Women, Why Did You Get into Tech? Tell the Next Generation ...

[Wendy Tan White]

I've been following the inflammatory and thought provoking debate that was initiated by the 'Women in Tech' panel at Mike Butcher's action packed Geek n Rolla. I was at the live debate but have been enjoying the ensuing conversations even more. Particularly between Zusannah Pasierbinska, Cate Sevilla, Paul Walsh and the incendiary Milo Yiannopoulos.

At the event Milo came across as reactive, initially shooting from the hip when providing an answer for why there aren't more women in tech:

'No! We shouldn't be apologising for having fewer women in a sector in which men naturally perform better [...]'

And then actually proposing a reasonable process for reaching a more considered answer:

'We need a serious, systematic study that looks at the actual reason why women are not in tech, rather than tiptoeing around each other with anecdotal evidence.'

Yes, men and women are different, yes women have children. Our grandmothers and mothers have fought to overcome associated prejudices and eroded many ceilings, no doubt women today will continue to do so. However, this applies to all industries and all women who want to work, so I’d probably eliminate this from the debate.

How do we get more women in tech? As many people have said it comes down to exposure, education and changing media portrayal. If you believed an industry was 'unsexy', 'geeky' and male dominated. Why would you aspire to working there as a young woman.

I'm only a sample of one but all women in tech will have a story explaining what inspired them to work in the industry:

My mum has worked in IT for 30 yrs. She still does at 64. I got a glimpse of how exciting the industry can be and supportive of women's careers even those with kids. My grandfather wouldn’t send my mother to university, there was limited money and it went on sending her brothers. She became a nurse. Ironically a career Milo perceives as female and chosen by women as a preference. My mother did it because it was the career path she was expected to take as a woman and the only thing my grandfather supported. Eventually she did an IT degree with 2 kids,working full time supported by my dad also a 'geek'!

I had an extremely enthusiastic maths/IT teacher at school, who encouraged me to study computer science at uni rather than natural sciences or something deemed more traditional for girls to study. Perhaps it was the one good thing about being at a girls school, we all believed there was nothing we shouldn’t or couldn’t do. My friends still thought I was a little crazy wanting to study computer science, ‘Isn't it dull?’

I've worked in manufacturing, finance and tech businesses and I've personally found the tech industry the most supportive. I've been equally supported by men and women and I love the fast pace, appetite for change and can do attitude of it's communities.

It would be great to hear the stories that inspired other women to get into tech? Let’s get them out there for young women and men to read and change perception! There are 100’s of sexy roles women can take in the tech industry, the supposedly polar roles of developer and PR manager being only two of them.

@wendytanwhite
(Once upon a time developer, analyst, manager, head of marketing, CEO and now entrepreneur and mother) www.moonfruit.com www.gandi.net

[Wendy Tan White]

Girls n Gadgets, more stories from women in tech ...

[Wendy Tan White]

Great blog, One Woman in Tech ... And how to Attract More by Ciara Byrne, software/business developer

[Wendy Tan White]

Louise Brown, software engineer and mother, why I got into computing.

[Wendy Tan White]

Talking of action, I really like Jennie Lees blog on less talk and more action.

Thank you too to Hannah Dee, Deputy Chair of British Computer Society Women's Group for her blog on why she got into tech.

[Wendy Tan White]

Great blog from Liz Benison COO Cap Gemini, why she got into tech and why they're needs to be more women in the industry. Liz was trained at Ford, I have a soft spot for them as they sponsored me to do computer science through university. They're a company that support's young women with real action.

[Gill Hunt]

The part of Milo's argument I object to most is the idea that there a more men in technology because they're better at it! If they're so good at it, how come so many IT projects end in utter failure and waste vast sums of money?

Anyhow - I was lucky to go to an all girls school that had just decided we should do all sciences from day 1 - a slightly revolutionary idea even then - and never came across the idea that girls shouldn't/can't do maths or science until; much later. My brothers said I was rubbish at everything so I just ignored them :-)

Computers were just coming in to mainstream use - we were the first year group not to learn to use slide rules and the first to have easy access to calculators in 6th form years. A very few people did Computing A level at the boys school I'd moved to but they were either too stupid to do 'real' A levels or weird!

I loved Chemistry - found it completely fascinating - and all I wanted was to keep studying it and find out more interesting stuff, so thats what I did, but after 4 years doing increasingly esoteric and specialised research I realised 2 things - first I'm by nature a generalist not a specialist and second the areas of science I was interested in would only lead to work in an academic environment, which by this time I'd had enough of.

I'd had to write an assortment of progams as part of my research and had experience of range of slightly weird and wonderful computers that were used to control experiments in real time so decided to give the computing industry a try. Luckily for me, at that time the industry was recruiting heavily and there were still very few people around with IT or Computing degrees - software houses were keen to take on graduates with science or languages backgrounds as they'd decided these were a good base to build on - and they still are in my opin ion.

Part of the reason I moved to IT was I figured that if IT skills were in such demand it would be relatively easy to combine a career with a family and although starting a family proved a lot harder than finidng a job I have found that my particular basket of skills has meant I've been able to walk that particular tightrope easonably well.

The part of IT I enjoy most is finding out all the amazing and unusual things that people do with IT, I've seen it used to design trains, inspect nuclear reactors, automate warehouses, manage X ray pictures, analyse torpedo trajectories and all kinds of other useful and entertaining things. Plus I get to meet a wide range of people all with different levels of technical and business knowledge and usually find mysefl learning something new every day.

Why on earth wouldn't you want to be involved in something so important and challenging?

[Natasha Friis Saxberg]

Great post Wendy. I attended GeeknRolla and watched how the audience were fired up on the matter. I truly believe we need to expose more role models, so the next generation of women can identify themselves with a career in Tech. Men and women do think differently, and we need that balanced approach in the solutions we create for our end customers.

I took an education within tailoring and design, opened a business at the age of 19, which I was forced to close a few years later. In 1996 I decided to change career, and my criteria were that it had to be a dynamic, creative and wide industry. I sensed that the IT industry could meet my demands, and it most certainly did. I started out as an IT systems engineer, followed by IT Operation management, took a supplementary education within innovation, moved on to web and finally entrepreneurship.

The field of Tech has in every way gone beyond my expectations, with constant challenge and the privilege of working with skilled and passionate people. I can never image running out of ideas or opportunities to follow. It is indeed a fine choice of career.

[Rachel Laycock]

My dad was an engineer and massively encouraged my natural apptitude for maths, often by teaching way beyond what I was taught in school and way better (you can't beat one-to-one learning). He encouraged me to study engineering or IT at uni and I decided that IT was way more interesting because at the time it was the dotcom boom and people were making lots of money (good incentive!). It was also new and changing, which excited me. I never realised 'tech' was so male orientated until I went to uni, where I was one of only two girls in the whole year of IT subjects (100+ students). The other girl is now a teacher, which is a route often taken by the few girls that do study IT subjects. I never had any intention of being a teacher when the industry has so much to offer and as Wendy says it's fast paced and ever changing, which I love. Through out uni many of my female friends would ask me why I was studying IT and was it boring, the first i have answered above and the second...well it wasn't boring and it still isn't. I used to find the idea of what they were studying boring (e.g. HR, biology, teaching etc). Those same friends are now always me asking how facebook, twitter and everything else works! And how they can create sites that they would love. I can't count the amount of times my friends ring me with ideas that they have had! Men are different from women, but some women do have a natural apptitude for IT subjects, which unfortunately when I grew up wasn't encouraged at shcool and that is what I think should change. Thankfully I was lucky enough to be encouraged at home and now I am a happy web developer :)

[Wendy Tan White]

Great story, Zuzanna. Love what you're doing in tech with SS and Huddle. I have a good girlfriend who's a RAF helicopter pilot, also a mum. My husband foolishly bet her when they were 14 that if she made it as a pilot he'd buy her a helicopter. He's still saving up his pennnies!

[Zuzanna]

Wendy, absolutely love your story! When I was 14, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. But they did not accept women to the 'fighter' high school (Poland had not been a part of NATO at that time = no gender equality in the navy). That was probably the first time I was stopped from doing something I really believed in, because I was a woman. Two years later, I started flying gliders and rocked at it :) I got into tech and the interwebs at university, my thesis was on measuring the impact of PR on the internet. That was a long time ago, I really didn't know what I was talking about. I worked for more than 50 technology companies - software, hardware, electronics, engineering, web app. I find things like digital valves and chips fascinating. Technology is an amazing industry and I know it'd be even more amazing if we got more women into it.