It Is Time For Women In Technology To Lead The Way In Gender Equality

The tech mantra of disrupting industries and transforming the world is alive and well in London’s bustling startups, Silicon Valley’s grand visions and in the garages and co-working spaces of tech startups.

This is reflected in the open source community, the so-called unicorns and the two-person team battling to be the next big thing.

This is amazing. This is awesome, but it isn’t. Something is rotten in technology and that is gender inequality.

The tech industry by its very nature is progressive and innovative, but when it comes to women in tech, it certainly is not.

This world resembles the advertising days of the 1960s and the way working women in the industry were portrayed by TV series Mad Men.

Surely it’s time for Mad Women or at the very least, Utterly Furious Women, at this ongoing state of bad affairs. People in the technology industry should be setting the best example when it comes to gender equality.

It’s not for want of trying. There are many groups pushing for this - by creating events where like-minded women can meet and persuade that technology is an industry that welcomes hard-working, passionate women.

Girls in Tech is one of those groups. For more than 10 years they have organised conferences around the world where women can pitch their ideas, hackathons where they can build them and bootcamps where they can learn the skills required to enter into the tech sector.

Girls in Tech London re-opened at the end of 2017 to ensure London is at the forefront in addressing gender inequality. Supported by one of the more progressive investment groups BlackRock, the launch event means London is getting serious at getting even.

The group will be running a series of events such as The Tech Spectrum: Getting Into Tech, where women working in different tech roles such as developers, UX designers, innovation directors and researchers will be presenting their story on how they got into tech.

“I think it's our responsibility as a society to encourage girls to pursue their dreams, whether that is in technology or some other industries considered male-driven.

“Millennials like myself didn't have enough female role models when we were growing up, so we are changing that for future generations. We want to give young women the tools and inspiration they need to feel empowered to realise their dreams,” said Kamila Hankiewicz, Co-Managing Director, Girls in Tech London.

There are several other organisations and initiatives attempting to tackle this issue throughout Europe. The European Centre for Women and Technology is a partnership of more than 130 organizations that support women in tech from all over Europe.

Moreover, the European Ada Awards makes a strong effort to recognize women in technology, issuing annual awards such as Digital Girl of the Year, Digital Woman of the Year and Digital Impact Organization of the Year.

The WISE campaign is another example of a movement to recognize noteworthy accomplishments by women in science and technology, with the mission of adding another one million women to the STEM workforce in the UK.

The data backs up the imbalance of women working in technology. According to a recent Reuters study, 30% of 450 technology executives said that their groups had no women in leadership positions. It goes on to say that only 25% of IT jobs in the US are filled by women and, even more dispiritingly, 56% of these women leave IT at the peak of their careers.

Nordic regions and smaller European countries sometimes struggle to provide as many opportunities as their wealthier neighbours.

The latest report from the Gender Equality Index, which measures gender equality policies across 28 countries in the European Union, found that in the ‘work’ category, women in Slovakia, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Italy ranked significantly low, indicating limited access to equal employment opportunities.

Luciana Cavalho Se, Head of Partnerships at Virtual Reality (VR) agency Rewind is another strong European voice when it comes to advancing women in technology. 

She is an ambassador and mentor for Code First Girls, Founders of the Future and Series Q. She was also elected one of Code First Girls ‘25 Ones to Watch’, and 'Top 5 Female Role Models in the Tech Industry'. She cites VR as a new sector that may offer women more opportunities.

"VR is fast becoming a medium in its own right, carving a space alongside music, art, film, and television. Sitting at the intersection of art and science, it has the potential to appeal to and engage girls and women of all ages, unlike any other medium before it.

"Never before has equal opportunity been so high on the agenda. Never before has society been so in need of empowering, diverse and inclusive voices. Never before have women been more ready to lead," she says.

As International Women's Day approaches (March 8th), the technology industry needs to foster, embrace and promote women to positions of influence to create a more balanced future for the next generation.

The work of Girls In Tech and its resurgent London division, the support offered by investment institutions such as BlackRock and the potential of VR to disrupt the current (and shameful) imbalance offer hope.

Technology needs to teach its children well... it's about time.

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