People of colour have been underrepresented in many high profit industries, especially when it comes to management positions for many years. Now, in the last decade or so there has been a huge push for equal pay and representation in the workplace and this has had a major impact on the opportunities for people of colour in industries like cybersecurity and others. In this article we’re going to highlight some of the statistics on people of colour in cybersecurity in the last few years. Many of these statistics are being taken by ISC2 Innovation through Inclusion Global Information Security Workforce Study:
Leadership
This study found that there is about a 7% discrepancy between caucasian people and people of color when it comes to leadership positions within cybersecurity.
Salary
When you look at the salary the gap has closed significantly to roughly a 3k difference between caucasian men and men of color. There is currently a difference of roughly 6k between Caucasian females and females of color, twice as much as observed between the men. However, when you look across genders the gap becomes a lot larger at roughly a 9k difference but this is more related to gender than it is to race.
Salary Raises
Looking at this study we find that there are still differences between which raises are most likely to receive raises on the job. Caucasian people were at the top, with differences ranging between 4%-9% when compared against other groups in the study.
Education: 77% of cybersecurity professionals said that cybersecurity was not part of their education curriculum. Many people of color simply don’t have any exposure to cybersecurity or the STEM field overall and this results in fewer people targeting those high-income careers.
Existing Connections: It’s no secret that people like to hire people that look like them and that they can identify with. Even with the pushes toward diversity with the majority of the field being caucasian, it stands to reason that even if there is no malicious intent, the majority of the people that they will identify with or have existing relationships with will also be caucasian and that will continue to give those candidates an edge over people of color.
Biases in the hiring process: Studies going back as far as 2004 have discovered that there are multiple biases at a place in the hiring process. For example, one study by the American Economic Association found that candidates were 50% more likely to get a callback if they had names that were associated with Caucasian people. Another study by the University of South Florida found that ethnic applicants that spoke with an accent were looked at less positively than applicants that spoke without an accent.
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