KC Ranks High for Women in Tech
For a third straight year, Kansas City weighs in at No. 2 on SmartAsset’s rankings of the best American cities for women working in tech-related fields, trailing only the nation’s capital.
The Web-based publication pulled data on men and women in computer and mathematical occupations and studied 59 cities with enough tech workers to provide statistically reliable Census data, then compiled its rankings from four metrics: pay equity for women, income after housing costs, women as a percentage of the tech work force and four-year tech employment growth.
Among its key findings:
- Women are still the minority – Nationwide, the percentage of computer and mathematical jobs filled by women remains around 26 percent.
- D.C. takes the top spot – The nation’s capital ranks as the best city for women in tech. It also ranked first in the 2015 and 2016 editions. It has one of the smallest gaps in gender pay and has a higher proportion of women in computer and math-related roles than most cities across the country.
- The gender pay gap isn’t getting smaller – The study found that the average female-to-male earnings ratio is 84.8% percent. Last year it was 86.7 percent, although female tech workers earn more than their male counterparts in a few cities.
Census data, the study revealed, showed that women in computer and math-related occupations actually earn more than their male counterparts in Kansas City; nationwide, women earned about 15 percent less than men in those occupations. In 2015, median pay for female and male tech workers was $69,770 and $67,461, respectively. Additionally, Kansas City’s total tech workforce grew by 10% between 2012 and 2015.
Baltimore, Indianapolis and New Orleans made up the rest of the Top Five, followed by Fremont, Calif., New York, Detroit, Denver and Philadelphia.
Details on the study, including full methodology and rankings, are available here.
