Bloomberg’s Christine Flounders considers the need to address the lack of women entering the STEM workforce.
Last week marked the 40th anniversary since the Sex Discrimination Act was passed in the UK and in most industries significant progress has been achieved.
Today there are more women in the workplace and, according to the Davies Review, more women on FTSE 350 boards than ever before.
However, when it comes to women in technology, progress remains slow.
STEM workforce
Recent figures from the WISE Campaign show just 14% of women make up our Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workforce.
The WISE Campaign’s mission is to attract 1 million more women into the UK STEM workforce which would mean 30% of all STEM workers would be female. Achieving this proportion is not simply a nod to equality. If our economy is to achieve long-term success, we must proactively address diversity in our STEM workforce.
In my 15 years in the industry, I have seen first-hand how teams which approach problems from different angles and with diverse perspectives produce better products which help us to achieve our business goals.
At Bloomberg, we are many things. We are a financial information company with 325,000 subscribers and a media company with 2,500 reporters and broadcast journalists. But, at our core, we are also a large technology company. In London alone, we have a buzzing community of over 550 software developers working in our research and development team, creating products and owning services that power financial markets around the world.
To compete in today’s global markets, we cannot just be gender diverse. We must be internationally and culturally diverse too. This is why in hiring for our London-based developers, we look at candidates from Europe and beyond, to ensure we’re hiring the best talent and building a diverse team in the process.
But when it comes to seeking female talent, we face similar challenges to the rest of the industry in hiring for technology or engineering roles. While girls outperform males in the majority of STEM categories at GCSE level, the number of girls selecting STEM A-levels and subsequently STEM university courses declines massively compared to boys.
STEM industries are missing out on a lot of smart women.
Initiatives
This is why we’re supporting industry-spanning initiatives to address the lack of women studying STEM. We are partnering with some fantastic organisations who share the WISE mission of promoting diversity in technical fields from classroom to boardroom. Examples include our support of the Teach First STEM Excellence programme and Innovation Unit, TeenTech festivals, and Code Club which has 3,206 active clubs in the UK and a circa 40% ratio of female students nationally.
We also run an internal graduate training programme which puts graduates from non-computing disciplines through a software development boot camp for 4 months.
While programmes run by STEM industries and non-profits can instigate significant change, these initiatives must be backed by public policy to accelerate progress. Many other European countries do not suffer the same gender segregation in STEM academics and industries.
Perhaps we have things to learn about how to teach STEM subjects and encourage our young women into STEM fields.
We need to inspire women to study STEM subjects and pursue fulfilling careers in STEM industries, which benefits not only themselves, but also business and ultimately our economy. In fact, a recent European Commission report warned that Europe as a whole, will face a whopping 800,000 shortfall in skilled ICT workers by 2020.
We cannot afford to wait another forty years.
Christine Flounders is research and development manager, London, at Bloomberg