In January 2015 I ran some reports on key data here at Datatech and I was thrilled to learn, that as a business, we had placed an equal amount of men and women in graduate data and statistical roles in 2014.
However I delved a little deeper in to the data and was shocked to find that Datatech overall had placed fewer women in 2014 than we did back in 2000.
We continued to segment and what was clear, as women progressed in their data careers, fewer and fewer were climbing the data career ladder. In fact only 2% of placements made over 100K in salary were filled with women.
In January 2015 I had a call from two key clients, who had asked me to quota my candidate submissions to help them balance gender in their data teams. I explained to them that naturally we could not be discriminatory but there was definitely a dearth of female talent to submit.
This got Rachel Keane (my colleague here at Datataech) and I thinking of how we could identify and reduce what was a clear gender gap in the data arena.
Firstly we surveyed a number of Candidates, Clients, HR teams and friends to understand the pull and push factors in this. Some very clear factors were recognised from our research and we decided to do something about it.
We enlisted some of the UK’s female data trailblazers to understand their experiences and routes to the top in their careers. We furnished them with the reasons we had unveiled in our research and these were points that were easily related to. We were in unanimous agreement that an event to raise awareness, inspire, educate and celebrate women’s careers in data was the way forward.
So in February this year Rachel and I set out to arrange the UK’s first Data conference for Women. The event is being hosted in partnership with UCL 26th November 2015. UCL were a clear choice for Datatech when searching for a educational partner, with so many of the graduates regardless of gender holding top jobs in the data arena. UCL had also announced a new Data Science Masters for the 2016 academic year.
10 months later and we are two days away from the event, with a fully subscribed guest list and a wait list that has 100’s of eager female data practitioners wanting to attend.
I can’t wait to share an update with you to let you know how the conference was received. Unfortunately it is too late to register to attend, however you can still register for updates and links to the speakers and their interviews post event.
Follow the link below to find out more about the speakers, their topics and the event.
http://www.datatech.org.uk/women-in-data.aspx
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