Tech industry won’t get more diverse until it learns to grow up

Women will continue to leave the industry if they don't feel their health is being taken seriously, says Billy MacInnes

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If I was to make a general statement about the tech industry that is broadly accepted by most people, it would be this: it’s young and it’s male-dominated. Like all general statements, it has changed slightly over time because the tech industry is not as young as it was and it’s becoming less male-dominated. But it is still broadly true.

The reason I make that statement is because of a press release I received earlier this week headlined ‘Menopause symptoms and lack of support puts women in tech’s careers on hold’. That headline neatly encapsulates the drawbacks of a male-dominated and youthful industry. The issues that affect people who aren’t young and aren’t male tend to be overlooked.

In that light, the results of a survey of 3,000 men and women in the UK working for fintech and tech providers conducted for Intuit QuickBooks make for unpleasant reading. Let’s start with this: One in five women in tech or fintech who experienced menopausal symptoms have left or wanted to leave their job because of their symptoms.

Then there’s this: As many as 22% of women experiencing menopausal symptoms have delayed or cancelled plans to apply for a promotion.

Menopausal symptoms also made a lot of women (38%) feel less confident in their abilities and 41% said it affected their ability to perform work tasks.

When you consider the symptoms of the menopause, ranging from hot flushes to mood changes such as depression, anxiety and stress and poor sleep quality, it’s no wonder they can have such a damaging effect on women’s confidence.

In a male-dominated industry, it can be hard to appreciate just how badly the effects of this natural biological process can affect the female half of the planet’s population. But those results provide stark proof of how debilitating the effects of menopause can be for women.

Men don’t have to grapple with anything remotely similar. The only parallel we could draw that might affect us as powerfully would be a debilitating illness of some kind.

The youthfulness of the tech industry has also contributed to its general ignorance of the effects of the menopause. In my experience, the single biggest factor that helps to raise awareness of the menopause and its effects among heterosexual men is when their female partner starts to go through the change. That’s when they get to witness its effects firsthand on a daily basis. Young men are unlikely to be in that position.

Despite the fact it’s a completely natural phenomenon, there is still a stigma around the menopause and one that’s likely to be harder to overcome in a male-dominated, youthful industry.

The good news is that this will have to change as the industry becomes more mature and employs more women. But it can’t come soon enough when you consider that 43% of women said they wouldn’t disclose they were going through the menopause to their employer. Nearly half of that number said they wouldn’t want to draw attention to the fact they were struggling and 40% didn’t believe they would get any additional support.

More than a third of women said they wouldn’t want to make colleagues feel uncomfortable, 28% said they feared colleagues would believe they were less capable and 23% felt they might be overlooked for promotion. 

How awful must that be? To feel less confident about your abilities and your rightful position in the company because you were undergoing a natural part of the ageing process.

There’s a very powerful argument in favour of employers providing support when you consider that 75% of women would be more likelyto stay at their organisation if there were supportive measures in place.

A point reiterated by Jolawn Victor, VP and head of UK at Intuit QuickBooks, who said supporting women through menopause could improve retention rates and the pipeline of talent for companies “as barriers to progression and fulfilment are removed. Taking steps in areas like this will also help to close the gender pay gap in tech and fintech”.

So let’s finish with another general statement: the more mature and the less male the tech industry becomes, the better for the women working in it.

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