Technology industry needs women to play a bigger role

For women in the workforce, coding is “where the jobs are at,” according to Girls Who Code CEO Reshma Saujani.

“Every day that goes by, another industry is being automated whether it’s retail… manufacturing… law… [or] medicine,” she said during an interview on FOX Business’ "Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street" on Friday. “And so, if we want our women to be in the workforce, they’re going to learn – they’re going to need to know -- how to code.”

Saujani said big companies including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Sephora, Twitter and Facebook are looking to add more women employees.

“Every single industry I know is looking for engineers.  They’re looking for software programmers.  They’re looking for people to come in, you know, and help build and create things,” she said.

And yet, when you look at the technology industry today, Saujani said the number of women is very dismal.

“We graduated less than 10,000 women in computer sciences -- China graduated 350,000 engineers last year alone,” she said. “So we have a huge, huge deficit in our workforce and in terms of like who’s coming out of college with these degrees.”

Saujani also addressed the leadership gap. In her opinion, women wait until the right opportunity to jump into a supervisory role.

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“I know so many women who are managers or directors who say, you know what, until I'm perfect, I'm not ready to lead.  I'm not going to raise my hand for that promotion or for that opportunity unless I know I can exactly do it right,” she said. “You know the statistics, men will apply for a job if they meet 60 percent of the qualifications, [and] women will only apply if they meet 100 percent of the qualifications.”

Catch the entire interview on “Maria Bartiromo's Wall Street” on Friday at 9 p.m. ET on FOX Business.