The everywoman in Technology Awards, the longest-running programme celebrating the tech industry’s most exceptional female talent, is shining a spotlight on inspirational women working in STEM at every career stage, from apprentices to C-Suite, who serve as role models to inspire and attract female talent to the tech industry.
Attracting women to the sector remains vitally important, as female employees account for 24.8% of the total UK STEM workforce, and government figures suggest this has fallen from 29.4% in 2020.
Sheridan Ash MBE, founder and co-CEO of the charity Tech She Can, and a judge at this year’s everywoman in Technology Awards, is sharing her thoughts on what can be done to increase female representation in the technology industry.
Why Do You Think the Tech Sector Still Struggles to Increase Female Representation?
Technology has an image problem, meaning it’s not attracting girls and women. At the same time, it’s struggling to keep hold of and advance women already in the technology workforce.
It’s also not tapping into the vast pool of women, many of whom are at the risk of automation, who could be reskilled into technology jobs. With a massive demand from industry for technology skills, at the same time as shortages in the supply of people with these skills, women offer an under-tapped talent pool already in the workforce with transferable skills.
What’s missing is a whole system workforce strategy aimed at girls and women that creates joined up initiatives and resources, with business and the UK government coming together to tackle the issue. Business and the nation as a whole must both prepare much earlier in schools and reskill the current workforce. The choices we make now will shape the workforce of the next decade.
What Can Be Done To Change This?
We need to focus on starting early, and we need to close the inspiration and aspiration gap, attracting girls to technology careers.
Starting early in schools is key, along with showing girls how technology can be used in a wide variety of ways that fit with their ambitions in life. Research shows that two of the most important factors for girls and young women’s choices for careers are that they can make a difference and improve lives and that they have access to relatable role models who look and act like them.
We need to inspire them, by showing how technology relates to their passion and interests and can have a positive impact such as how technology is used to solve environmental issues, how it’s used to help people, and even how it’s used to live in space.
Shining a light on the relatable role models pathways and story telling about how technology can be used for a positive impact are two key design principles for the work we do at Tech She Can to inspire girls and young women. The everywoman in Technology Awards are especially impactful for shining a light on inspirational real life role models working in technology at every career stage.
For women in the workforce, recent research from Untapped Digital Talent showed that nearly 12,100 digital roles went unfilled across finance, professional services and technology sectors last year. Those vacancies represent projects delayed, innovations postponed and opportunities left on the table. These gaps are already costing these sectors millions in lost profits. Over the next decade, the cumulative productivity loss from the digital talent gap could exceed £10 billion.
Women, especially women already in the workforce, have the essential skills that are needed in a volatile and AI world. They bring behaviours such as creativity, collaboration and empathy, which are crucial to ensure the development and use of technology is socially as well as economically valuable. Pivoting women in the workforce already through upskilling programmes should be an essential part of the business and the UK government workforce strategy for our AI-enabled world.
Why Is Increasing Female Representation In Technology So Important?
For girls and women, being able to use and create technology in a world increasingly shaped by it means better job prospects and greater financial independence for them and their families.
The UK also faces a major technology skills shortage, costing billions of pounds each year. If as many women as men worked in technology, that skills gap could disappear.
Technology is for everyone. We shouldn’t miss out on the ideas and creativity of half the population. Diverse teams build better products and solutions that work for more people. What’s good for girls and women is good for business, society and the UK economy.
Women’s jobs are significantly more at risk of automation than men’s, with some studies suggesting women are nearly three times more likely to be impacted. This vulnerability stems from women’s overrepresentation in administrative, clerical and service roles that are highly susceptible to AI and automation. We need to have a focused strategy on upskilling women so they can move into new roles, including digital and AI. For example over 70% of call centre staff are women, but have all the transferable skills needed for an AI workplace.
Diversity in AI is also becoming an essential requirement to avoid operational and reputational risk for companies. With AI systems increasingly involved in hiring, performance assessment and content moderation, biased outputs are no longer just reputational issues; they are potential legal and financial liabilities. Diversity in technology will increasingly be about who builds the systems that build society.
