Articles about Women In Tech

Women make up only 11 percent of the cyber security workforce according to the latest report from the Center for Cyber Safety and Education -- formerly the (ISC)² Foundation -- and the Executive Women's Forum (EWF).

The survey of more than 19,000 participants around the world finds that women have higher levels of education than men, with 51 percent holding a master’s degree or higher, compared to 45 percent of men.

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For many years forward thinking companies across the UK have been attempting to raise the numbers of women working in the IT professions. They make slow progress, and some might even say "no progress", since we know that around 20 percent of the IT workforce was female at the turn of the century and the number now languishes at about 17 percent. For those involved in the work to attract and retain women in the technical professions, the question arises: "What would the number be if we weren’t already taking action?"

When you look at it, the amount of activity to support the attraction and retention of women to the professions is astounding. It follows the lifecycle of girls and women. Many big organizations offer summer camps for girls (e.g. Apple, IBM, the bigger banks) to show them how exciting the digital world can be. Thousands of people are engaged in programs to talk to girls in schools about the technical professions as a career option.

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Diversity is a tricky conversation. While everyone should have a fair chance at a job despite skin color, disability, gender, or sexual orientation, you can't force a certain group to enter an industry. In other words, percentages in a diversity report don't really tell the whole story.

The best approach to diversity is simply fostering opportunities for those that want it. Scholarships are a great option as it simply opens a door -- the recipient must walk through it. Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been supporting such a thing -- the Scholarship for Women Studying Information Security -- and today, it announces the number of 2016 recipients.

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The tech industry is well aware of the positive impact of diversity on business performance -- and of how its insidious misogyny is directly at-odds with diversity goals. In spite of this evidence, instances of sexism in tech are sometimes -- nay, often -- dismissed as a "women’s issue" to be addressed and solved by women, rather than by the men who overwhelmingly comprise the industry’s workforce and executive positions.

But it isn’t a "women’s issue" if solving it benefits all of us. And we’ve seen time and time again that fostering inclusive and diverse workplaces is not just a social issue relevant to minorities and their allies, but a business concern relevant to all who would reap the benefits of seeing their startup succeed, their web business pivot successfully, or their enterprise company increase revenue.

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We reported last month that women only make up 10 percent of the IT security workforce and there's similar under representation across the tech sector.

To address this, freelance developer network Toptal is announcing a scholarship scheme to support and empower women aspiring to become professional software engineers.

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New research carried out by non-profit certification organization (ISC)² and technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton highlights a lack of gender equality in IT security roles.

Based on a survey of almost 14,000 global professionals, the report looks at the differences between men and women in the industry, the current and future outlook for women in the information security field and the unique skills women possess to fill information security positions today and in the future.

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Workforce diversity is something that every company wants to be seen to be getting right. At the moment -- particularly in the world of technology -- they're failing spectacularly. As in so many walks of life, it's a world dominated by white, middleclass men, and it's a problem that gets worse the further up the hierarchy you look. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft. They all have one thing in common: a desire to be seen as the most welcoming, ethnically and sexually diverse, forward-thinking companies out there.

It's great PR, and now Twitter is trying to step up its game. News of a commitment to making the Twitter workforce more diverse sounds great, but sounding great isn’t the same as being great. I've mentioned that talk of diversity is good public relations, and that's exactly what we see here -- spiel, empty gestures, misguided proposals, and embarrassingly ham-fisted approaches. Now Twitter is taking things a step further.

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