India is the second largest populated country having a sex-ratio of 945 females for every 1000 males. With the increasing population, demand for jobs also increases and in this century, the very first thing a job demands is skill or talent.

As the government and the stakeholders work on evolving a skill development framework to boost employment opportunities across India, it is Gender Diversity in talent pool which would be critical to monitor. 

Youth4work released its second edition of yTal India Report – insights on India’s Vital Talent scenarios, an analysis of over 1.75 lakh people who demonstrate their talents on Youth4work platform. A detailed analysis carried out on six of the most sought after IT skills cross-referenced with people’s gender and education reveals interesting scenarios. 

Technology skills as one of the prime area of concentration. Various research and reports have underlined the fact that there has been an upswing in the development of these IT talents. Furthermore the augmentation of the job opportunities in this sector has given a new impetus to the ever-widening Indian youth to learn, practice and put into use various IT skills like Java, HTML, MySQL, ASP.NET, PHP, C++ etc. 

Rachit Jain, CEO of Youth4work says, “We consider Talent as an individual’s inclination towards any productive skill that can be employed to generate income for the economy. Youth4work empowers people to self-assess and showcase their talents to the world. People take up self-assessments to show a stronger intent towards a talent and understand their relative standing w.r.t. other talented people. The insights and suggestions in this report can help to improve the relevant employability scenarios. From nearly 1.7 million youth on the platform, only 27% are Females, and that’s striking!” 

Youth4work’s yTal India Report on Gender and Education factors have some interesting findings: 

• 30% of the total youth analysed for the six IT talents are Females. Males are the rest ~70% having these IT skills. The gender ratio for all six IT talents is undeniably skewed towards males.
• Most of the Females having IT talents have BE/BTech as academic qualification, however for ASP.NET has least no. of females with BE/BTech degrees (51%).
• Overall online representation of youth with BCA and BSc.IT is least as compared to other degrees, and the same holds true for analysis of Females as well.
• Most of the youth completing BCA or BSc.IT, move ahead for PG courses like MCA, and hence MCA is next to BE/BTech as a choice to build a career in IT domains. This holds true for Females as well.
• Interestingly, technology degrees are not holding back Females to learn these IT skills, as nearly 20% of all females have non-technical degrees and are ready for careers in IT.
• 21% of all youth having Core Java and HTML talents are Females with BE/BTech degrees, whereas the corresponding number for Males is nearly 42%.
• 16% of all youth having PHP, MySQL and ASP.NET talents are Females with BE/BTech degrees against 38% males having same degree. 

Though globally women are becoming more aware about showcasing their skills, the scenario in India is slightly different. This is mostly due to unawareness about avenues or platforms to position oneself as a talented women. However, integrated platforms like Youth4work are focusing on analyzing and bridging this gap and encouraging women to rank themselves against their male counterparts for all the professional skills.