As part of International Women’s Day, two events are being held today to help young women into careers in the tech industry.

The events from Glasgow-based charity SmartSTEMs will be delivered in cooperation with Scotland Women in Tech (SWiT).

With Scotland needing to add around 13,000 new people to its tech sector every year, engaging with underrepresented groups is vital to expanding the talent pool.

While the number of women working in the tech industry has increased since 2017, only 24% of tech jobs in Scotland are held by women. Furthermore, less than 20% of those studying tech subjects at school, college, university, and apprenticeship are females.

With a lack of women in the workforce and the tech pipeline building their careers, the gender disparity represents a huge loss of talent to the industry.

DIGIT spoke with SWiT board member Ketty Lawrence, who is also Digital Skills and Diversity Project Manager at Skills Development Scotland, and SmartSTEMs Programme Manager Karen Murray to learn more about the importance of getting women into the tech skills pipeline early.

Collaborating

SmartSTEMs helps young people aged 10-14 into Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics careers. A large part of its work involves staging events at schools, helping them learn about potential STEM career opportunities.

The charity focuses on groups that typically face barriers to entering tech careers – for example due to gender, social exclusion, financial hardship, deprivation and disengagement.

“For us, it’s all about equity of opportunity for young people,” Murray says.

Meanwhile, SWiT has helped address the gender disparity facing the Scottish tech industry since 2008. The two organisations have worked together previously on events, taking advantage of one another’s expertise and networks to provide opportunities for school children.

“Collaboration on tackling the technology gender gap is absolutely crucial,” Lawrence says. “No single organisation is going to be able to solve this problem by themselves.”

Engagement

As part of International Women’s Day, SmartSTEMs and SWiT will run two events on March 8th at St Clare’s Primary School and Barrhead High School in East Renfrewshire.

Exposing children to the opportunities afforded by a STEM career early is vital to helping women into the tech pipeline and starting their careers.

“Gender stereotypes tend to set in towards the end of primary school and particularly when they start to transition to secondary,” Lawrence notes.

“It’s important to reach them as early as possible because the more young people we can bring in at that stage, then the less likely they are to face some of the other barriers as they go through the pipeline.”

Central to SmartSTEMs’ events are presentations from figures from the Scottish tech scene. The two on International Women’s Day will feature talks from Project Manager at Virgin Money UK Narissa Cooney and Software Engineering Graduate Apprentice at VeryConnect Kristina Pavlou.

“We’re really lucky to have lots of fantastic role models and volunteers that will get involved and help support these young people,” Murray says.

In addition, the events feature different activities, including a 20-minute Q&A with the speaker, practical challenges, and discussion topics for the pupils to engage with.

“Everyone learns differently,” Murray notes. “We have some pupils that get really involved in the building aspect of an activity, and then other pupils prefer a paper-based activity.”

With a focus on gender equity, the events are not just aimed at women.

“We have female speakers because we want to empower the young women in the class, given it is International Women’s Day,” Murray says. “But it’s also important for boys to hear from young female role models in STEM as well. That way, as they get older, they go on and they empower young women as well.”

“It’s just as important for boys to realise that women can work in technology as it is for girls,” Lawrence adds.

Building Diversity

While progress has been made in addressing the gender gap in tech in recent years, there are still several obstacles facing women that need to be addressed. These include a lack of awareness of available tech careers and pathways, and misperceptions about tech jobs and stereotypes hampering women’s ambitions.

Visibility is a big remedy to some of these – hence the importance of presentations from women in SmartSTEMs’ events.

“You’ve got to see to be it,” Murray explains.

“Role models are absolutely crucial to combat all of those barriers,” Lawrence adds. “We need role models not just to normalise women in technology, but also for those role models to help show the wide range of technology, careers and jobs.”

As such, it is important to present young people with a variety of role models – in different positions, and with different skills.

“Young people might not aspire to be the CTO or the CEO of a tech company, so it’s about showing them somebody they can more easily relate to, who’s not too far away from them in the pipeline,” Lawrence notes.

“Tech jobs are not just techie jobs in tech sector organisations. Part of featuring those role models is to help young people understand that tech jobs are everywhere. They are jobs that you probably haven’t thought about.

“That’s why events like SmartSTEMs, where people can actually meet role models, talk to them, discuss with them, find out what they do, and actually take part in hands-on activities, can be most powerful.”

She adds: “If you ask any technology employer what the most important skills are to work in technology, they won’t tell you the tech skills, they’ll tell you things like teamwork, problem solving and critical thinking.”

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Networks and support are hugely important. Just as SmartSTEMs and SWiT provide expertise to each other, they also provide support to women and other underrepresented groups starting their tech careers.

“There’s still a lot of schools in areas of deprivation where young people don’t think they can be involved in technology,” Murray says. “So, it’s already breaking barriers to say ‘no, you can’.

“They might not have that network at school or at home, so it’s about providing them with network of support.”

Lawrence adds: “It’s important for industry to play a part. However, it can also be difficult for industry to engage with schools directly.

“Having grass roots quality initiatives like SmartSTEMs are important to help support industry to be able to play a part in tackling the gender gap and inspiring young people.”

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