Women in Tech

I attended the Women in Tech media futures events held on the university campus on Tuesday 12th November. There was a panel of 6 women with roles in PR, content, telecommunications, UX designer, project management. I took notes from the panel and discussion talk.

https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/media/events/event/1670/media-futures-women-in-tech

Uni of Leeds media futures webpage

·     Male-dominated in the workplace, “not enough women in our company”

·     Technology was so out of my league and seen as a boys club

·     Every company has a certain element of tech 

·     1 panel member works with 6 men as is the only engineer

·     Women can approach the task with fresh pairs of eyes and sometimes men get consumed in the programming 

·     Not many women in health and safety 

·     PR more female-dominated but the higher up you get it tends to be men 

·     Men can find it easier to apply for bigger roles, women feel more intimidated and have less confidence 

·     No senior women at 1 panel members company, she wanted to be that one to inspire other women 

·     Gender does play a part and women are far less confident in own ability

·     1 panel member has an all-female team and subconscious bias  

·     Scope for change but it is an upwards battle

What could the industry do to get more women into tech? 

·     More public speaking events 

·     3% of all creative directors are women - need to support women to access higher up roles

·     Networking events 

·     Struggle because of children and less accommodating for women - be more accommodating 

·     ‘Thrive’ daily newsletter on women in tech (https://thriveglobal.com/tags/women-in-tech/)

·     Practice on social media networking 

·     More presentations in School on technology (raising visibility and awareness) 

What did you wish you knew before you got into tech?

·     How to design website 

·     Different branches of marketing 

·     Don’t feel pressure to immediately understand everything 

·     No question is a stupid question 

·     More programming and languages (if she would have known basic information it would have been helpful) 

What are your tips to get into the industry? 

·     Strong character 

·     Willing to learn 

·     Transferable skills 

·     Email companies you wanna work for 

·     Express your personality 

·     Do your research 

After the talk, a networking event followed and I had the chance to ask questions about my project and share my project idea. This event was very useful for my project, learning more about the women in tech and the audience I want to target. It also showed that there is a need for my project and what I am trying to focus on is something that these women were trying to raise awareness of the gender gap and inspiring more women to get into tech.