Last year at the Anita Borg Institute Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) in Phoenix the “Male Allies” panel consisting of execs from Facebook, GoDaddy, Google and Intuit was less than well received. It got so bad that the audience started heckling the speakers and Twitter blew up from attendees criticizing how these men “ended up reinforcing many of the stereotypes women are already all too familiar with,” journalist Selena Larson reported.
CEO GoDaddy Blake Irving returned to the 2015 conference with something to say. With glares and stares from a 12,000 female-focused audience at GHC ’15 , Irving launched his first slide with “Why the F*** am I here?”
GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name provider and web host, underwent an internal gender analysis audit and Irving was there to get real with the data and showcase what GoDaddy is doing to close the gap.
Throughout the talk, GHC goers sent out mad props Tweets to the CEO for his transparency, coming back to the conference with progress and called for more tech companies to follow suit.
GoDaddy said it sets its salary range by role and level based on industry-standard data. The company’s median salary showed higher than other businesses in its category. How that transferred to women, the specific breakdown looked like this:
Total Company: women paid .28% more than men
Technical: women paid .11% less than men
Non-Technical: women paid .35% more than men
Management: women paid 3.58% less than men
In a statement, GoDaddy said they are “committing to understanding the root cause of the gap” so it can create change.
Next up, women software engineers. GoDaddy has been on a hunt for more women engineers for internships to senior levels. Their report found that as women moved up the tech management ladder, there is still a considerable gap and the number of women in those roles decreases. To put his money where his mouth is, Irving appointed Elissa Murphy to CTO.
WATCH: I never got the memo I wasn’t supposed to be an engineer – Elissa Murphy, CTO, GoDaddy
Irving said in a statement, “On the whole, women have a good salary trajectory at GoDaddy, yet we aren’t going to stop with this report. Now we have to understand the reasons why we don’t have more women represented in some senior software development roles, and the drivers behind gender pay gap at the management level.”
Moving on to gender diversity, their updated stats show that women represent 20 percent of its technical workforce and 25 percent of the company overall. In addition the company has increased its women in management roles to 25 percent and increased its women interns and new college graduate hires from 14 percent to 39 percent, year-over-year, in both categories.
WATCH: Interview with CODE director Robin Hauser Reynolds & Blake Irving
Irving continues to make strides for GoDaddy and influence other tech companies to promote more women to senior roles. Recently he became the executive producer for the film CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap that exposes the lack of women in the tech industry; it is being shown around the country at tech companies and film festivals.
The Anita Borg institute has recognized GoDaddy as one of the Top Companies for Women Technologist Leadership Index.
Read the complete analysis of GoDaddy’s gender salary study here.
Read all of our extended coverage of GoDaddy and Blake Irving’s mission to close the gap.
Lead graphic: Blake Irving Twitter
Graphics courtesy of GoDaddy and Twitter
