Would you be interested in a press release on events to encourage women to take up empty skilled positions in tech (since 2019), discussing the issue and opportunities available for women and others from underrepresented backgrounds. There is an event next week in Birmingham (22nd March) for women to find out more about the support available and another in London (on 4th November)
The average tech salary is higher than the average for most vacancies in the UK, and it is steadily increasing at a time when most jobs are decreasing. Women, however, are massively underrepresented (only 20%). - data from 2022 has shown that if the slow pace of change continues in the tech industry, a 50/50 gender split will not be achieved until 2060.
"There's a huge digital divide in terms of equality throughout the UK and a digital tech problem in that we have a lot of digital jobs open with no one to fill them. We don't have the digital skills that they need.
The education is out there. It's just about signposting it, showing people where to go to get the skills and helping them understand what they need. If you know you can do this, or if you see other women succeeding in these roles, it's going to help your confidence and give you the support to change or enhance your career."- Lucy Hall, the founder of Digital Women.
Links below signature is the Press Release, High Res images of the event and founder and Editors Notes.
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ANICA BROMS
PR Consultant
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Press Release: Times up on excluding women in Tech.
Digital Women Live, an event which empowers women through the sharing and development of digital skills, is in Birmingham this month on the 22nd of March at the Millennium Point.
The events offer women the opportunity to see how to include themselves in the jobs and skills available in the Tech industry. They aim to close the gender gap and ensure women can fully participate in the digital economy.
Lucy Hall, the founder of Digital Women, believes we can close this gender skills gap through events like these by showcasing female talent. A significant setback for women looking to enter the tech industry is not seeing themselves represented, which doesn't make sense given they make up half the population.
When women cannot see themselves, they are less likely to go for tech opportunities, leading to a vicious cycle of gender bias already being revealed in AI systems (source UN). Building on this, women tend to downplay their talents, so they get easily overlooked and are consequently massively underrepresented in this section.
Digital women aim to balance this out through their live events, where they host skill-sharing sessions from a wide range of women from diverse backgrounds and ages.
By attending these kinds of events women have made new friends, started a business, quit a job, got a promotion or even started a new career from being in a room with women just like them or just like how they aspire to be.
Lucy Hall, the founder of Digital Women, says, "We don't invite massive expensive speakers onto the stage; we bring in women from the Digital Tech community who have been there and done it. In turn this process empowers more women to stand up and share their knowledge. The knock-on effect of all this is that these experts then go on to speak at events outside of Digital Women and go on to inspire an even greater number of women.
The education is out there. It's just about signposting it, showing people where they need to go to get the skills and trying to help them understand what they need as well. Because sometimes people don't know what you need or what's possible. So part of what we're doing is trying to raise awareness. If you know you can do this, or if you see other women succeeding in these roles, it's going to help your confidence and give you the support to change or enhance your career."
Editors Notes:
About Digital Women: https://digitalwomen.
Digital Women Birmingham event (22nd March): https://www.
Photos of founder Lucy Hall https://www.dropbox.com/
Photos of past Digital Women Live events
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/
Quotes from the founder Lucy Hall:
"Women tend to downplay their talents, and many very successful women in the Tech industry are almost invisible as they lack the confidence to stand up and speak at the same events as their male counterparts. So often, when women go to tech events, all their seeing represented on the speaker stand is predominantly men of a certain class demographic.
"There's a huge digital divide in terms of equality throughout the UK and a digital tech problem in that we have a lot of digital jobs open with no one to fill them. We don't have the digital skills that they need."
"My mission is to empower a million women through digital skills, training and education by 2024."
Data:
Data from 2022 has shown that if the slow pace of change continues in the tech industry, a 50/50 gender split will not be achieved until 2060.
During 2022 UK tech companies continued to grow at near-record levels (£24 billion), more than France (£11.8 billion) and Germany (£9.1 billion) combined. The total growth raised over the past five years is nearly £100 billion (£97 billion). Tech jobs are booming. The average tech salary is higher than the average for most vacancies in the UK, and it is steadily increasing at a time when the average wage for most other jobs on the market has decreased. But major setbacks include a need for more diversity in the workforce.
A Hewlett Packard internal report found Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100% of them.
Digital Women wants to support women in taking up these jobs, and one of the first ways of doing this is to give them a voice and role models that they can recognise themselves within.