How to get gender equality in tech sector
Gender equality is still a big issue for the Kiwi tech sector despite a push to get more female workers into the booming industry.
Just one quarter of the global tech workforce are women — and that proportion is declining, as outlined in a MYOB report released today exploring how New Zealand’s tech sector can improve gender equality.
Women made up 23 per cent of the tech sector in the 2013 census, down 1 per cent from 2006.
In 2016, New Zealand’s tech sector generated 8 per cent of GDP, produced 9 per cent of exports and employed more than 1000 people.
MYOB general manager Carolyn Luey said education was vital to ensure more women get into the industry.
“Only 3 per cent of 15-year-old females are thinking about a career in the tech sector, and so education should really start at a young age. We need primary schools and high schools to be highlighting the opportunities in the more scientific areas of computing and technology,” Luey said.
According to Statistics NZ, the average annual salary for a tech employee in 2017 was slightly more than $56,000, and recorded as $95,000 in 2016 by NZTech.
MYOB’s report found few female role models in tech meant the industry continued to be male-dominated.
“There’s been a lack of role models, particularly high-profile ones, as people like to model themselves on someone that they know of or aspire to be and if there aren’t any there it is kind of hard to have that,” Luey said.
Frances Valintine, founder of Tech Futures Lab and The Mind Lab, agreed and said that the lack of female representation in tech was problematic.
“You cannot be what you cannot see, I think, is very, very true,” Valintine said.
“The solution is to educate those who are much younger, to take away any gender bias within the under-12s, so by the time that they hit university and high school subject choices they are not thinking at all about gender in the role of technology, and I think that’s already happening naturally as there’s a lot less focus on genderbased roles.”