Driving gender diversity in IT

Jen Openshaw at BAE Systems Digital Intelligence argues that we need to make it easier for mothers to switch careers

 

A few weeks ago, we celebrated another International Women’s Day. There’s still a long way to go before the tech industry more accurately resembles the working populace.

 

Diversity is improving, but slowly. It’s a huge missed opportunity, and one employers could immediately start to address by recognising the large untapped pool of talent comprised of women looking to retrain or restart their careers following the birth of a child.

 

Since making such a career leap several years ago I’ve been struck not only by the size of the opportunity, but also the barriers that continue to be put in the path of potential candidates. To effect real and lasting change, employers need to start thinking seriously about cultural change. 

 

 

The brightest and best

We probably all know by now the scale of the gender imbalance in IT. Estimates suggest around a quarter (27%) of the IT workforce is female, around the same as in cyber security (25%). That figure is shifting slowly upwards each year in part because fantastic government schemes like CyberFirst Girls have yet to bear fruit.

 

According to the most recent UK figures, just 35% of STEM learners in higher education are women, dropping to 19% for computer sciences. In 2020, only a fifth (21%) of students taking GCSE computer science were female.

 

Given industry skills shortages, which are particularly acute in cyber, encouraging greater gender diversity in the workforce would seem like a no-brainer. But it’s not just a numbers game. Time and again studies report that more diverse teams are more effective, and create the kind of workplace cultures that breed success and attract the brightest and best talent.

 

While the pipeline of talent coming in from schools, colleges and universities is certainly vital to filling this diversity gap, employers must also look to those already in the workforce, or those who’ve recently dropped out to have kids.

 

It may be surprising just how many of them are out there. A 2020 poll by charity Pregnant then Screwed found that 85% of stay-at-home mums said they wanted to do paid work. And in March this year, over 500 women attended a conference in Manchester hosted by Tech Returners—whose mission is to empower experienced engineers back into software engineering, often following a break after having children. 

 

 

Making the leap

There’s also a large pool of potential tech superstars who have no previous experience in the sector, but want to join. Since talking publicly about my own career change, many mums have reached out for advice on how to do the same.

 

My background was a degree in history, an NVQ level 2 in beauty therapy and a career at the National Trust—not the kind of CV to catch the eye of most IT recruiters. Yet a part-time bootcamp course at Manchester Codes ended up opening the door to a new career as a software engineer at BAE Systems Digital Intelligence. There are lots of free resources online that offer help and training, including freeCodeCamp, Codecademy and Code First Girls.

 

However, there are still too many barriers in the way of women who want to make the leap. Of course, confidence plays a big part. Changing careers is always a daunting prospect, made even more challenging when the responsibilities of parenting are piled on.

 

But some things are harder to fix. The UK has the second most expensive childcare in the world. In fact, one 2021 study found that a third of mothers pay more for childcare than they do for rent or mortgage.

 

This highlights one of the biggest challenges for women returning to work after having a child: time and flexibility. The traditional full-time, five-days-a-week office job is just not compatible with parenting, financially or otherwise. Neither does it allow for the many university or bootcamp courses needed to reskill. With time, sleep and sanity in short supply, mums need more flexible training and job opportunities.

 

 

How employers can help

This is where employers can make a big difference, through initiatives such as running intensive training courses for career changers, with the prospect of a job at the end. Although full-time courses will still create barriers for some, by explicitly saying they welcome career changers and those returning after a break, organisations can help to create much needed cultural change.

 

They should also be more open to recruiting from boot camps or even self-taught coders, rather than those with traditional university degrees.

 

Employers should also recruit for potential or willingness to learn. Coding skills can be taught. Many of the other attributes career changers have in bucket loads – determination, motivation, soft skills and real-world experience – are harder to teach. 

 

There are other things organisations can do, for example by offering more part-time, flexible, hybrid or remote working options that work for parents. Specificity is needed at the recruitment stage. It’s not enough to include a vague “we support flexible working” statement in a full-time job spec and hope applicants will apply who are bold enough to ask for it. Advertise for part-time, flexible roles from the outset, on job boards specifically for women, as well as through regular channels.

 

Next, think about deeper cultural change. If the past two years has taught us anything it’s that flexible working should be normalised for all employees, whether they’ve got kids or not. That means staff being able to arrange hours around school pick-ups, nativity plays and other childcare commitments, without fear of reprisals. Are all work social events drinks after work? Make sure some of them can happen during working hours, so parents don’t have to choose between socialising with colleagues and getting home for their kid’s bath time.

 

And for those without kids, it’s about being able to normalise whatever it is that makes a difference to their work/life balance—a mid-afternoon walk, or leaving early one night for an evening class.

 

The key for employers is to nurture a working environment where this kind of flexibility becomes a firmly established part of the new normal. For many of us, our collective experiences of the pandemic have made working more flexible, more hybrid, and more human. So let’s embrace those changes and make sure we don’t go back to the old ways.

 

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Jen Openshaw is a Software Engineer at BAE Systems Digital Intelligence

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com