Inspiring Tech Leaders - Fostering Diversification and Gender Equity in Technology Teams

In this episode of the Inspiring Tech Leaders podcast, I delve into the importance of diversification and gender equity within technology teams.

Discover how diverse perspectives fuel creativity, challenge assumptions, and drive innovation, leading to more effective solutions and a fairer workplace.

Learn practical strategies to create an inclusive environment that empowers all genders, addresses the gender gap in STEM, and promotes women into leadership roles.  Tune in to explore how fostering equity can transform your tech team and organisation.

Transcript

Welcome to the Inspiring Tech Leaders podcast, with me Dave Roberts.

In this episode I’m going to talk about how we can foster diversification and gender equity within Technology teams, which are often a male dominated environment.  As we know, by fostering gender equity, technology can become more innovative, resilient, and better aligned with the diverse needs of an organisation, while also promoting fairness and equality in the workplace.

Diverse teams bring different viewpoints, experiences, and problem-solving approaches.  With technology evolving rapidly, diverse perspectives help fuel creativity and innovation, leading to more effective solutions, products and service management.

It’s also true that diverse teams are more likely to challenge assumptions, reduce groupthink and create an environment where innovation is encouraged and celebrated.  Achieving gender equity helps contribute to a more balanced and thoughtful approach to technology strategies, helping to avoid unintentional bias and ensuring technology serves all demographics effectively.

When you create a culture of equity it helps in retaining employees by creating an environment where all genders feel valued, respected, and empowered to succeed.

The gender gap across STEM unfortunately remains significant, but by fostering gender equity in tech teams this helps to address the issue but encouraging more women to pursue and stay in tech careers.  Supporting gender equity is essential for ensuring that women not only enter the tech industry but also thrive and advance into leadership roles.

But how do we create the right environment to begin with?  It starts with ensuring that you have the right recruitment and hiring strategies that can overcome any unconscious bias.  Looking at how and where you advertise roles and also the wording used within the job descriptions is imperative.  Job descriptions that use masculine language can unintentionally deter women from applying for the roles to begin with.  In fact, research has shown that women are less likely to apply to jobs that use such language because they may not identify with terms associated with male dominated cultures.  Using more gender-neutral language in job descriptions can help to convey a more inclusive environment.

Studies suggest that women tend to apply for jobs only if they meet 100% of the listed requirements for the role, whereas men are more likely to apply if they meet around 60% of specification.  Therefore, overly detailed or rigid job descriptions may discourage women from applying if they don’t tick all the boxes.

The difference between desirable and must have can make a significant impact on the number of women putting themselves forward for a role.  It’s important to highlight the opportunity for growth and development, rather than strict unattainable standards.

It’s important to call out that you value diversity and inclusion within job descriptions, while offering flexible working arrangements can also help widen the overall pool of candidates.

Describing the impact of the role and how it helps to contribute to the company’s mission and goals helps to demonstrate the potential to grow, solve problems and make meaningful contributions.

Carefully crafted job descriptions and adverts are the first step in helping to ensure you get the attention of a wider and more diverse candidate pool.

Perhaps consider widening the talent pool to target specific groups like women in tech conferences, or training academies that specialise in training and providing opportunities for women in tech is critical.  Encourage referrals that promote and leverage diversity in the workplace.  Celebrate your gender diversity, your existing women in your teams can help to promote the diversity you’re trying to create and can provide mentorship for others that are starting out on their tech careers.

You need to ensure that you’re able to create and inspire an inclusive workplace to develop and grow.  Having clear policies around pay equity, parental leave, and flexible working arrangement to create a supportive environment for all genders is critical.

It’s important that you can create a safe space for conversations around diversity and inclusion, allowing all employees to have a voice and promote new and innovative ideas.  

Enabling female employees to move into different technical roles through internal training programs or job rotations is important and creates opportunities for career growth, while reducing barriers for women entering certain tech roles.

It’s important to conduct regular training on how to avoid unconscious bias and how to foster an inclusive culture.  This helps employees to understand the importance of creating a supportive, non-discriminatory environment.  Also making it very clear that any form of discrimination or harassment is unacceptable.

As Peter Drucker said, you can’t manage what you can’t measure.  It is therefore important to establish clear, measurable goals for improving gender diversity in your technology team.  Regularly analyse your hiring, promotion, and retention data by gender.  By regularly reviewing these metrics it can help to address any imbalances.

By taking a multi-pronged approach to diversity and inclusion, you can create a more equitable environment where everyone feels more supported, valued and empowered to succeed.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Inspiring Tech Leaders podcast.  I would love to hear about the strategies that you’ve implemented that have been successful in helping create more diverse and inclusion technology workplace.

And remember stay tuned for more episodes where we’ll continue to explore the incredible ways in which technology is influencing and changing our lives.