President Barrack Obama applauded the efforts of Pinterest and Intel to empower women in tech.
Pinterest encourages creative collaboration among its employees from different backgrounds. As seen in its hiring video, Pinterest expects women to be as good as their mail counterparts.
The president wishes that every other tech company in the nation would do the same.
During the first-ever White House Demo day, the head of state campaigned for diversity in technology, a critical industry in the U.S. Women make up 59 percent of the total U.S. workforce and 51 percent of the population. However, they only make up 30 percent of the tech industry workforce, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
"We've got to make sure that everybody is getting a fair shot," Obama said. "The next Steve Jobs might be named Stephanie or Esteban. They might never set foot in Silicon Valley. We've got to unleash the full potential of every American - not leave more than half the team on the bench."
The exclusion of women in the board room is not even practical from a business perspective, said Megan Smith, the US CTO of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy.
"Hiring women isn't just the right thing for companies to do. It's more profitable," said Smith. pointing to a McKinsey and Co. study that shows companies that are more gender and ethnically diverse perform better financially.
Facebook, Google and IBM responded to Obama's call and outlined their plans to increase diversity, CNET reported.
Facebook will launch a new Supplier Diversity program meant to increase the number of women and minority-owned businesses in Facebook's supply chain. Google is set to host its first-ever Women's Demo Day. IBM will expand its relationship with Girls Who Code.
Twenty-one percent of the tech hires at Google last year were female. The achievement is the beginning of the company's game plan to employ more women, Town Hall reported.
