There still aren’t enough women in tech. Here’s how we could change that

When I began my career in technology — back when Java was fresh and Amazon just a river — becoming a female programmer felt somehow pioneering. It’s hard now to imagine how overwhelmingly male the IT business was.

Or so I thought. According to the industry network WISE, 21st Century women remain woefully underrepresented in the UK technology industry.

We’re half the population but still less than 25% of the tech workforce. The latest figures show only 16% of FTSE 100 science and technology companies have reached the goal of a 33% female boardroom.

Of those taking A-level computer science in 2020, only 14% were female, up 1% on the previous year. Of course, we are thankfully past the era of “boy jobs and girl jobs”, yet the rate of change seems glacial.

Achieving a more diverse industry is now widely understood to be A Good Thing and it’s a topic I’m passionate about. In this post, I’d like to suggest some steps employers and educators could take to make Planet Tech more representative of Planet Earth.

What follows focuses on women in the UK, particularly those who are parents. That reflects my own experience but I realise it’s just one section of the global talent pool and one aspect of the diversity conversation. Your perspective is, of course, just as important as mine.

Family life vs. skills currency

The engineers everyone wants to hire are the ones who also code in their spare time because they love it. Side projects such as contributing to open-source software, entering hackathons and pursuing personal projects don’t just keep people happy — they also keep them up to date and connected to the wider world. When people move into leadership this becomes even more important.

For women, though, starting a family seriously curtails this coding happy-time. They tend to be the ones who take time off to raise kids. Even if they don’t take long-term leave, time and energy suddenly become rare and precious resources.

As an industry, I think we have to do better at helping people maintain their skills, and we should probably be doing that during work time. I’m absolutely not suggesting this should be women-only. The point is, companies invest heavily in their hires and it’s wasteful if they then treat them like rental cars.

I’ve been taking part in a Friday afternoon Python “code club” at MPB, run by our own engineers, as part of our weekly Learning & Development time. It’s years since my last hands-on coding job and I’m thoroughly enjoying it, but it’s more than just a bit of fun. What I’m learning also helps me understand my team’s needs and make better decisions as a result. For example, when we were recently discussing our approach to upgrading the Python version of our codebase, I was able to deeply understand the trade-offs and benefits of this piece of work.

I don’t think employers can just expect people to hit a high technical bar without helping them maintain it. There may well be managers out there who would sooner hire fresh talent than absorb the cost of training; to me, that’s a recipe for a rather soulless operation whose lack of diversity will be detrimental in the long run.

Nor is it enough to let women do the legwork themselves — find out what they need to learn, research training opportunities, then make a funding case. If someone is so time-poor they can’t code in their spare time anymore, that kind of admin is probably a step too far. It also takes a lot of confidence to admit to the areas where you aren’t acing it.

Leadership needs to be more proactive — set the expectation, give the time, invest in the training resources for everyone.

After I took maternity leave I returned to the industry with atrophied technical skills. I was lucky enough to find a non-technical “on-ramp” job, but it’s only since taking my current role that I’ve been regaining my coding confidence.

I was also lucky at the start of my career. My first employer trained me on the job, which was common practice at the time. In the time since, some of the best people I’ve worked with have progressed via training at work. Maybe your own premises should be the first place you look to fill your vacancies.

‘Taking one for the team’ is everyone’s job

For some reason, women tend to be the ones who take on the office housekeeping, sort out leaving cards, organise the Christmas party, generally doing the people-based things. Not always, but more often than you’d expect to happen by chance.

These things are important and valuable, but they also take people away from becoming a better software engineer, product owner or test automation manager.

As leaders, I think we need to set an expectation that these things are fairly shared amongst the team. If only women answer your call for volunteers, it’s reasonable to co-opt male colleagues too in pursuit of a gender-neutral panel.

To put it another way: sure, “social” tasks can be a way for individuals to raise their profile, and help team happiness. But it comes at a cost in the long term, so it’s only fair to spread the burden (as well as the benefits).

It’s probably someone else’s turn to make the coffee.

Women in tech have superpowers. No, really

When I started out, a senior manager actually told me that women’s brains didn’t work the right way for them to succeed as programmers.

I hope that’s ancient history. Things have changed, but I think women still have to develop a certain confidence just to get into the game. It’s still the case that sometimes you’re the only woman in a meeting.

That can be tough, though the silver lining is that it can leave those who stick it out with increased resilience and tenacity — traits hiring managers love. It’s still a shame that extra mental toughness can be the price of admission.

Research suggests that women generally score higher than men on emotional intelligence, a measure of traits such as empathy and social cognition which are clearly valuable in any workplace. The ability to communicate effectively at all levels is often the hardest thing to teach and is increasingly important as you progress through your career. Over-indexing on this to start with is definitely a bonus.

What I’ve learned about hiring

There are a couple of things that I’ve found work to increase gender diversity in the workplace.

First, use gender-neutral language in your advertising. Tools such as textio can help you find blind spots and suggest improvements.

Second, and probably most important: use diverse interview panels so your candidates realise they won’t be a lone tick in a diversity checkbox and are more able to imagine themselves working at your company. This also helps ensure you don’t over-index on confidence.

Finally, if you use an agency to help recruit for a role, ask them to provide a diverse slate (a balanced selection of candidates) — this should be the norm nowadays anyway, but it’s worth making sure.

We’ve been scaling up at MPB over the last year. The techniques above have certainly helped our hiring — but we have also been focussing on team happiness and engagement to maximise retention, and because it is the right thing to do. Approaches such as flexible working are, thankfully, much more common nowadays but we have really challenged ourselves to support those at all stages of their life. We also believe in career development, as this earlier blog post shows and we invest time to nurture those at the start of their career.

We continue to learn and develop how to be more diverse and inclusive.

Technology is an amazing industry for women to work in

I’d love more women to move to the tech sector. They genuinely don’t know what they’re missing.

We touched earlier on the low number of young women planning a technology career. As someone wise once said, “if you can’t see it, you can’t be it”.

I’ve visited schools to talk to students about career opportunities in our industry and take part in coding events. It can be tough to overcome girls’ initial scepticism, but they really shouldn’t worry.

For one thing, this is a generally kind industry full of lovely, inclusive and welcoming people. Of course, you find the occasional arrogant-seeming “rockstar” developer out there, but there’s nothing to compare with the toxic tales told about industries like law, finance or professional services.

It’s also a global industry, which is well-versed in flexible working practices as a result.

You may get to travel, which is super-exciting. And irrespective of gender it’s a great industry to work in with so many opportunities. Women are in demand and rewards are generally good.

Finally, it’s creative. You get to problem-solve all day long. We have to be structured and organised to work together, but it’s essentially creative work, not cookie-cutting. Every problem is a novel problem — yes there are standard design patterns we can follow and we’re standing on the shoulders of giants, but it’s down to you to solve these problems, day in and day out.

I started coding aged seven and loved it from the outset, so a tech career was never a hard sell for me. But for anyone considering a move into this field I’ve only one question: why would you not?

Resources for this topic

STEM — UK organisation promoting science and technology in education
Hire more women in tech — diversity issues in detail
Women In Tech: PWC — industry research and statistics

Sophie Davies-Patrick is Chief Technology Officer at MPB, the UK’s leading reseller of photographic equipment with operations in Britain, Europe and North America. https://www.mpb.com