Should we be telling them?

Sadly today the average statistics for women working in technology still sit at approximately 1 woman for every 5 of their male counterparts.  This figure gets even worse if you refine technology back further to more technical roles .

We know that the stereotypes and reasons behind the younger generation not choosing to pursue a career in technology are ingrained from an early age, and whilst there are a selection of initiatives out there to try and change this, GoldieBlox being one of my personal favourites, every time I get invited into a school to do a talk to try and encourage more girls into tech I find myself asking the question. Am I doing more harm than good by telling them there’s a gender divide in technology?

I for one know that when I was choosing what subjects to take at school, no one ever mentioned to me that IT was something for boys. I suspect this was possibly to do with the fact that our head of IT was a woman as well as another of the 4 IT teachers at the school. Regardless, this lead me to being blissfully unaware and I would assume that as my A Level class was heavily on the female side, I wasn’t the only one.

So would it have made a difference to me if I’d known that I was setting myself up to join an industry where in terms of my gender I would be in a minority?

This one is hard to answer, I want to say no, I think I would have chosen it anyway but it’s very difficult to say with hindsight. For now, if I speak in front of students choosing their GCSE subjects, I try to mainly focus on showcasing some incredible women who are smashing it in the industry and try to steer away from the topic of the gender divide.

Did you know about the gender divide before you embarked on a career in technology?  What do you think we should do?