Senate Designates March 24, 2025, as 'National Women of Color in Tech Day,' Pledges Diversity Push

This Senate resolution officially designates March 24, 2025, as "National Women of Color in Tech Day." The goal is simple: recognize the massive, often overlooked, contributions women of color have made to science and technology—think historical figures like Katherine Johnson and modern innovators—while acknowledging the structural roadblocks they still hit in education, hiring, and securing funding. This isn't just a symbolic gesture; it’s built on the premise that the U.S. needs a stronger, more diverse tech workforce to stay competitive, especially with over 750,000 open cybersecurity jobs as of early 2023.

Why We Need a Reality Check in Tech

If you work in tech, or rely on it (which is everyone), you know diversity is a persistent challenge. The resolution lays out the facts: Women of color face both an "opportunity gap" in STEM education and an "achievement gap" in science and engineering. Despite making up a huge percentage of the female population, they earned only 17 percent of STEM bachelor’s degrees and 7 percent of STEM doctorates in the 2021–2022 school year. This underrepresentation isn’t just about fairness; it means the products and solutions we use every day—from apps to infrastructure—are being built without crucial perspectives, often leading to flawed or biased outcomes. Think about facial recognition software that struggles to identify non-white faces; that’s a direct consequence of a lack of diversity in the teams building it.

The Senate’s Pledge: From Symbolism to Strategy

Beyond naming a day, the resolution includes a series of specific commitments. The Senate pledges to actively work on boosting diversity and inclusion in the tech sector, focusing on recruitment, training, and retention. For the average person, this means a commitment to removing the systemic friction points that make it harder for talented women of color to enter and thrive in tech careers. It’s a promise to address the practical reality that if you’re a woman of color trying to launch a startup, you’re statistically less likely to get venture capital funding than your male peers.

Investing in the Pipeline

Crucially, the resolution reaffirms support for increasing access to quality STEM and computer science education for all students. This isn't a vague promise; it specifically commits to increasing investment and partnerships with minority-serving institutions like Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), and Tribal Colleges. For a student at an HBCU, this could mean better-funded computer labs, more robust career placement programs, and stronger industry partnerships that translate directly into job offers after graduation. Building that strong, diverse pipeline is the only way to solve the talent shortage in the long run.

The Final Piece: Show Us the Data

One of the most practical parts of the resolution is the call for better data transparency. The Senate urges the President and Congress to improve data collection and sharing regarding diversity in STEM education and the workforce. Why does this matter? Because you can’t fix what you can’t measure. Right now, data on who is actually getting hired, promoted, and funded is often murky. Better, disaggregated data means we can track whether these diversity pledges are actually working or if they’re just good intentions that fizzle out. It holds everyone accountable for making sure the tech workforce of tomorrow actually reflects the country it serves.