2015 Women in IT Scorecard research

ECWT just released the StartUP Europe WeHubs exploratory survey’s findings.

The latest figures from the 2015 Women in IT Scorecard research, published by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, and the Tech Partnership, show that just one in ten IT Directors are women. The Scorecard also reveals that only 17% of the 1.18m IT specialists working in the UK in 2014 are women. This compares with a figure of 47% for the workforce as a whole.

Karen Price OBE, CEO, The Tech Partnership added: “Employers are profoundly concerned by the tech sector’s continued difficulties in appealing to women, and they are working hard to implement programs that attract, recruit and retain female talent. But they know that the problem has much deeper roots – girls’ disaffection with technology starts at school. Last year just 8% of Computing A-Levels went to female candidates. Real progress will require concerted action by government, industry, and education: the Tech Partnership’s own TechFuture programs are making a real difference to young women’s attitudes to technology, and showing how much can be achieved when everyone works to a common goal.”The report shows that female representation within IT occupations ranges from one-third (33%) of employees working as Web Design & Development Professionals to less than one in ten (10%) working as IT Directors. Amongst those employed as Programmers and Software Developers (the largest group of IT specialists) only around one in ten (13%) are women. The research found that with gross weekly earnings of £650 per week, female IT specialists were found to be earning only 84% of the rate for males working in such positions during 2014 (£770 per week). The difference in female and male pay rates appears to be greatest amongst ‘professional’ level IT positions.

Highlights from the research.

Just under 20,000 female IT specialists were self-employed in 2014 – proportionately much less than either male IT specialists (13%) or UK workers as a whole (15%). Just under six in ten (59%) of all females employed as IT specialists in 2014 were working within small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Female representation in the IT professions was low in all UK regions/devolved nations during 2014 and ranged from 15% of IT specialists employed (or self-employed) in the East of England and the South East to 20% of those working in Wales. Around one-third (34%) of female IT specialists were working in IT businesses in 2014 compared with almost one-half (45%) of males working in such roles and of all IT specialists working in IT firms only 13% were women. On average, around one in twenty (6%) female IT specialists were looking for a new or additional job during 2014 and over the 2011-2014 period at least, the most common means of finding employment as an IT specialist was by replying to an advert and using recruitment agencies.