Gender diversity is becoming more and more crucial within technology, with organisations continuing to strive to attract and retain their female talent. Many initiatives have been launched across the UK to achieve gender equality – including the City of London Corporation who launched a taskforce in April this year to tackle the lack of women in digital roles after data revealed that less than 25% of women work in AI and data science.
Our new Women in Tech 2024 report helps break down what female candidates are thinking, and what’s making them tick. In this blog, we’ve highlighted some of our key findings so organisations can utilise our research to learn how to nurture their female talent and attract new talent.
The tech working environment
In our report, we asked women in tech a variety of questions about their current working environment. One key finding was that 34% of women rated their current work environment as highly inclusive and supportive Most respondents, however, answered ‘Good’ – the second highest rating – for their current work environment. This suggests that the majority of women in tech believe there is room for improvement in terms of inclusivity and support in the workplace.
When it comes to equal opportunities, nearly half of our female respondents felt they mostly had access to the same career advancements as their male counterparts. Only a quarter of women we surveyed feel as though they always have equal access to career opportunities. Overall, a third of our participants felt they occasionally, rarely or never had access to the same opportunities as men. For organisations striving for equality, this point should drive home. Our research found that most women in tech do not feel they are always able to advance in the same way their male colleagues do, and action can be taken to make workplaces more inclusive.
Similarly, 41% of women believe their company’s inclusion policies are only ‘somewhat’ effective, as opposed to very effective. Surprisingly, 20% of women we surveyed were neutral on the matter, and 10% believe the policies are ineffective. Although a total of 68% of women believe their company’s policies are very or somewhat effective, the remaining 32% suggests that organisations can do much more to ensure their policies represent everyone and are actioned appropriately.
Career aspirations for women in technology
The second half of our report asks women their motivations for entering technology, the challenges they have face in the industry and their thoughts on the future for women in technology. An overwhelming 48% of women said that a personal interest in tech motivated them to enter a career in the industry and only 20% said that the high earning potential was a main motivator. Earlier in the year, we performed a survey for all candidates in tech which found that men were more interested in money – a fact that is re-enforced in the Women in Tech survey as salary appears low for women’s motivations to join the tech sector. Furthermore, only 6% of women in tech were influenced by role models or mentors when entering a career in technology. However, with many organisations creating programmes to address the under-representation of women in tech, such as the UK government’s Women in Tech initiative, this figure is sure to increase over the coming years.
Interestingly, almost half of women said that the biggest challenge they had faced as a woman in the tech industry was work/life balance. This aligns with our previous What Tech Candidates Want 2024 survey which highlighted that one of the key benefits for women working in tech is flexible working. Over a quarter of the women we surveyed have faced challenges of gender bias and discrimination, with a similar number facing pay disparity. This should spotlight how crucial equality in all aspects of the workplace is to organisations.
One of the more positive results in the survey was that 87% of women in technology feel confident with their role competency, with only 1% of women stating they were very unconfident and 10% remaining neutral on the matter. It is excellent that, despite the challenges mentioned and women feeling somewhat underrepresented within technology, they still believe they are highly competent within their roles, with the majority aiming to continue to specialise over the next few years.
This blog highlighted several key points from our Women in Tech 2024 survey – to download the full report, click here. We also have a variety of other candidate sentiment focused reports that can be found on our website, with additional insights available on our LinkedIn.
