The Future is Female is a campaign aiming to increase the number of women in tech – currently, these numbers are rather low, and it’s something we at Baltic Training would love to see change! We really believe that the tech industry needs more strong female voices, and we’re hoping our campaign will raise some more awareness to women in the industry already, and inspire other young women to get involved in a career in tech.
The Future is Female was first introduced to empower women in the early 70s when it first appeared on a t-shirt for the first women’s bookstore in New York. Since then, it has had firm roots in feminism, and driving progressive change for women.
We believe women are the future of tech, and it’s imperative that we bring more women into the industry. We champion young women breaking into the tech industry by offering specialised digital apprenticeships to kickstart their career.
The tech industry is starving for better representation of women. The number of women assuming tech roles has dropped from 33%, that was previously reported in 2002, which shows women are either leaving the tech industry, or there is a stronger intake of men. Compared to other industries, where the average percentage of employed women is 47%, the tech industry is startlingly low with only 27% women in the workforce. There is a huge discrepancy between the number of women in the workforce, and the number assuming roles in IT. This number is only predicted to rise to 30% by 2020.
Even industry leaders have a huge problem with lack of representation of women. Only 17% of Google’s tech employees are women, 15% of Facebook’s staffing body are women, and only 10% of Twitter’s tech workers are women. The gender gap has recently been in the tech spotlight since the Google ‘anti-diversity’ memo which highlighted outlandish generalisations made about women in the industry.
The overall lack of women in the industry means that there are very few women in leadership roles. The number of women in tech roles is so low, that statistically the probability of women being in leadership roles is slimmer. In fact, out of the top 100 technology companies that currently operate all over the globe; only 14% of the board seats are sat in by women. These are just the major international companies; so, the numbers undoubtedly become even fewer in smaller tech businesses. Without more women in leadership positions, young girls aspiring to be in the tech sector have fewer female role models to aspire to.
To continue reading the blog and for further details, please visit https://baltictraining.com/blog/apprentices/the-future-is-female/
