International Women's Day: Unconscious bias must not be allowed to ruin careers - Greg Wright

Almost a decade ago, I had the privilege of witnessing one of the first performances of a play which showed how the rigid sexism of Victorian society led to a criminal waste of human potential. Today Jessica Swale’s debut play, Blue Stockings, is on the GCSE drama syllabus. It chronicles the colossal obstacles encountered by female science scholars at Girton College, Cambridge in the 1890s.

Apart from facing male academics who believed that “mental taxation in a woman can lead to atrophy, mania, or worse”, the women left empty-handed after completing their studies, despite matching the men grade for grade. By the time women were awarded degrees, many of the Victorian “blue stockings” were long dead.

An investment in a girl’s education creates a ripple effect which transforms the fortunes of future generations. Seventy years ago, my maternal grandparents, Thomas and Ada Nestor, a working class couple from Huddersfield, believed their daughter had just as much right to a university education and a career as any boy. This was not a common belief in Britain during the early 1950s. My mother became the first person in her family to gain a degree and, on the back of that, a new world of experience and opportunity opened up to her and, later, to us.

The theme for this year’s International Women’s day is #BreakTheBias. It tries to imagine a world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. One of the most effective ways of reducing gender inequality is to ensure you have a strong pipeline of talented women being hired in fast growing sectors, such as technology.

But what if women never get a chance to prove themselves? A study has found that a number of technology sector recruiters have acknowledged that women are still being overlooked for roles.

More than 4,000 global tech recruiters were surveyed by developer recruitment platform CodinGame and online technical interview platform CoderPad. Two-thirds of the recruiters who responded to the survey said bias - unconscious or deliberate - is an issue when it comes to tech hiring. Women make up less than 20 per cent of the sector’s workforce. The study concluded that talented women are missing out on tech positions because of ingrained bias during the recruitment process.

So how do we break down these barriers? Last month, CodinGame and CoderPad reported that 57% of recruiters are ready to “ditch the CV” - which can introduce bias into the hiring process - and turn instead to more objective hiring methods, such as practical technical assessments and live coding interviews.

This approach can help recruiters to focus on candidate experience. With many female developers not taking the traditional route to a technology career, by studying a STEM subject at university, growing numbers of recruiters are now actively hiring developers from non-academic backgrounds. It’s hoped this will open up opportunities for female developers who are self taught, and didn’t learn to code at school or university.

Once hired, it’s also important that companies ensure there is a support network that makes women want to stay. The company could, for example, provide a female mentor if they are in a junior position, or offer flexible working as part of an inclusive policy.

Amanda Richardson, CEO, technical interview platform CoderPad, said: “Every day I’m proud of the progress the tech industry has made to create a more inclusive and diverse community. And every day I continue to see how much further we need to go.”

In Blue Stockings, Jessica Swale painted a picture of a world we all hoped had gone, where capable women were thwarted by prejudice. We must not allow unconscious bias to wreck careers before they have begun.