Bridging the Gender and Skills Gaps with Emerging Technologies

The number of jobs in the United States requiring substantial Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) expertise has grown nearly 34 percent over the past decade and employers say they are having trouble filling jobs in occupations that depend on skilled technical professionals. Women, specifically adult women, are a pool of talented individuals who can fill STEM jobs nationwide. With the support of National Science Foundation (NSF), the project team designed, developed, organized, conducted, and evaluated a conference supporting the reentry of adult women in emerging technology (EmTech) fields, such as cybersecurity, data science, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. In this poster, we summarize the key findings pertinent to overall conference satisfaction and impact, reasons for educational and career breaks, and mitigating barriers for (re-)entering academia and workforce in the computing disciplines. These results are presented to provide insights and give a voice to adult women in tech to build capacity and broaden participation in the computing field through upskilling and reskilling with the emerging technology gateway.