A number of start-ups aim to increase the amount of women and minorities at companies through “blind hiring”.

Over the past two decades, the amount of women among US tech workers has declined, with 25% of women holding professional computing occupations in 2015, according to the National Centre for Women and Information Technology.

Despite industry leaders such as Apple, Intel and Google spending millions on diversity initiatives throughout the years, several studies show training does not increase workplace diversity.

Last month, Qualcomm agreed to pay US$19.5million to settle a gender discrimination class action suit.

‘Lack of diversity means missing out on products’

Laura Mather, founder and CEO of Talent Sonar, said to Tech Republic: “In tech companies, things are not getting better nearly as fast as they should.

“Silicon Valley claims to be a data-driven society. But we look at the data and see not much has changed, yet continue with the same behaviour, thinking that if we keep training people it will go away.

“The companies who get to it first are going to win on multiple dimensions — hiring better people, getting better market share, and beating competitors.

“The companies who wake up to what is happening and create change will have a huge competitive advantage.”

Mather also noted a lack of diversity means missing out on products that could benefit more than 50% of the population.

Written by Leah Alger