Not Just Silicon Valley: Feds Have a Gender Tech Gap, Too

Women make up about 44 percent of the federal information technology workforce, according to the Office of Personnel Management. But the percentage of women in IT jobs government-wide hovers at only about 30 percent, according to an analysis of OPM data by CEB, a consulting firm.

Women who work in the tech space in Washington aren’t exactly shocked that government -- which has struggled to recruit and hire technologists of all stripes -- hasn’t quite cracked the code of hiring a diverse tech workforce. "Those numbers certainly aren't surprising, because we can't be naive and think that the disparities that we see in Silicon Valley exist in one geographic region instead of applying more broadly to an entire industry and skill set,” says Laurenellen McCann, a civic innovation fellow at the New America Foundation.