Most women coders (82%) in India still face bias from recruiters and firms, according to research from TimesJobs.

Of these, most respondents (57%) agreed that gender bias is the main reason that very few female software developers are eventually hired, whereas 43% disagreed with this statement.

Of the job roles where women developers faced most gender bias, 32% said women technologists faced most bias in software development roles while 31% said for a strong bias in system administrator roles. Meanwhile, 21% claimed women techies faced most bias in product designer roles while 16% stated most bias existed for software engineering roles.

Research from TimesJobs also found that most (38%) recruiters would hire a developer with excellent coding skills, overlooking their educational achievements or experience. Over 28% respondents said that a developer’s relevant experience would be their sole criterion for hiring. 21% said they considered relevant educational qualifications as the only bar when hiring a developer. The remaining 13% said that they would hire a developer basedon their performance in interview and skill tests and no other factor would matter.

TimesJobs also asked hiring managers if they preferred developers who had learnt extra skills during the lockdown. The unanimous answer was ‘yes’, stated by 90% respondents. Only 10% said ‘no’, this was not necessary for them.