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Women in Tech are slowly booming in several parts of the world, but is Utah its next stop? 

“Utah has the nation’s largest gender wage gap. And women are the least likely to be employed in a STEM field in the Beehive State.

In the tech community, Silicon Valley is the model for all other tech hubs. Before you shake your head, consider all the names aspiring hubs give themselves: Silicon Slopes in Salt Lake City, Silicon Alley in New York City, Silicon Hills in Austin. The list goes on. But what if the world’s global center for high-tech is the past, not the future? Particularly for women.

Roughly 20 percent of technical roles in Silicon Valley-tech companies are held by women. Female-led companies get a mere two percent of venture capital funding. Women have higher career dropout rates and lower participation in leadership, too.

Many Silicon Valley companies are investing heavily in fixing these imbalances, which disproportionately affect women and minorities. But even the ‘equality trailblazers’ are struggling to make progress within this large, established ecosystem. Facebook, for example, has a massive gender equity effort supported by the vision of COO and “Lean In” author Sheryl Sandberg. Still, the company reports mere 1-3 percent yearly increases in the number of females in tech roles. In the industry more broadly, the numbers, and gender dynamics are barely budging.

Salt Lake City has a chance to change that. Today, we have a small but rapidly growing ecosystem of modern high-tech firms. This means that seemingly small, initial actions by the leaders of these companies can have larger ripple effects than Facebook could achieve in Silicon Valley (and despite its massive investment).Read More

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