A short history of one woman’s pathway into the technology industry…

 March 08, 2016

Today is International Women’s Day, a day when the achievements of women are recognised globally and across a broad spectrum of political, social, economic and cultural landscapes.

It is widely acknowledged that there is a significant under representation of women in computer science as a whole, with fewer women studying the subject at university and the amount of women in technical and leadership roles also minimal.

My journey into technology began at a time when equality was only just making its way onto the workplace agenda and within distribution, an industry well-known for being male-dominated. 

Growing up, I was an ‘ordinary girl with ordinary interests’ and a career in technology had never crossed my mind. I had an interest in the sciences but that was about it. As I set off for university at the age of 18, I would have laughed in the face of anyone who had suggested as much and more than 30 years later here I am!

Although my degree was in Business studies and Human Resources, I did write basic operating programmes as part of an IT module I took but it never seemed that this ‘subject’ would become the integral component it is today in education and business.

Grass roots start

After I graduated I began my employment as a general management trainee in the distribution industry. The training style of the company was to experience every job first hand, so I manned the phones in the sales office, purchased the stock in the buying department, picked the stock in the warehouse and went out with the delivery drivers on their rounds. I was ‘one of the girls’ and ‘one of the boys’ according to which job I was doing.

In the eighties, there was a lot more sexist behaviour than now and you were just expected to deal with it. There were inappropriate comments, being talked ‘down to’, being viewed as the weaker sex or viewed as temporary before ‘we all go off to have children’. I distinctly remember being told by another woman that I couldn’t have it all; a family and a career!

I am pleased attitudes have changed from when it was considered all part of a day’s work for men to hold up numbered score cards to rate the ‘look’ of female interviewees behind their backs. Despite the prejudice, my first job was a ‘great introduction’ to the world of business and without realising it, I became a user of tech in the process. Because of the expansion of the company and the acquisition of other businesses, my role had changed to assisting with the management of the new branches whilst IT systems and business processes were being consolidated.

This was where I first got involved in using technology to drive forward a company’s performance through making its business processes both more efficient and effective. I don’t need to understand code or mathematical equations to do this but I do need to understand how a business operates and how the potential of technology can be unleashed to assist it.

Working mothers – a personal choice

Following on from this, my husband’s job relocated and this took me to CSfD. I began to work on a part-time basis while my family was growing up. The rights and wrongs of working mothers is already a well debated topic and I do very much believe that this is a personal choice on which you should not judge another. For me, working part-time gave me the best of all worlds, I was around for my children during their formative years but kept my hand-in, so to speak, in the world of work.

Keeping the ‘home’ plates spinning can curtail the potential of what you are able to achieve in the workplace, and my career did not develop at this time; it simply allowed for a spring board on which I could relaunch my career.

You have to ‘believe’ to be in the tech industry

In my early days at CSfD I spent a great deal of time and effort mapping and optimising all of our business processes and this eventually led to the adoption of the ISO9001 quality standard and Investor in People awards that we still carry to this day.

More recently, in 2013, I became part of a management buy-out group and a director/owner of the company. This presented me and the company with many new challenges as we sought to take our organisation on to its next phase amongst an increasingly competitive marketplace.

My career to date has taught me to become more assertive, develop leadership and management skills and has increased the confidence I have in my own abilities. You have to have a vision of where you want to go and how you’re going to get there and be able to react to constantly changing variables. You have to believe. This is never truer than in the technology industry where the pace of change is relentless but it also makes it exciting.

I work at keeping up to date with all the latest developments and terminology in use but I’m also never afraid to ask somebody to explain if I don’t know what they are talking about, after all, you can’t know it all.

Women still outnumbered by men in tech

The small number of women in technology is very noticeable. As a recruiter of coders, in 25 years I can count the number of women I have interviewed on one hand. We do slightly better with testers but to this day women continue to be outnumbered by men. This needn’t be so and I think is all a question of image.

I find it alarming that women are so underrepresented in tech, one of the reasons the company got involved in the Hour of Code initiative to encourage school children to consider a career in the technology industry and it was great to see some girls there along with the boys. I hope initiatives like this will mean there is a significant change in the numbers of women looking into computer science educations and careers in technology. My pathway into the field I work in was quite inadvertent but if we can continue to encourage more women to work in technology then everyone will benefit.

Helen Henshaw, Chief Administrative Officer at CSfD