This International Women’s Day, it sure seems like women in tech are having their moment.

Since 2017, the amount of women in the tech industry in Scotland has increased by 6%. 

The UN is celebrating International Women’s Day with a new gender equality initiative by way of DigitALL: Innovation and Technology.

In the UK, women now make up 40% of boards in the top 305 companies. 

Initiatives supporting women entering the tech workforce have popped up across the nation, with Scotland Women in Tech launching a Women Do Cyber programme, Women Enterprise Scotland producing reports on progress, and DressCode making coding more accessible to young women and girls in school.

“I’ve been delighted to see the wider tech ecosystem work together to encourage more women into tech roles,” said Sarah McLaughlin, VP of Marketing at Krucial and Chair of Scotland’s Gender Diversity Workstream. 

“The work of Scotland Women in Technology, who along with Glasgow Caledonian University run the Women Do Cyber programme, and initiatives from Codebase including Digital Skills 4 Girls, which is a monthly workshop for girls interested in learning or developing new skills – are positive changes which will lead to great results in the future,” she added.

Women Enterprise Scotland has also added to the improvements in the industry, as WES ambassador and CEO of Appointedd, Leah Hutcheon explained: “I really admire the work of the organisation, and I think it’s really important work. I saw an opportunity to become part of that infrastructure that supports women in the early stages of starting a business. It was wanting to be able to give something back and to be able to say thank you for the support I’ve had that made me be an ambassador.”

Scotland has also provided opportunities that were simply not available elsewhere. Rashmi Mantri was able to get an education in software development in Scotland after immigrating from India, where educational opportunities were sparse in her area, especially for women. Her hard work enabled her to launch her own company, British Youth International College, to teach school children maths, english, and even coding. 

“I can say that the environment has certainly changed…” Mantri reflected. 

“It’s easy to think it’s gotten better…” Hutcheon stipulated.

“Things are far better now than they were even a decade ago…” McLaughlin said. 

See? Things are going great! Happy International Women’s Day! 

“But Not to that Extent”

“I can say that the environment has certainly changed, but not to that extent,” Mantri said. 

It would appear statistics are on Mantri’s side. 

Recently, Pathways: A new approach for women in entrepreneurship was published by the Scottish Government, authored by Ana Stewart and Mark Logan, often referred to as “The Stewart Report.” 

The report is a stark, unflinching review of the Scottish entrepreneurial ecosystem.

In many ways, the report is simply a reaffirmation of the mundanely obvious: women face barriers to entering business. As they are often primary caregivers, traditional networking systems are often not open to women, and education in Scotland is often not geared toward entrepreneurship, which more greatly affects women. 

The most important part of the Stewart Report was its devastating honesty: it quite blankly referred to society as sexist (which for many of us, is a known reality). 

“Our society has a degree of sexism embedded within it, and these prejudices are transferred from generation to generation,” the report said in its executive summary, detailing the sexism underlying the lack of women in entrepreneurship. 

Entering education and the workforce in the UK as a woman was a major barrier. 

Mantri detailed her many visits to different universities, taking any classes she could until she was finally accepted to study. She was one of three female students in her class.

“After completion, getting the job is very difficult for a woman,” she said. “IT is a more male-dominated field.”

“Not only in the technical field,” she went on to say. “Everywhere I felt that.” 

Even though her parents were more supportive, “being a girl was the biggest thing I faced,” she said. 

In Scotland, only 23% of the tech workforce is made up of women, according to ScotlandIS.

According to the Stewart Report, only 1 in 5 businesses are women-led, and women-led start-ups only receive 2% of funding from VCs. 

In Mantri’s own coding courses, about 95% of the students are boys. 

“…It isn’t an equal playing field”

“It’s easy to think it’s gotten better, and I think it came through Ana Stewart’s report, but sometimes some people in really influential positions, people who are doing a lot of great work in the ecosystem have come to believe it is an equal playing field,” Leah Hutcheon said. 

“But you look at those stats, and really, it isn’t an equal playing field, and I think the report has really opened my eyes to how unequal it is unfortunately.”

The Stewart Report came as a bit of a surprise to Hutcheon, who founded Appointedd – an appointment software company – about ten years ago after leaving the magazine industry. 

“I do feel really comfortable in [the tech] ecosystem,” she said, “But it reminds me: I feel comfortable because I’ve been in this ecosystem for 10 years now.” 

A 5% increase is not something to celebrate when women are still only 23% of the tech workforce. The bar cannot remain so low as to applaud any tiny step toward progress. 

The Stewart report may be important because it does make people reflect – are your initiatives doing enough? Is diversity actually turning into inclusion? and, of course, engendering reflection on one’s own experiences as well. 

“You get so used to the fighting,” Hutcheon said regarding entrepreneurship, “so you don’t know if it’s harder because you’re a woman or whether it’s just down to your business.” 

Initiatives are there, companies seem to be saying all the right things, yet women are still left behind as tech excels. 

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“I’m determined to continue making a difference”

“Things are far better now than they were even a decade ago,” Sarah McLaughlin said.

She added:“But as a mum to four beautiful daughters, I’m determined to continue making a difference to help ensure that they enter a much fairer, more inclusive workplace, and know they can achieve anything they set out to do in life.”

If all of these initiatives exist, on the local, national, and international level, are women really still struggling to enter the tech workforce?

“We know that nearly one in four women are quitting tech roles in Scotland due to difficulty achieving promotion or being taken seriously by investors,” McLaughlin said. 

Clearly, there seems to be a disconnect between these massive gender initiatives and the work environment. 

“Awareness is not enough – gender-based exclusion has many causes,” McLaughlin said. 

She added: “Commitment, action and accountability is needed, from education, organisational bodies and industry to get to the root causes and put support in place. 

“Time-bound targets need to be activated; promotion of grant schemes; award programmes and role models need to be profiled; and awareness campaigns that get to the root causes in addressing biases and stereotypes need to strike a chord.”

When those seeking tech careers say across the board, flexible working is of primary importance, many different obstacles often quoted for women would theoretically be removed. 

Barriers such as being primary carers, inter-office networking being more male oriented, and even just being in a room full of men would be much less problematic with remote and hybrid working models, which are becoming the norm across the tech tech landscape. 

“We need to ensure that diversity and inclusion in the workplace is not a tick box, nor just a corporate badge on a website,” McLaughlin said. 

Further, these continuing issues are stopping progress overall. If we cannot finally address the glaring gender gap in tech, then it’s more difficult to address intersectionality, barriers for other marginalised groups, and tackling unconscious bias. 

“There is a huge opportunity to draw a line in the sand, remove stigma, and write the next chapter of ‘today’s inclusive workplace’,” McLaughlin said. “Together we can collectively help ignite change for current and future generations.”