After having made a joke about how she hoped her granddaughters dated a nerd in case he turned out to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, Darlene Loretto probably didn’t expect the man himself to tell her to think bigger.
It has become clear that the lack of females in the UK’s tech sector has gone from being a diversity issue to an economic one – despite the digital skills gap expected to reach 1m workers by 2020, only 17 per cent of people working in tech are women. But according to some, a huge revolution is taking place in the sector.
By Kate Cox
In today’s world, working women are no longer a shock – you expect to find them in all corners of the corporate world. However, I’ve been surprised how deep the gender bias can be since joining the technology industry a few months ago.
Technology giant Facebook has put diversity at the forefront of its agenda by pairing up with non-profit organisation Inspiring Fifty to champion women in the tech sector.
Exactly how you make work “work” is something many entrepreneurs will have pondered and was certainly at the forefront of my mind when I was working as a lawyer in a magic circle firm in the noughties.
With universities producing just 71,000 graduates in STEM fields each year, and with women in short supply, it’s fair to say the situation looks dire. But while there is a known shortage, the real question is why
Just 100 years ago, there were no female politicians in the Houses of Parliament. But the 2015 general election proved to be an historic event for women.
John Glenn, who became the first American in orbit, once said the “role of men is to go to war and into space. Women are not involved in these activities.”
Many women in tech seeking female role models currently look towards the most visible, the headline-makers, like Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo’s Marissa Meyer. However, as amazing as those women are, the ‘Inspiring Fifty’ made it their mission to showcase the many accomplished, and all-too-often overlooked women in technology a lot closer to home.
Only one in five UK SMEs currently export. This is a worrying statistic given that businesses are 11 per cent more likely to survive if they export, according to CBI. And despite recent government focus on gender equality, women are an even smaller part of the equation. We talked to former Dragon Kelly Hoppen about the export gender divide.
