In the UK, women, girls and non-binary people continue to face unique barriers to employment across many sectors, and the digital and tech sector is no exception. The tech industry has long been a male dominated world, but as the digital revolution continues to snowball, it is time for that to change. The annual 2024 ‘Diversity in Tech’ report from the Tech Talent Charter indicates that women and non-binary individuals represent only 29% of the UK tech workforce, reflecting only a 1% increase from the previous year. Furthermore, when examining specific roles since 2020, the figures reveal a decline. For instance, women and non-binary employees constitute merely 20% of software engineers and 21% of senior technology leadership positions, with the latter experiencing a 1% decrease between 2023 and 2024. Additionally, with social mobility often powered through economic stability, sustainable employment is vital for reducing economic disparities across genders. Currently, the WomenTech Network estimates that with today’s pace of change it will take over 130 years to close the economic gender gap.
At Catch22 we are dedicated to upskilling those in the UK who can plug skills gaps across the digital, AI and tech industries, ensuring that the future labour force is ready for this ever-evolving world of work. Therefore, on International Women’s Day, we are proud to be shining a light on the employability and skills programme, TechUPWomen.
TechUPWomen is a multi-award winning, trailblazing programme developed closely with industry experts, which takes women from underserved groups and retrains them into tech careers. Equipping participants with a strong foundation in general IT and IT support skills, plus general workplace readiness preparation, the programme aims to equip learners for a level three or four apprenticeship. Part of the nationwide Click Start training programme developed by the Institute of Coding (IoC) and funded by Nominet, TechUPWomen has helped to tackle the UK’s digital skills gap by offering skills and training to learners across the country who may not have previously had opportunities. Catch22 are proud to have delivered the programme to over 230 participants with over 100 of our participants securing employment or further education.
TechUPWomen Director, Professor Sue Black OBE, shares her thoughts on this International Women’s Day:
“We are now operating in a global marketplace, with software products and services needing to meet the needs of people around the world. Diverse teams are not only more capable of understanding and addressing the needs of people around the world, but also provide increased creativity and innovation, better problem solving, and a wider range of perspectives leading to improved business performance and competitive advantage.
We know that there is a shortage of women and a shortage of people from diverse backgrounds in the tech space and has been for some time. TechUPWomen was set up to directly address this problem. We provide award winning programs that retrain women from underserved communities directly into tech careers, guided by industry partners.
Our programs focus on job roles such as software engineering, data science and IT support, all of which are skills shortage areas. We create programs that teach real world tech skills to amazing women who then go on to work in the tech industry. We cannot solve the issue of diversity in tech on our own, but we are doing our bit to make the right change happen and providing a case study for others to follow of how to improve diversity in the tech workforce for others to follow, showing that it can be done.
The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step…”
Find out more about our digital skills programmes.