Women in the tech sector

The statistics leave no doubt: Women are still underrepresented in the tech sector, particularly in managerial roles. To make matters worse, they quite often take on management tasks without being paid or acknowledged for them.

Text by Jacqueline White

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Women in the tech sector

Image: © Halfpoint/istockphoto.com

If you type the words "women" and "tech" into a search engine, you will most likely end up with a variety of articles or research papers on the improvements being made in the sector or the way in which women are still lagging behind their male counterparts. These articles and papers are almost always decontextualized and consist of a plethora of statistics, graphs, arrows and stylized gender icons. The gender icons will usually show multiple rows of male icons in trousers and then one or two – or sometimes two and a half – female icons in dresses tacked onto the end, to indicate the female element within the sector. Depending on your point of view, these statistics can be read as depressing, or as an "encouraging start". Some might even interpret these few female icons as frightening harbingers of a legion of Valkyrie-like women just waiting to descend, take over and ruin the sector.

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