Only 3% of female students in the UK choose digital as their first career option. This was just one of the shocking statistics presented to us by PwC at this year's Women of Silicon Roundabout, an annual event providing a platform for both men and women to discuss issues relating to Women in Tech Leadership, female founders, bridging the gender gap, and most importantly inspiring future generations of girls into the sector.
It was during our first visit to WinTec (as it’s often referred) that we heard about Next Tech Girls and we were impressed by what we saw! Next Tech Girls is an initiative started by Empiric with the aim of strategically increasing the number of women in technology by securing tech work experience for girls. 1.46 million people are employed in the UK’s technology sector, but only 17% of them are women.
Creating female role models
Next Tech Girls mission is to change these statistics by a simple four step journey. They start by inspiring, this is done by appealing to women role models working in the tech industry to join their ‘Wall of Inspiration’ telling their story about how they entered the world of Tech. You can view Celeste, our Head of Operations story, here. Having opened a Digital Agency at the tender age of 25, Celeste is always on hand to offer advice, tips and motivation at TheTin and further afield making her an ideal role model for rising talent.
It is then the time to inform, talking to girls taking ICT and Computing at GCSE level and presenting industry facts. The size, scale, options and benefits of being a future Woman in Tech and the different paths available, it's a massive misconception that a tech career is all about coding (which won’t appeal to everyone) but with this early intervention, new opportunities and the variety of career paths become apparent.
The next step, engaging it’s where companies like us come in. Here at TheTin, we pride ourselves on leading a diverse team which we feel leads to better outcomes. We are an exceptional team full of men and women that are pushing every day to make our company both equal and inclusive. As it stands to date 50% of our company is made up of females, and we’re driven by this as we feel it shows that women working in technology are on the rise and we want to shout about it! This passion for diversity saw us reaching out to Next Tech Girls Head of Corporate Partnerships, Marie-Clare to see what we could do as a company to support The Next Tech Girls scheme. The initial conversation with Marie-Clare then lead us to the exciting final step of the journey, interacting.
Learning in a real environment
We are proud to announce that this week see’s our first Next Tech Girl Kirsty, join us for work experience in our London office. During this time she will experience what it's like to be immersed in a fully functioning Tech environment. The team is excited to interact with Kirtsy on a variety of projects from each of our main functions including Dev, Design, Project Management and Strategy.
We, of course, don’t know if Kirsty will choose to pursue a career in technology when the time comes, however, we hope that her experiences at TheTin will inspire her when making her career decisions later in life.
How you can support the scheme
If you or your company would like to support Next Tech Girls, you can find all the information, here. We hope that our story encourages you to back this great initiative and help inspire female CEOs, CIOs, UX experts, data engineers and developers of the future.
Keep your eyes peeled for our next instalment where we will hear from Kirsty as she tells us her experiences of the week.
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