Women in Tech

1 THE BUSINESS CASE FOR DIVERSITY

Gillian Arnold

This chapter explains the business case for a diverse workforce, specifically focusing on gender diversity within the technology profession. Before covering the essentials of the business case for diversity, it’s important to outline the history of the roles of women in the technology space and the long struggle to make inroads into the declining numbers. Currently, women make up around 17% of the UK technical workforce whereas they constitute almost 50% of the working-age population (BCS, 2020b). In a recent survey, BCS (2020a) asked survey respondents what they thought was the biggest diversity barrier to getting a first job in IT. Equal first place went to ‘gender’ and ‘age’, with 22% believing ...