By : Lucie Fonseca , Global Head , R & D , Giesecke+Devrient (Pune, India)
During a women leaders networking event, a male senior executive was invited as a guest speaker. As he entered the board room, he looked at the twenty-odd women sitting around the table. He commented in a slightly nervous tone: “Oh my… I feel outnumbered”. The women looked at each other and laughed. For this man, being the only representative of his gender in a room was a novel experience. For most women in the room, it was a consistent experience throughout their careers in the technology domain.
Across the globe, the numbers show steady but slow progress in women’s participation in the tech industry. Significant discrepancies come into notice when looking at individual countries. In the UK the percentage of women in the IT workforce is less than 20% and this figure has not changed in the last ten years. When looking at senior positions, the representation of women drops dramatically, to just 10%. EU countries report similar numbers. The US have better results. According to self-reported data women represent around 24% of the technical workforce at Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Facebook. And the overall number across the tech industry was around 29% in 2020. This is significant progress from just 8% in 1970 but very slow considering fifty years have passed.
India is doing comparatively better. Large technology service providers like Wipro, Tech Mahindra, Infosys or TCS report around 30% of women in their workforce. They have shared plans to increase the proportion to 45% to 50% by actively hiring women. The percentage of female engineering students is one of the highest in the world, around 30%. But the majority of women tech workers are below 30 and unmarried, and a large chunk exits the industry after just five years of career.
Here’s some deep diving into this subject:
● Diversity at work – Research demonstrates that diversity makes business sense and helps in understanding varied business goals. Companies with a more diverse workforce and leadership have better business outcomes, attract talent more easily, do better with innovation, and are more likely to build products and services that fit with the market demands.
● Fair, ethical and inclusive digital future – Ensuring a better gender balance at the get-go is essential to ensure that bias is minimized in the foundational algorithms of transformative technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Crypto or the Metaverse. This goes beyond gender and encompasses other forms of diversity like race, culture, age, social background, religion or sexual orientation. In all honesty, a future designed by a small homogeneous group of people could be a very scary prospect.
● Tech jobs, secure jobs – Tech profiles are in high demand and most established tech companies are looking to hire more women in the future to help fill the resource gap and achieve better gender diversity. These are highly paid jobs that can secure women’s financial independence, a key factor in reducing domestic abuse but also in avoiding the pauperization of the family when other sources of income are lost. Over the last two years, the world witnessed heart-breaking appeals about women left to fend for themselves and their children after the unexpected demise of their spouses. In single-parent household it is usually a woman who provides for her children and close relatives like aging parents.
● Gender-neutral tech jobs – Tech jobs are usually gender-neutral by nature and they are performed from the safe environment of the office where intellectual skills matter more than physical strength and where “getting your hands dirty” means writing code yourself. They are also particularly well suited to support flexible and remote work, a key factor for women who still bear the brunt of childcare, elderly care, and household chores and responsibilities around the world.
● Flexibility at work – Two years of nearly universal work from home in the technology industry have amply demonstrated that flexible work is a viable model, with high productivity levels. Adaptable working hours and less time spent commuting are powerful enablers or work-life balance if managed properly. Rigid working hours and lack of remote work opportunities were repeatedly cited by women as reasons to abandon a career in tech. Before the Covid 19 pandemic too many companies missed out on this retention opportunity, under the misconception that working from home would result in a lack of discipline and poor performance. The perspectives have changed, flexible work is now the new normal and performance or productivity are no longer in question.
● Change of mindset – some technology companies have successfully implemented paternity leave schemes, and created a better environment for women in tech in the process. Men who benefit from such programs have a deeper appreciation of their female colleagues with children. They understand that working from home at times or leaving early to take care of children doesn’t mean the work will not get done. This change of mindset is key to the wellbeing, recognition, and advancement of women at work.
Women are ready to make a difference in the tech segment as decision makers, solution providers and designers of the future. All they need is the right environment to thrive. As we get out of the pandemic and re-invent the workplace, let’s make sure we create those conditions and attract more women to the tech world. Everyone will benefit, the women, the industry and society at large.
“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!” ― Maya Angelou
