Advocate for Women Developers
Even though we are making progress toward workplace equality, women remain vastly underrepresented in the UK’s tech industry.
“Just 23% of the people working in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) roles across the UK are female — and only 5% of leadership positions in the technology industry are held by women.”
”While the rate of women working within tech companies (such as social networks) is closer to parity, the rate of women working within tech roles (such as developers and data engineers) is much lower.”
In product management, the ratio between men and women in tech appears to be more balanced. However, considerably fewer women go into more technical roles, including software development... My personal experience is of being the only woman Back-end developer in any team.
Most women who take up the software engineering journey know how tough it is! They try to help others around them by often performing GLUE tasks— software development, onboarding, mentoring, and advocating for Women in Tech.
We need more women to represent us! However, we need authentic women leaders, not women pretending to be ‘men in tech.’ Women are required to work twice as hard to move up. They feel they need to adopt “masculine” characteristics to produce better results or work the same way as men because the industry doesn’t include them.
We don’t need to compete against each other to get ahead. We don’t need to be superstars! We desperately need an inclusive, fun and engaging environment for us to grow and develop.
Margaret Heffernan is a fantastic speaker that talks about high-achieving teams in this TED TALK, the highest-performing teams are the ones that have women in their group.
The industry should allow for different leadership styles and freedom of expression. Women should be trusted with more space to lead how they see fit rather than being forced to emulate the style of a man.
If you are looking for role models — Margaret Hamilton is a great start. She Led the NASA Software Team That Landed Astronauts on the Moon.
It is also equally important to have male voices advocating for women. I encourage more men to participate in Women in Tech events to understand further the barriers women face.
Often men don’t know if it is okay to turn up at these events as sometimes this is not very clearly advertised. Having spoken to organizers, it was 100% clear that... Men are welcome! I believe it would be helpful to clarify this in the event details.
In the end, the highest-performing tech teams are diverse teams that create and deliver a product that is fit for all, not just for a select few.
