Where are all the women?

Equality at itro

At itro, we actively look to employ women across all of our teams and would love to have more female engineers. However, while advertised roles within our Marketing and Administration teams generally attract mixed applicants, applicants for technical positions are almost exclusively male. We keep asking ourselves, ‘how we can both find and attract women to join our team?’

AAUW has released new findings into how we, as employers, can actively promote cultures that promote gender equality in technology. The suggestions make sense to implement into business practice and the full report is well worth your read (Playbook of Best practices for Gender Equity in Tech). Below is a brief summation of the three key points for your convenience.

We are already reviewing our internal procedures and communications to see how we can be more gender inclusive because itro is committed having a more inclusive workforce.

What Are Your Ideas?

If you notice something itro could improve on for a more inclusive website or workforce, or know a female technician you can recommend for our team, I would love to hear from you! Either give me, Ana, a call on 1300 10 3000 or email me on [email protected] 

Best Practice for Gender Equality in Tech

November 28, 2017, marked the 136^th anniversary of the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

What is AAUW?

AAUW advocates for equity for women and girls in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), through educational programs, innovative research and philanthropy to help women achieve their full potential. Such as, former members include scientist Marie Cure, astronauts Judith Resnik PhD and Mae Jemison, MD.

Together with Dell, AAUW held a Summit on Gender Equality in Tech and AAUW. The Summit identified three key practices that improve workplace conditions for all genders, published in the book Playbook of Best Practices for Gender Equality in Tech.

Three Practices to Promote Gender Equality:

1. Support an Inclusive Talent Pipeline
2. Build Equity into Your Recruiting DNA
3. Create and Sustain a Winning Culture For All

1. Support an Inclusive Talent Pipeline

How:

• Teachers and organisations should encourage students with various backgrounds to peruse technical careers.
• Organisations should encourage employees to volunteer and participate in community programs to promote technical careers.
• All young adolescents should be empowered to envision their future in a technical career.

2. Build Equity into Your Recruiting DNA

To increase the number of women in technology:

• use neutral language in job postings
  • avoid words such as ‘competitive’ and ‘dominant’, or ’emotional’ and ‘compassionate’.
• use neutral language in your company mission statements and also in internal communications.
• conduct blind interviews with objective criteria.

3. Create and Sustain a Winning Culture for All

How?

• • The world is developing quicker than most can keep up with. Therefore, to stay competitive in the technical world, all staff should participate in training regularly.

• In addition consider adding ‘stay’ interviews to your internal asset processes. Such as, exit interviews, stay interviews seek to understand what drives employees, helps them feel belongs and what keeps them in their job.

To conclude implementing these three keys takeaways from the Summit on Gender Equality in Tech will lead to improved workplace conditions for everyone.

For the entire article from Rae Hoty, click here.

Where to Next?

For further information, please call itro on 1300 10 3000 or fill in the below details and a technician will be in touch with you.,