Promoting Positive Role Models to Bridge the Technology Gender Gap - Samantha Swift

Promoting positive role models to bridge the technology gender gap

Samantha Humphries-Swift, Intel Security Group

INTRODUCTION

Subjects were asked if they recognised the names of ten men and ten women in prominent roles

with the technology sector.

Bill Gates, joint-founder, Microsoft

90%of respondents had heard of Bill Gates

Mark Zuckerberg, founder, Facebook

78%of respondents had heard of Mark Zuckerberg

Steve Jobs, co-founder, Apple

70%of respondents had heard of Steve Jobs

5%of respondents couldn’t recognise the names of any of the men

Baroness Martha Lane-Fox, founder, Lastminute.com

17%of respondents had heard of Baroness Lane-Fox

Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook

8%of respondents had heard of Sheryl Sandberg

Marissa Mayer, President & CEO, Yahoo

5%of respondents had heard of Marissa Mayer

72%of respondents couldn’t recognise the names of any of the women

When asked why girls do not have adequate encouragement to pursue careers in the tech industry….

49% said social stereotypes dictate they shouldn’t follow this career path.

58% said there were not enough engaging initiatives provided by schools and the government

54% said there were too few role models

“By making such a noise about the lack of women in technology, aren’t we just compounding the

problem?”

“No, Sam.”

Make a start, today!

Download & Read This:

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Go to Amazon.co.uk (or your eBook store of choice)

Search for “BCS Women in IT”

Get the book, read the book, spread the word!

Where do we go from here?

• 44% of entries for an IT related (ICT and Computing) GCSE were girls

• Girls accounted for more A-C grades in IT related GSCEs than boys

• 6.5% of entrants for Computing A-Level were female.

• 16% of the UK IT workforce are women.

• This is below the average of other (EU15) countries in Europe

• Women were more likely to hold positions in support or operational positions

Source: http://policy.bcs.org/sites/policy.bcs.org/files/Women%20in%20IT%20scorecardv2.pdf

Women in IT Scorecard - 2014

• Recent Gartner research indicated that women occupy only 11.2% of CIO roles in EMEA.

• In North America, it’s 18.1%...

• Silicon Valley Bank found that in Europe 50% of technology companies had one or more women in the C-suite or board of directors.

• Therefore……50% didn’t have any. Not one.

• A Dow Jones report from 2012 concluded that a company’s chances for success increase with more female executives.

• Illuminate Ventures showed that organisations with more women in leadership roles achieve 35% higher ROE.

Women in Leadership roles – Europe is lagging behind

https://www.gartner.com/doc/2687324/-cio-agenda-perspective-prioritieshttp://www.svb.com/women-in-technology/http://www.dowjones.com/collateral/files/WomenPE_report_final.pdfhttp://www.illuminate.com/whitepaper/

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