We recently launched a poll on LinkedIn and the highest percentage voted for Schools… Schools reached 52% of the vote whilst Employers landed on 30%, Apprenticeship Providers just 2% and ‘other’ gained 17% of votes which included the main answer of ‘All of the above’.
But where would you say the responsibility lies? Please vote at the end of this article.
This November we launched four webinars to support Women in Tech. Two were aimed towards school/college organisations and students and the other two were aimed for any women looking to upskill or explore tech opportunities. This was phase 2 of our Women in Tech campaign as back in May we hosted a Women in Tech week for all women, with feedback from so many of our panellists regarding how they would like to work with schools/colleges to allow female students to understand the options available to them at a young age and think of tech as a possible career route.
Panellists joined us on the webinars from Channel 4, Mercedes AMG, CapGemini, IBM and Aiimi to help get the message across to young students and 195 people signed up to listen to these webinars.
We want to continue to support schools and colleges in helping students, teachers and parents to understand what they can do to help young women feel inspired to choose a career in technology.
Here are a few suggestions of how you can approach this within your school/college:
Raise awareness in the Classroom
Create lessons and conversations linking to role models for students choosing their options, let’s change this to help your students hear more about women in the technology industry and how they got there. It is also important to make sure you include imagery of women as well as men when promoting options such as IT to appeal to the audience more.
Host a female-only careers session
Every 2-3 months each school should host a careers session/assembly aimed at females so they can get to know tech a little bit more. Without males attending, females may feel more open and less intimidated to ask questions about each role. You could also bring in an external speaker like us at Just IT to discuss these opportunities in detail and answer any questions that attendees may have.
Partner with Tech companies to offer hands-on work or sessions
The perfect career choice starts with that first spark of interest. By partnering with Tech companies to offer hands-on experience, young females can hear more about the career path and understand what it entails.
Create Support Networks
If young females are interested in exploring technology careers together bring a small group of them together for focus/mind mapping sessions to allow them to explore career choices together and help each other decide which career choice may be a good route for them depending on skills and interests.
Market online resources which may be of use to females in a monthly newsletter to them and parents
There are some amazing resources out there and even people who are willing to offer their advice and guidance to help all women of any age get into technology.
On all of our webinars, panellists left their LinkedIn profiles in the chat box to the audience if anyone wanted to ask them any questions or advice, and this is exactly what young women need if they are unsure what to explore in the technology industry and where to begin.
There are also some amazing websites such as Girls into Coding aimed at 10–14-year-olds and Cajigo is another great resource that partners with Schools to deliver STEM career talks and provides continuous mentoring for girls from Year 7 and upwards.
To watch our schools’ webinars back please visit the links below and contact us by (email) if you would like to work with us on Women in Tech going forward, we can offer support on Apprenticeship roles in the technology industry and attend your schools’ careers fair/come in and speak to your students.
Our general webinars aimed at all women of any age looking to upskill can also be explored here:
If you would like to find out more about Technology roles for Women please reach out to our Women in Tech Lead, Leah Hardy at LeahH@JustIT.co.uk.