After stalling for a generation, the numbers of women choosing IT careers is at last on the up, writes Johanna Hamilton MBCS. Ten prominent women in tech share their thoughts on boosting females in STEM careers and make suggestions for not only attracting, but retaining women in IT.
Women are under-represented in STEM careers and this is particularly true of IT. While the wider science community has a ratio of around one in four women, IT has struggled with figures of between 14-17% for a generation.
In 2021, this figure rose to 19%. While the figures are now going slowly in the right direction, we still need more women in tech. There’s a great deal of work, thought and effort being invested into understanding how to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Many organisations are also asking how do we get more women in tech?
Here, we explore why we need more women in tech.
We need more talent (full stop!)
Dame Stephanie Shirley CH FBCS
Pioneering IT entrepreneur and passionate philanthropist
‘We need more women in tech because we need more people in tech. All predictions are for a massive shortfall of STEM graduates.
‘I was the first female President of the Society, and was very conscious of my leadership role in encouraging and inspiring other women.
‘Employers who do not actively target women are likely to receive significantly fewer job applications from them. Words such as “enforcement” and “fearless” may entice male applicants, but more inclusive terms such as “transparent” and “catalyst” are needed to attract the 51% of us who are female.’
We need greater balance
Jyoti Choudrie FBCS
Professor of Information Systems at the University of Hertfordshire
‘Why we need more women in technology, is because they can provide a more balanced view to female gender and technology sector issues.
‘When only one gender is being emphasised in the media, academic and industry sectors, issues that females can identify with, and address remain largely ignored.
For instance, females making a mark in the technology sector, e.g. Lucy Hall, CEO, Digital Women, or Priya Lakhani, founder and CEO, Century Tech, can inform and raise awareness in society of the challenges females face and offer solutions to society.
For example, they can shed light on the bias issues of Artificial Intelligence, balancing a homework life balance, gender pay issues and the skills that females need to make a mark in the technology sector.’
We need society-wide variety
Dorothy Monekosso HonFBCS
Professor of Computer Science at Leeds Beckett University, and the recipient of an honorary fellowship at BCS
‘There is a shortage of skilled IT personnel and the demand is growing. From this perspective alone more women are needed in technology to fill the skills shortage.
‘Jobs in technology innovation are varied, different skills are needed from coding to user experience and technology evaluation. The skillset covers a broad array of disciplines from mathematics to psychology. There is a place for all.’
Increased representation of women in tech
Jo Stansfield FBCS
Founder and director of Inclusioneering and IT thought leader
‘Technology is shaping the world we live in, yet women and many minority groups in society are currently under-represented in the tech workforce. I believe that digital transformation must be accompanied by human transformation if everyone is to reap the rewards.
‘Increasing representation of women in tech is important not only for the brilliant career opportunities it can offer to them, but also for the ability of the technology industry as a whole to innovate and rise to meet the needs of society.’
For you
Be part of something bigger, join BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.
We need better design
Rubi Kaur FBCS
Senior Solutions Architect at Vodafone
Today, the Tech workforce in the UK has less than 20% representation of women. This worrying percentage moves at a glacial pace and gender equality in the tech space will take a long time to reach parity unless drastic action is taken.
‘It has been proven repeatedly that organisations with greater diversity bring in more revenue compared to those that do not embrace diversity in the workforce. Women in the tech industry are important for a whole number of reasons, especially when it comes to designing and developing products and services. We build for all society, understanding their requirements to build meaningful, responsible technology.
‘Consider the iphone which has become larger than the average female hand size now and there are many more examples in Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez.
'Therefore, we must work towards creating greater diversity in our workforce, who will be representative of a society who use those tech products and services.’
We need to fix society
Mivy James FBCS
Digital Transformation Director at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence
‘We need to move on for making a case for diversity as a non-diverse political, leadership and STEM world clearly has vast room for improvement, just take the eye-opening “Invisible Women” by Caroline Criado-Perez as to an example of what goes wrong when this isn’t the case. Instead, we need to ask “why wouldn’t we want to have more women in tech?” Diversity needs to be a given, not something that requires a business case.
‘Prior to the home computing boom, programming was often done by women. The technology has moved on but the underlying aptitude needed remains the same - so perhaps there’s an argument for the tech industry to turn back the clock and remind itself of this. And diversity needs to mean diversity - rather than the tendency some have to try to ‘fix’ women to make us more like men in order to succeed in our careers. Let’s fix the system instead.’
Different skills, insights and attributes
Olena Berestetska, Head of International Cooperation, IT Ukraine Association
Historically, the IT industry has felt like a closed, ‘men only’ club. But, this is changing and needs to keep changing. A career in technology shouldn’t be about gender. Rather, admission needs to be about your knowledge, your experiences and your past results.
Some people talk about the differences between men and women. Some say that women may be more emotionally intelligent, so they are able to navigate complex workplace dynamics more easily. This can help build strong relationships with clients and colleagues. Women tend to be more flexible, adaptable and more likely to use collaborative and inclusive language. Women may even be better at multitasking, which can help them handle multiple responsibilities and juggle competing priorities.
The point is: women in technology bring a different perspective. This will help teams work together differently and empower them to solve problems differently.
Solving problems differently
Elena Samborska, Managing Director/HR Operations Director, Luxoft (Ukraine)
I think it’s important to inspire women to pursue a career in general. The IT industry provides the best opportunity to do this in a quick way. In such a complex world, where we face so many different problems, and need diverse teams to solve them. A lot of research proves that only diverse teams can be productive in a volatile and unpredictable world.
