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Businesswoman and peer Martha Lane Fox has criticized the lack of gender diversity in the UK technology industry, saying it has not progressed in 25 years.
Lady Lane-Fox of Soho rose to prominence in the late 1990s as the co-founder of Lastminute.com, the travel booking website that became one of the symbols of the 1990s internet boom. However, she said many of the same problems she experienced then are still prevalent in the tech industry.
“I never imagined that now in 2022, some of the dynamics of the industry in which I enjoyed building my business would still be so dire,” she said in a speech at an event hosted by WorkL, which works with businesses. To track employee welfare.
Len Fox, a self-described “dot-com dinosaur”, has served as a crossbencher in the House of Lords since becoming the youngest female peer in 2013. She said the industry still has problems recruiting enough women and men. from different class and ethnic backgrounds.
She pointed to the example of Dame Stephanie Shirley, an entrepreneur who started a software company that employed programmers who were almost exclusively women. They worked on codes for applications ranging from Concorde jets to UK military submarines. Shirley signed her name as “Steve” on letters pitching for business to avoid being rejected on the grounds of misdemeanors.
“Nowadays, we would be absolutely amazed if we saw so many women engaged in those areas of technology,” said Len Fox. “They’re not involved right now, those deep tech areas of technology, with such a gender balance.”
The technology industry has long failed to hire enough women, and misogyny is still endemic in online culture. Only 21% of IT professionals and 12.5% of engineers were women, compared to more than half the population, in a survey for the VICE campaign pushing to increase the number of women in science and technology roles.
According to data from lobby group Tech Nation, ethnic diversity in the UK technology industry better reflects the wider population, but separate data from recruitment agency Inclusive Board in 2018 found that the proportion of people of color in senior tech leadership roles lags behind the wider population. .
Len Fox said the coronavirus pandemic has led to some welcome changes in the use of technology. She said that if someone had told her in advance about the pace of the House of Lords switching to online meetings during the lockdown, “I would have honestly thought you were smoking a colossal spliff.”
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