Here’s a quick fact: Only about 17% of tech startups are founded by women, but insiders say that we desperately need to start doing more to encourage female participation in the sector, creating more visible role models for young girls out there.
It is said that roughly 16% of IT professionals are women, and being in their minority, tech companies are having a hell of a time keeping these women on board, which might be partially due to the documented problems with gender balance in the tech industry. When asked why much more men were prone to applying for vacant jobs within the information technology sector, employers believed the cause for this was because the IT industry itself has an off-putting image of a male-dominant environment.
But can such a young sector really suffer under an old boy’s network? Not likely. Girls are being put off the idea from school, rather than deliberately being discriminated because they are female. One of the big problems is that there just aren’t enough female role models in the industry inspiring young girls to take up careers in the tech industry.
Tamsyn Attiwell, the vice-president of software company Zuora, remembers once being referred to as ‘darling’ in a boardroom meeting, and she also reminisces about the time she got refused a raise in her salary because it was believed that she could not possibly be the breadwinner of her household.
Then there’s the case of Sarah Eccleston, the current director of enterprise networks at the UK branch of Cisco. She clearly remembers how she had to deal with discrimination and bullying at companies whom she had been employed with, based merely on the fact that she was a girl playing cards in a man’s world.
But there might be hope since these two women (among thousands of others just like them) believe that it’s time for women to step up and start changing things around. “All eyes are currently on technology companies as they are changing our everyday lives, at home and work,” says Attiwell. “So leading companies should set the bar high and start making a real effort with equality in the workplace.”
Cisco has many schemes to encourage women in the industry, says Eccleston. It runs a “connected women” program to increase female talent in tech and has this year achieved a 50:50 split of male and female apprentices. She advises young women to recognize and embrace the fact that they are in the minority.
Only once women start sharing their stories and inequality experiences of the tech industry, will they be able to help each other see that the IT sector is more accessible and more legitimate of a career path for women than it was ten years ago. An executive director of Fujitsu, Helen Lamb, offers the following words of wisdom: “We need to move the conversation away from just talking about technology and start talking about the brilliant things it enables instead. This starts to bring to life the purpose of technology, inspiring other women to join the industry.”
Here’s hoping that the next decade in the IT industry sees a remarkable gain about how many women are employed and empowered by the sector that didn’t want to accept female presence ten years ago!