In March 2018 we partnered with The Manchester Evening News to shine a spotlight on the women leading in technology in Greater Manchester. Laudale MD Alec Laurie discusses why in our latest video:
Why women in technology
It’s an agenda that we’re incredibly passionate about and if you work in technology you should be too. Gender equality is a business issue not a women issue – improve gender equality and by proxy you increase the available talent pool and I’m yet to meet a business that doesn’t want to do that.
Through the work we do day to day we know who the outstanding technology professionals are in Greater Manchester and we know a lot of them happen to be women. This campaign gave us an opportunity to showcase the outstanding talent in the region and we really enjoyed doing it.
What did we learn
We learnt a few things number 1 was there are some outstanding women technology professionals in Greater Manchester, and this confirmed that for us. Secondly was the route into technology was quite interesting not a lot of the women we talked to went through the traditional education route of computer science and up through a normal technology career. A lot came into technology careers, whether that’s through industry or functions a little bit later in their career or through a slightly different route at university. And thirdly it was a very supportive community of women technology professionals, there was very little ego and everyone was really encouraging about each other. We got a lot of referrals and people who recommended other women to feature in the list and that was really nice to see.
What next
We need to continue the conversation, keep the momentum, keep pressing for progress and keep celebrating outstanding women in technology, I think there’s a lot being done at the grass roots level, there’s a huge amount of initiatives aimed at encouraging young women into the profession or into the technology sector which is great. I still think employers need to do a little bit more there’s something still here around the glass ceiling we need to break that glass ceiling for women in technology careers who want to climb the ladder, there’s much more that can be done by businesses and employers to achieve that.
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