How can the tech sector attract more women?

LinkedIn, newspapers, online job boards; all are inundated with tech talent vacancies. Whether it’s front-end developers or data analysts, there’s a glaring shortage across the industry. On average, there are about 50,000 to 90,000 unfilled vacancies. Places that, as the IT corner itself has come to realize, cannot possibly be filled with the current supply of developers, for example.

The key to solving the shortfalls may lie in a more diverse policy. Worldwide, the number of women in the IT sector is about 26 percent, in the Netherlands 18 percent – ​​the lowest percentage in all of Europe. This is partly due to the image of the industry: for example, the idea that IT is ‘boring’, seems to have little immediately visible impact or is only suitable for nerds who spend their entire lives in a basement surrounded by computers.

But the sector’s unfriendliness to women also plays a role, say women who do work in it. Such as Juliëtte van der Laarse, who works for a large insurance company: “There are still male IT people who do not take you for granted as a woman, for example by constantly testing you on your technical know-how.”

Chantal Schinkels is a speaker and advisor in the field of tech and wrote the book The IT girl, about the how and why of the imbalance in this sector. According to her, it is essential that there is a more balanced distribution of men and women: “Technical innovations have a major impact on our society. If these are only devised by men, they will result in products that are particularly suitable for men. Think of facial recognition, which works better on men’s faces than on women’s.”

Yet women are not welcomed with open arms in the tech world: “The sector does not welcome women enough. For example, many companies still have a macho atmosphere. And from research from the University of Chicago, among others, shows that a culture change only occurs in 30 percent of a minority in a team. With the 18 percent of women in Dutch IT, we are not yet there.”

Once trained in tech, women drop out above average. From research of VHTO, the national expertise center for gender diversity in science, technology and ICT, found that only 27 percent of women with a technical education end up in a similar profession. This is 57 percent for men. There are several reasons for this. The bar for women is higher; men’s performance is still judged better. In addition, it is more difficult to develop self-confidence if you are in the minority and have to deal with negative connotations around women and technology. In addition, many employers in the tech sector are inflexible around things like flexible hours. And that affects women, who spend more time with the family or, for example, on informal care, more than men.

If you want to build a more diverse team as an organization in the tech industry, then these preconditions are an important place to start. Schinkels: “Look with an open mind at how welcoming the company culture really is. Are people open to flexible working hours and hybrid jobs, which are easier to combine with care tasks? Are the needs and wishes of female employees also taken into account? For example, ask women who already work there how they experience this and ask about it in exit interviews with departing employees.”

Lateral entrants

To get more women to work in the tech sector, new talent must first be trained. There are various ‘tech boot camps’ and training institutes that focus on lateral entrants. One of these is TechMeUp, a training fund that provides student loans to people who want to work in the sector but cannot afford to do so without a contribution towards the costs. Many of them are women. After an extensive application procedure, the most motivated students are supported and guided in their education, about 150 students per year. The money for this (an average loan of 4,500 euros) is collected from IT companies themselves, municipalities and private investors.

Managing director Nikky Hofland: “The step to get retrained is a big one. Get ready to do such a time-consuming and expensive study alongside your current job and perhaps a family life. We hope to make that barrier a little less big.”

She would like to see the preparation of women for a job as a developer, or computer programmer, started earlier. “This can be done as a very young girl, by giving tech toys such as Coko the Robot Crocodile as a gift instead of a Frozen backpack, for example. But also when they are a bit older, through IT education from primary school, so that children and parents get used to the idea of ​​tech as a career option for women. They are now often discouraged by friends and family, migrant women especially. One of our students related that her father said, ‘You either become a doctor, a lawyer or a failure.’ Go against that as a seventeen year old.”

Comfort zone

The fact that heterogeneous teams lead to more successful companies and better functioning teams has been demonstrated several times, including in leading research Why diversity matters from McKinsey (2015). But there are still companies that resist. Wendy Broersen helps organizations through Superpeople Company to make their business more diverse and inclusive. For example, by means of a different way of assessing applicants. “In general, women underestimate their skills, they boast less about themselves in their CV or cover letter than men. To find out what they can do, it is therefore advisable to invite her for an interview if you are in doubt about a female candidate. Who knows what kind of talent you will discover.”

It is also important during the selection process to consider how objective you really are. “We tend to look for our counterparts. But is that person in front of you really the best person for the job? Or do you recognize yourself in it the most? If you want to hire more diversely, it is essential to step out of that comfort zone.”

It is then important to retain the women who have been hired. Broersen: “If the majority of the employees are men and women are added, involve them in the organisation: that is inclusion. From a women’s toilet for which they do not have to walk five flights of stairs to thinking about the details of a company outing. We tend to think in grand gestures, but the attractiveness of an organization lies precisely in the details.”

Rose Steigenga (32)
works as a frontend developer at De Voorhoede, a company that makes apps and websites

“At the age of nine I already wrote a chatbot through a game, a kind of computer that you could talk to. Yet it did not come from that technical study. When you’re young, you watch what your friends do. I chose art history and worked as a decorator, among other things. Programming kept running through my head, but the idea that I would have to struggle into a man’s world bothered me. I also had all kinds of prejudices, that only silent types work in IT, for example.

“At one event I saw in one fell swoop that this made no sense. After that I dared to go for it, first through YouTube videos, later through programming school Codam. I love that you can do so many fun things with programming skills. Recently I was in the Efteling and I saw all those clichéd fairy tales. Then I thought: why not make an app in which you automatically make fairy tales more inclusive by, for example, adjusting the pronouns? I can do that sort of thing now.

If you want more women, you have to make them feel welcome

“To get more female colleagues, role models are important. That’s why I’m speaking for the first time soon, during The Girl Code meetup. I think it’s exciting, but also important to show what I’ve been through, and pass those lessons on to other women in the sector. Diversity and inclusion is more than ticking a few boxes. It is also about indicating that women can work from home if they suffer from menstrual complaints, or have a pumping room at the office, and ensure that everyone within the organization is aware of this. If you want more women, you have to make them feel welcome.”

Juliette van der Laarse (31)
works as an ‘IT workforce specialist’ at a large insurance company

“I have been a developer, owned my own IT company and worked in the games industry. Now I determine the strategy that other developers implement. Thanks to my family, I never doubted that women belong in IT. For example, I went with my uncle to the flower auction in Aalsmeer, where he worked as an IT specialist. When I was 12, Party Peeps was popular, a kind of blog. You could adjust all kinds of things there behind the scenes, if you knew how. I didn’t even realize this was programming. My uncle gave me IT literature and gave me a Dreamweaver license, which allows you to build websites yourself.

Women are indispensable in this profession

“Later I had a teacher who acted as a second mentor: he taught me programming. I was good at it, but also found IT a bit boring. The fashion world seemed grander and more compelling to me. My father allowed me to enroll in a fashion course if I first visited open days of technical courses. He was so convinced that I would like it. And when I discovered game development, he turned out to be right.

“Women are indispensable in this profession, precisely because they have different experiences and references. Yet I also notice around me that there are unfortunately still men in IT who do not take you for granted as a woman, or who, for example, constantly test you on your technical know-how.

“However, I think there is a change going on. You see more and more female IT influencers on Instagram, writing a piece of code while drinking a matcha latte, for example. As a result, development feels more mundane, less intimidating.”

Begum Eryildiz (38)
works as a fullstack developer at Fietslabyrint

“I studied mathematics and economics in Turkey. I’ve always been interested in programming, but when I went to apply for a job, I only got a foot in the door in the somewhat ‘softer’ positions, such as project manager. I ended up at a large Turkish bank, I pushed aside my interest in development. But after a while I ran into my limits. I was constantly arranging all kinds of things and putting others to work, while I wanted to build things myself.

“My husband is a developer and was offered a job in the Netherlands. We hesitated, until I discovered that the Netherlands has many opportunities to become a developer via a side road. Once here I took a boot camp and after that I pretty much had the jobs to choose from. Employers are eager for developers and this is the time to look for female employees.

We women are generally better at details

“We really have something to add to a team, bring a different perspective and are generally better at detail. In my opinion, the solution for the limited number of women lies not so much in the recruitment corner, but in the deeper social and educational system. There is currently too little flexibility. The many opportunities to join as a lateral entrant are an important part of this, some boot camps even give a discount if you are a woman. Now we have to get rid of the cliché image people have of developers. We are not all nerdy men with glasses without friends, as you often see in films.”