How schools/education can help to improve gender diversity in tech

Mentors and champions

 

Sophie Devonshire, CEO of The Caffeine Partnership, comments, “We cannot be what we cannot see.” To encourage teenage girls to get into the sector, the wider community (from business to government to education) needs to champion female role models. Tech leaders don’t just look like Steve Wozniak or Steve Jobs – but they can also look like Martha Lane Fox and Sarah Wood.

Being able to contact female mentors can give young women access to another kind of champion and is a key step that schools can enable. Mentors directly prove that success in the field is possible. More importantly, they can offer informed guidance and advice – and hence accelerate their mentee’s progress through education and placements and into industry roles.

Breaking stereotypes

It’s important to challenge stereotypes at an early stage as well. “If girls are given play kitchens and dolls while it is the boys receiving [cognitively educational toys like Lego sets, gaming consoles and science kits], and we combine this with a fundamental lack of confidence at a young age between girls and boys, we then enter a situation where some girls are too scared to enjoy STEM subjects or are too afraid to make mistakes and fail because they feel they have to prove themselves more to be considered equal to boys,” notes Jo Baptista, winner of the Young Star Award at the Women of the Future Awards.

Jo also emphasizes the important role that schools can play in teaching skills over software (teaching coding rather than Excel); and the fact that computer science can be an exciting subject in its own right as well as being a path to employment.

Yet, there’s a great deal that organisations need to do to drive change. Businesses that want to find the best candidates available should pursue gender neutral language in job ads, they should tackle unconscious bias in hiring, and they should seek to root out prejudice and discrimination across their operations. Taking these steps can make a difference by creating a more welcoming workplace for everyone.

And schools can embrace this. By collaborating with businesses that advocate these practices; by identifying and highlighting relevant placements and internships; and by connecting with and championing female role models, they can help to create a clear path into tech for young women.