Durham ranks among top 10 cities for women working in tech: Study

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DURHAM — The Bull City isn’t such a bad place to be if you’re a woman in tech.

That’s according to the latest numbers coming out of a study conducted by Smart Asset.

The NY-based personal finance technology company released its sixth annual report analyzing 59 of the largest U.S. cities to find the best places for women in tech to work and live, considering metrics ranging from the gender pay gap to tech employment growth.

Durham nabbed the tenth spot overall.

In 2018, women filled about 30% of tech jobs in Durham, the 10th-highest percentage for this metric across all 59 cities in our study. Additionally, female tech workers in Durham have relatively high average earnings of about $57,500 after deducting housing costs.

Baltimore, Maryland (1), Washington, D.C. (2) and Arlington, Virginia (3) landed in the top tier.

Other key findings revealed that the biggest cities aren’t always better for women in tech.

“Only one of five most-populated U.S. cities – Houston – makes it into our top 15 cities for women working in the tech industry. The other big cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Phoenix) fall much further down on our list, with NYC ranking the highest at 27th and Los Angeles the lowest at 47th,” the report noted.

The national tech gender pay gap has also widened. “In 2015, women working in computer and mathematical occupations were paid about 86.9 percent of what their male counterparts made. This gap has widened over the past five years. In 2018, the national gender pay gap in the tech industry was 83.1%, meaning that women’s earnings relative to men’s decreased by about 3.8 percent.”

Source: WRAL TechWire