The importance of mentoring women in tech
Tonya Hall talks to Mercedes Soria, executive vice president and chief intelligence officer at Knightscope, about receiving the ABIE Award and trying to engage more women in tech.
Research conducted by travel giant Booking.com has found that only just over half of women working in the tech sector feel their company is prioritising gender – and three out of five that take a career break feel less valued.
The company says the industry needs to be better at supporting women in IT, both at the start of their careers and when they are more established, if it is to maintain a representative and skilled workforce. ZDNet spoke to Booking.com CEO Gillian Tans to find out more.
ZDNet: Your recent research into the role of women in IT suggests that the situation is better than it has been. Would that be correct?
Tans: Well, there is good and bad. While you do see that some areas are better, the gap is still pretty big. With women working in IT, and the need to improve the balance between women and men, there is an urgency needed. Are things getting better? The urgency is there but I think it requires a lot of attention.
Can you talk about examples, areas that do need attention?
Tans: “There is still a lot that needs to be done and that sits with creating diverse cultures within companies.”
Photo: Booking.com
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Yes, I think that if you look at the gap, companies can do a lot. The biggest problem Is in education, and I think that is probably the first area that we need to think about because there are not enough women taking the studies that are needed for the future.
For instance, McKinsey put out the report that showed that women make up just 23 percent of those at high school on advanced courses in computer science.
Just 19 percent of computing and information science degree places are for women, so you can see that overall women tend not to choose these subjects when they study. I think that this is one of the main elements that needs to change.
That is why Booking.com started a scholarship for women and I think that is what many companies could really do to help address this situation and help women in these STEM subjects.
Within companies there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done, even in the technology sector. We found that 44 percent of women said that their companies were not prioritizing on diversity.
SEE: The state of women in computer science: An investigative report (cover story PDF)
There is still a lot that needs to be done and that sits with creating diverse cultures within companies. It sits in having programmes for women – membership programmes. It sits in training that women need. It sits in many different areas, and that’s what I’ve learned at Booking.com is that companies really need to look at their data and see what’s happening. What’s working well? We see that even when you start recruitment, you must have a diverse candidate mix from the start.
You have promotion processes that should be calibrated and there’s all kinds of things that we’ve learned that you need to go through as a business as well.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that in a company like Booking.com you have a fairly high ration of female employees?
Yes. Over 50 per cent of employees at Booking.com are women. In technology, we have 20 percent. That’s probably a bit higher than the average and I think that’s because we are putting in a lot of energy around this topic. We would like, of course, to get these numbers up.
In the technology side of the business, what ways do you use to try to improve the ratio?
We started this internally by setting up specific programmes to bring women into Booking.com. But then we also started externally because we realized that putting all your efforts internally will not get you there.
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