​Culture and Diversity strategy starts at the top. Improving diversity in technology is high priority for every company I meet and, like most change, it must start at the top. Traditionally, the most senior role in IT is CIO so let’s look at Gender Balance in that role in isolation to sense check how Europe is performing and how Ireland compares. Achieving diversity across an organisation goes way beyond gender but for the purpose of this piece I have looked at only this one area of the diversity discussion.

The under-representation of women in IT has always been a hot topic and as the tech sector begins to grow, women are equally under-represented in senior roles. At present in Europe only 14% of CIO’s are female, although Ireland is slightly above average at 16%, this is a huge problem to tackle. The top countries can be broken down into:

Sweden 19% female

Italy 19% female

France 17% female

Switzerland 16% female

Ireland 16% female

Netherlands 15% female

United Kingdom 13% female

Spain 11% female

Germany 9%

Belgium 8% female

Poland 7% female

 
With Sweden and Italy leading the way for gender diversity in IT, Ireland has a long way to go.



In the past 5 years, there have been some improvements as the rate of female CIOs has jumped significantly, but there is still a long way to go. In some countries, such as Germany, Poland and Belgium, the imbalance is at a critical stage. Most concerning of all is that in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, only 9% of CIO’s are female.

Encouragingly, we have recently seen companies adapt diversity strategies in order to tackle this problem. Tech companies need to ensure that there is core diversity criteria within each key executive search to ensure that males and females are represented in the search. In Mason Alexander, diversity is a key part of our business culture internally and our customers benefit from a diverse quality driven search methodology that ensures they can hire with confidence and from a fully balanced short-list.

If you would like to learn more about how you can tackle gender balance within your organisation, contact us today!