Women working in technology have achieved great things but the fact remains that there are not many of them around – only 19% of the UK IT workforce is female.
What’s more, there are even fewer women when it comes to the top level jobs which are heavily dominated by men. Many organisations would however like to hire female talent – they just can’t find it! Why is this and why is it important to have women on your tech team?
First of all, women could benefit your organisation financially – research from McKinsey highlighted that European organisations with the highest proportion of women in influential leadership roles showed better than average financial performance. But more generally, women tend to possess the softer skills, like strong communication skills, that men often do not and having a more diverse team means having a wider range of ideas and viewpoints. It’s also crucial for the people in your company to reflect your customer base, to understand their needs and to be able to relate to them. Not only that, the more women that enter the sector, the more role models there will be, which is crucial if the industry wants to encourage even more women to pursue careers there.
This is all very well but why are there so few women in IT? Women continue to leave their jobs due to pregnancy and family commitments as they do in all other sectors but in IT this has lead to the number of women in the industry continuing to drop. After an extended career break some women do return to work flexibly, however many lose confidence and feel their skills are out of date so refresher technical training could be really beneficial. At the moment we also have the most unequal parental leave arrangements in the whole of Europe and although paternity leave legislation is due to change next year it remains to be seen whether it’ll have much impact – this all combines to play a significant role in the loss of many women from the sector.
Women are a minority in IT but there’s an even bigger shortage when it comes to the top positions – partly because of the reasons above but also because women often don’t have the confidence to push themselves that far up the career ladder. A female candidate recently told me that she wasn’t going to apply for a particular job because she didn’t think she ticked all the boxes. She changed her mind after her husband said “So, what?” and that in her position he would put himself forward. In the same way we have seen a senior role advertised, with a high salary to match to which hardly any women applied – until the salary was lowered!
Organisations can look at using diversity suppliers like womenintechnology.co.uk who work with firms to help them increase the flow of female candidates being put forward. We work with male candidates too as ultimately the job has to go to the best person for the role but this service helps to get more women onto your job shortlist. It also helps to have more women involved in the recruitment decision making process to ensure a range of opinions are given and that people don’t fall into the trap of hiring in their own image. Networking groups and internal schemes for women can also help attract female talent to your organisation and retain it once it’s there.
Business confidence is returning but at the same time the baby boom generation is nearing retirement and less talent – especially female talent – is entering the sector. Companies and the UK as a whole will need to make sure they have the very best talent to remain competitive and as a largely untapped pool of talent, women are going to be key to that strategy.
Claire Goodwin heads up the womenintechnology Recruitment Services team, providing companies with the opportunity to access a wider and more diverse talent pool for their IT roles. An experienced recruiter, she has six years experience in supplying high end recruitment solutions to leading financial institutions and blue-chip companies. www.womenintechnology.co.uk.
