Chip companies like Nvidia and Intel are grappling with a gender gap amid the AI ​​boom

It went to work as a process engineer at an Intel chip factory in Arizona. Only three of the 10 people on her team were women, she said. She often felt that some of the best resources for the chip factory, such as top construction workers, were dedicated to teams with more men, while women were given less freedom to make mistakes.

“We’re very isolated, very often resource-wise,” she said.

This dynamic is not specific to a single company; gender disparity is widespread throughout the tech industry. According to a 2023 Accenture analysis, the average representation of women in the semiconductor industry is between 20% and 29%, rising from 20% and 25% in 2022. More than half of companies reported less than 10% representation of women in the technical director. roles and less than 5% in technical executive leadership roles.

With the U.S. expected to triple its domestic chip production and generative AI potentially becoming a $1.3 trillion market by 2032, building an inclusive workforce will be critical to developing the technology and ensuring that the economic boom benefits as many people as possible.

Part of this is a challenge in the pipeline of education. Although they account for the majority of undergraduate and advanced degrees, women make up less than 23% of engineering and computer science graduates. That percentage drops even more among minorities, as black and Latina women accounted for less than 4 percent of engineering graduates and 5 percent of computer science graduates over the past 10 years.

Chip industry recruiters said bridging the hiring gap can sometimes be a sensitive topic because gender is a protected class under anti-discrimination laws. While the chip industry is working to expand the recruiting pool overall so that hiring can be more inclusive, the changes can feel incremental.

According to the most recently published corporate social responsibility reports, approximately 20% of Nvidia’s total workforce are women. Women make up about 15% of technical roles, 18% of managers and 40% of executive officers. AMD’s workforce is 24% female. About 19% of engineers, 14% of senior management and 17% of the executive team are women. Women make up 28% of Intel’s workforce and hold 25% of technical roles and 19% of senior management. At Micron, 31% of the total global workforce is made up of women and they hold 25% of technical roles, 17% of management positions and 21% of leadership roles.

“Intel has a long history of fostering a diverse and inclusive culture and is central to our values,” an Intel spokesperson said in a statement.

Intel has set goals to increase female representation in senior management to 25% and technical roles to 40% by 2030. The Intel spokesperson also highlighted its first-ever apprenticeship program for technicians in production for its factories in Arizona, of which all selected participants are women.

“We treat all employees with fairness and respect and do not tolerate behavior that is contrary to these values,” the spokesperson added.

Both AMD and Nvidia have employee resource groups focused on women in tech. An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment for this story. An AMD spokesperson said the number of female engineers and participants in their mentorship programs has grown over the past five years, and that the company has partnered with the Global Semiconductor Alliance to recruit female engineers at the University of Texas at Austin and MIT. Pipeline program participants also cited an improvement in their perception of growth and development within the company in a 2023 survey. Micron did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.

Few women in leadership

A former Intel process engineer who still works in the chip industry said she decided to leave the company because she felt it could be a “hostile environment” at times, with male engineers challenging her when they were not rewarded with projects. The engineer, whose identity is known to Business Insider, asked to remain anonymous because she is not authorized to speak to the media.

“There were other high-performing men on my team who were given the same projects and opportunities as me, but no complaints were ever made about them,” she said.

Although Intel has made more efforts to hire women, she said she doesn’t see as much effort in promotion. Of the hundreds of people in her department, only two managers were women, she said.

The lack of women in leadership can create the perception that female employees have no room for growth, leading to a higher turnover rate.

“Attracting talent without a talent retention plan really creates the same cyclical problem,” said Jared Tatham, managing director at Insight Global, which oversees its semiconductor recruiting portfolio.

Reducing hiring bias

Customers have been asking for more gender diversity in development, said Luke Tomaszko, a principal managing consultant at Acceler8 Talent, which works with early-stage hardware companies focused on AI chip design. He said startups need to be aware of this as they build their culture and team composition.

“The industry can be so male-dominated that if you have a team of 100 men, then it’s not really a welcoming environment for a woman to come in,” Tomaszko said.

Insight Global’s Tatham works with clients that range from equipment material suppliers from foundries to chip design, testing and packaging companies. He said he aims to reach out to potential candidates more personally, rather than relying solely on job descriptions, because men are more likely to apply for jobs even if they don’t meet all the criteria.

Tomaszko said that before posting job descriptions, his agency runs the listings through tools like a gender decoder to review words that may have a gender bias.

Demanding schedules and childcare

The CHIPS and Science Act spurred some efforts to lower child care costs. Micron received $6.1 billion in funding this year, including building new child care facilities in Idaho and New York. However, childcare is only one facet of pipeline improvement.

Scheduling a chip factory can also be a challenge. The former Intel process engineer said the on-call schedule, which meant she would have to cover if something went wrong at the factory, was “definitely” something that made her think about how she would affect family planning in the longer term.

“When you wake up multiple times during the night and then have to do your whole day the next day, I imagine it would be especially difficult for birthing mothers. You should physically stay within two hours of the factory for that entire week, just in case of an emergency,” she said.

Closing the gender gap in the chip industry will require more efforts from companies and top management to make these career paths more inclusive and stable. Some women say there has been some improvement in inclusion and community building.

The former process engineer said she is now part of a cohort of women at her company which has monthly meetings. In these meetings, they discuss leadership podcasts and readings, and company veterans and newcomers alike can share different ideas.

“It’s not just like one person running it. There are several different cohorts with different leaders and it really seems to be supported by our senior management,” she said.

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