This month marked Ada Lovelace Day on October 8th.
This month marked Ada Lovelace Day on October 8th.
Ada Lovelace is widely regarded as the world’s first computer programmer, and as such was a trailblazer of British women in technology.
Despite Lovelace’s ground-breaking work, women are still massively under-represented in the tech space.
Only one in six tech specialists in the UK are women, only one in ten are tech leaders and, worse still, despite significant growth in the number of women working in technology and IT roles, female representation in the technology sector has stalled over the last ten years.
To celebrate Lovelace’s legacy, every day for the next week, we’re going to feature some of our own modern-day trailblazers, who are making their own legacies in their work.
First up is Technical Business Analyst, Ruth Lewis…
Ruth Lewis, Technical Business Analyst
What are your thoughts on the gender imbalance in tech?
It’s becoming less obvious but it’s still there. Women are slowly moving into the industry and being promoted to executive positions, but it’s taking too much time. I really want to get to a time where someone becoming CEO or taking the top job is not national news because of their gender.
What advice would you give to other women wanting to pursue a career in tech?
What are you waiting for? With any industry and any role, everyone needs to get out of the ‘Can women have it all?’ mindset. This question should never be asked of any gender. If you want something, you should go for it.
For the tech industry specifically: Learn. I’ve never stopped learning since starting out in the tech industry whether I’m learning about coding, UI design, User Experience, Web Services, or development methodologies. You have to keep learning to keep up and even more if you want to keep ahead.
In your opinion, how do we get more women in tech?
Initiatives such as Kode with Klossy, Stemettes and CodeFirst:Girls need more backing and widespread coverage but at the same time we need to get out of an ‘us and them’, ‘women versus men’ mentality. It starts with perceptions, if I say to you “imagine a software engineer” what do you see? Do you see a man or a woman? It shouldn’t matter. But the sooner we extinguish any inclination towards just men in IT then the women-lead initiatives become irrelevant, they just become support for anyone wanting to break into the tech industry.
We’re in the situation where media is king and the masses follow what they see, read, hear. If we can promote more women in the tech industry, then it won’t be so outrageous and blogs like this will no longer exist. I’m waiting for the day where I’m no longer something to be blogged about. I’m just a run-of-the-mill person in the tech industry.
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Article by TrakCel Marketing Team - 15 Oct 2019
