6 ways you can change the gender ratio

By Administrator
[blockquote text=”People who are different from one another in race, gender and other dimensions bring unique information and experiences to bear on the task at hand. A male and a female engineer might have perspectives as different from one another as an engineer and a physicist—and that is a good thing. Research on large, innovative organizations has shown repeatedly that this is the case. For example, business professors Cristian Deszö of the University of Maryland and David Ross of Columbia University studied the effect of gender diversity on the top firms in Standard & Poor’s Composite 1500 list … they found that, on average, female representation in top management leads to an increase of $42 million in firm value.

– Scientific American” show_quote_icon=”yes” text_color=”#086b23″ background_color=”#ffffff”]

  1. CODERDOJO

Bring your daughter to Coderdojo, which is a global volunteer-led community of free programming clubs for young people between 7 and 17, so that she can learn  how to code and know that its not just something boys do. It’s important to let your little girl know about all possible career paths available to her and how valuable her participation would be in whatever field she chooses.

Our inspiration is Lauren Boyle, creator of www.coolkidsstudio.com and who was named EU Digital Girl of the Year 2014.She is only 10 years old, and during the summer we had the pleasure of watching her give a keynote speech at Inspirefest on the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre stage in front of an audience of hundreds of people!

  1. INSPIREFEST

The very first Inspirefest took place in Dublin last year. It was a huge success, bringing together women involved in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), with speakers including Cindy Gallop of Make Love Not Porn and Brianna Wu of Giant Spacekat. Their aim is to recognize the huge contribution of women in this area and to increase the ratio of women participating going forward.

Panel Discussion Involving Lauren Boyle at Inspirefest 2015

You can support this event by buying tickets for the 2016 event – last year 35% of the attendees were male, and they want to bring that ratio up higher!

  1. STARTUP EVENTS

Startup events are happening everywhere these days. There are Hackathons, which focus on creating new products, and general startup events, like Startup Weekend Limerick, which focus on the creation of new companies. These are generally 3 day events – people pitch ideas on day 1, teams then form to develop the idea and at the end of day 3, each team pitches their idea / business plan, and a panel of judges decides who wins.

Winning Team in Sprinters 2015 Women Entrepreneur Event

Winning Team in Sprinters 2015 Women Entrepreneur Event

Our CFO, Georgina recently attended Sprinters, a 3 day event for female entrepreneurs. Several ideas were developed over the weekend, including a co-working space for women with a crèche, a platform to support migrant music artists and an app to record and relay symptoms of Crohn’s Disease to your doctor. Prizes ranged from free co-working space in the Dogpatch Labs to free Web Summit tickets. Venues were given by Twitter and the NDRC.

These events support a culture of innovation in Ireland and bring teams together in a gender inclusive way. They need community support – they need venues, prizes and sponsorship. If your company can help out, please do!

  1. WATCH YOUR UNCONSIOUS BIAS

[blockquote text=””There is a cycle of behaviour in the venture capital community which I don’t think is overt sexism, I think there is some, but I don’t think it is the only reason but there is a lot of unconscious bias.”

– Martha Fox Lane, co-founder of Lastminute.com” show_quote_icon=”yes” text_color=”#086b23″]

Unconscious bias makes it harder for female backed ventures to find funding and for women to get senior roles. However, to affect real change, both sexes need to look at their underlying attitudes. Women need to look at their own confidence levels and their belief in their capabilities and abilities. And men need to question assumptions they might be making about men’s abilities or suitability for roles versus their female counterparts.

Take this 5 minutes test to examine your own unconscious bias here!

  1. YOUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS

How well are women represented on your board of directors? Research shows that for women to have a real impact on a board, there needs to be at least three of them.

[blockquote text=”“A clear shift occurs when boards have three or more women. At that critical mass, our research shows, women tend to be regarded by other board members not as “female directors” but simply as directors, and they don’t report being isolated or ignored.” – hbr.org
” show_quote_icon=”yes” text_color=”#086b23″]

Start asking questions in your organization abut female representation and let senior management know that it’s important to you, and why it’s important.

  1. FAMILY FRIENDLY

Are there family friendly policies in your work place? Are important meetings held at times that suit women with children? What’s your policy on working from home / time off? As we’ve all heard, Netflix have implemented policies allowing staff a lot of scope to work from home – they are placing emphasis on quality of job performance rather than being physically present in the office, being seen to work long hours.

So as you can see, there are many ways you can contribute to changing the gender ratio. The population is 50:50 so there is no good reason why so many fields, including business, politics, arts, broadcasting and technology, are so male-dominated. Lets change the ratio together!

Let us know you experiences by tweeting us @MintTekCircuits​