Back in July 2014, I posted a visualisation of university place acceptances by gender and subject. Back then, there were terrible imbalances in the usual STEM disciplines (too many men, too few women), but a correlating imbalance in nursing, languages and education (too many women, too few men).
I thought it would be worth running the data again with last year’s figures. Perhaps unsurprisingly little has changed, although there is a very small indication that the balance may be moving in the right direction for Computer Science (12% female applicants in 2013, vs 14% in 2015).
There is, rightly, a strong call to celebrate Women in Technology, but we have to acknowledge that the problem runs deeper than executive selection. There’s a similarity between the stats for university applications and executive positions – cio.co.uk reported that 13% of the CIO 100 were female in 2015 – that demands more investigation. Do CIOs and CTOs even study Computer Science degrees? Is it as simple as a limited graduate hiring pool being reflected at senior selection? It’s certainly not clear from this data. Regardless, the pool to choose from is too firmly stocked with XYs.
What is clear is that we must celebrate the obvious successes (the number of female CIOs in the CIO 100 has increased from 5% in 2012 and 2013, to 7% in 2014 to last year’s 13%). Christina Scott, a regular placement in UK Top 50 CIO lists (and Mech Eng graduate) has moved from her position at the FT to take the top tech spot at News UK. Her replacement at the FT continues the tradition, with Cait O’Riordan (BA in Philosophy) taking the reins. It’s important that the next generation – those young women who have yet to choose a STEM undergraduate degree, understand the amazing opportunities that exist for them in tech.
But this isn’t just idle reportage – I’d like to ask anyone reading this to try and turn the tide. If you know young women or girls that could be encouraged to pursue an academic path in STEM courses or hobbies, now is an amazing time to do so – from Goldiblox to Coursera Machine Learning courses. Add to that the creative opportunities in Data Science, Design and UX which all benefit from Social Science backgrounds, or the pure digital joy of coding and true Computer Science, we need to shout more about the broad appeal of our disciplines. If you have the ability, reach out to schools and colleges, support initiatives like Codebar or even start your own apprentice schemes to help widen the net to attract the most diverse talent. You won’t be disappointed, not least because research suggests that women (on Github) write better code than men.
If you’re doing something to encourage more equality and diversity in your teams, please do let me know. It would be amazing to compare notes.
P.S. Lest we forget, we should also be encouraging boys and young men to follow their hearts into languages, arts and nursing. The gender imbalance works both ways.