The lack of female representation in the UK’s technology sector is a “sad reality”, according to Amali de Alwis, CEO of Code First: Girls, a social enterprise that has delivered free coding training to more than 6,000 women.

de Alwis’ comments regarding the lack of females in the technology sector came following her investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace, where she received an MBE  from the Princess Royal for services to diversity in technology.

She said: “There’s no such thing as a non-tech business these days; we carry around super computers in our pockets. But the sad reality is we do not have a lot of women.

“We are thinking about how do we stay competitive? How do we build companies and amazing things that add to society? And women are not part of that story. We want to support women to get out there and get involved.”

Related: Social Enterprise Overtakes Universities in Teaching Women to Code

de Alwis, who is a board member of Ada, the National College for Digital Skills, added: “The narrative around why we need greater diversity in our workforce – surely the products that are made for everyone, should be built by everyone?

“Companies spend millions of pounds each year trying to understand their customers, trying to create products and services which align with how people need things, and one of the best ways to do that is have a diverse range of people involved in the creation of those products.

“Making a change is hard. It will take time, and it will take effort. It’s about asking how do we want to see the world in the future, and working towards that goal.”

To-date, Code First: Girls has delivered £4.2 million in free coding to women in the UK, and it aims to teach 20,000 women to code by 2020. Last year, figures from UCAS revealed that more women were being taught to code by the social enterprise than were enrolled in computer science in 2017.