Australia is beating Silicon Valley on women in tech
In this guest post Nathan Elvery argues Australian tech companies lead the way in breaking the glass ceiling for women in the sector.
A recent media narrative has slammed tech companies for their appalling record on women and demonstrated how Australia takes more than its fair share of this problem. What’s been missed altogether from the narrative is the Australian tech companies that are world-leaders in this space, which provides a cause for optimism amongst the understandable hand-wringing.
First, though, the problem. Last week, Claire Connelly wrote for Fairfax Media about the tech industry’s ‘woeful’ record on women. She argued that the endless ‘car-crash’ women in tech panels are all style over substance and the industry needs to ‘put its money where its mouth is’ to improve.
I’m sure we all congratulate change.org on the fact that they have a female country head, and a generous parental leave scheme. However, standing there and saying “we’re better than all of you on this” in what is effectively an ad for working at change.org, disguised as an editorial on a complex problem, isn’t really helpful. Perhaps change.org need to be the ones to get off their soap box and contribute to the broader issue, rather than telling everyone how great they are.