Interesting here Sadiq as tech roles more often than not require a background in science, maths and technology. These subjects in schools and universities are still very male-dominated. I would advise businesses not be narrow-minded when assessing people’s experience.
For example, if you look at Yahoo and its employee's background and education of the women working within its audience solutions division, whilst some came from an obvious route such as maths there are also people that studied humanities and other more creative subjects.
Dora Michail, Yahoo’s senior director of audience solutions EMEA, for example studied English Literature but went into advertising and followed the technical piece as it was the part she found the most interesting. She has an analytical mind and naturally inquisitive. She has the less common ability to combine analytical and creativity which is key when it comes to advertising. This also applies to digital marketing roles.
Tamara Heber-Percy at Mr & Mrs Smith leads the tech strategy including heading up an in-house dev team, whilst her joint co-founder James Lohan drives the "sexy" brand strategy.
In Expedia, I was last year in dialogue with with Elizabeth Eastaugh who is their Director Technology - Offer Services, Checkout. She also drives their diversity strategy.
So I think in the world of digital travel, we are definitely making waves.
Research has revealed that London's tech scene offers the greatest opportunities for British women in tech, with 40% of the entire country's female tech workforce employed in the capital. But although London is leading the equality charge, there is much more work to be done. One in 10 tech teams in London have no female employees and more than half of the 3700 professionals surveyed by recruiter Mortimer Spinks say that less than 15% of their teams are women. These findings echoed figures recently released by Tech London Advocates which found that 18% of London tech companies had no women at board level. This comes despite a third of London tech companies saying they have formal initiatives in place to recruit more women to the workforce, compared to less than a quarter in the rest of the country.