08/03/23

International Women’s Day in a digital world

This International Women’s Day, people across the world are taking another step towards a gender-equal society.

International Women’s Day (IWD) aims to celebrate women’s achievements, raise awareness about discrimination and take action to drive gender parity – encouraging people to #EmbraceEquity 

DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality

The theme is DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality – a theme that resonates with us in the IT industry as so many women are involved in the innovation and technical changes of the IT world.

UN Women and the United Nations have released a number of statistics about women in technology:

  • Women make up only 22 per cent of artificial intelligence workers globally.
  • A global analysis of 133 AI systems across industries found that more than 44 per cent demonstrate gender bias.
  • A survey of women journalists from 125 countries found that 73 per cent had suffered online violence in the course of their work.

Women in the digital world

We know that from early computing right through to AI, women have made huge contributions to the digital world and yet a persistent gender gap in digital access can keep women from unlocking technology’s full potential (https://www.unwomen.org/)

In our industry and here in the UK, the stereotype of the male IT geek was always a popular view – but it has been changed by what women in IT are achieving – and how many women in IT we now have.

Our women in tech

Katy Jones is now an EPX Partner Consultant after growing PC Net into a leading IT business in Shropshire over more than 20 years, and she joins seven other women making up our teams.

She said: “When it was revealed that coding was to be taught in schools, I knew that it would have a great impact on the number of people entering the IT industry as a whole.

“And women are learning about IT in school alongside their male counterparts – which means it is no longer being thought of as a man’s world in their eyes, and this is how these stereotypes begin to disappear.

“I don’t think there is a deliberate gender bias in IT – if bosses were interviewing a man and a woman, they would go for the person best for the job; the rare bit would be having the same amount of men and women interviewing for the role!”