Insights - Women in Tech

Last week the BCS (The Chartered Institute for IT) published their Insights for 2019.

[https://www.bcs.org/events-home/bcs-insights-2019/bcs]

What is immediately clear is that we have made no progress on the numbers of women working in the tech professions and at times it seems we are going backwards. This is madness! Across the UK (and Europe) we are looking for additional skills in coding, more data analysts, more people to work on AI and ML. It is ridiculous that we can’t attract the women to join the tech workforce. We could access up to 700K additional people in the UK alone if we could solve the women in tech problem. That would mean more people to be trained as coders and analysts, more architects, more software engineers and it would also mean broader solutions which accommodate all parts of society.

Many teams have been working to make a change but still the progress is glacial.

So today, I thought I would point out one or two things which might help fix the problem:

Fellas – we need your support. This is not a problem for the Women in Tech groups to sort out – it is a problem for us all to sort. Give us a hand and help your local women in tech group to have some potency in the work there are doing.
We need to eliminate Micro Inequities and Micro Aggressions at work. We have started a blog here so that you have some examples, because, as Karen Petrie shows, those who are in the minority will receive more of these and life will be tougher in the workplace because of it.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrie_multiplier]
We need to sort out the culture in tech teams in the UK. Women (and those who don’t fit the prevailing culture) need to feel welcome in our workplaces.

Women will only work in teams where they are valued! Add your weight to the work being done to attract and retain women in technical roles.