Women in Tech: 2021 in review

The PA Women in Tech Network is passionate about increasing gender diversity and inclusion within technical fields, both inside and beyond our offices.

We’re passionate about making the future of technology more diverse and inclusive to benefit everyone. We influence the industry and proactively seek opportunities to further diversity within PA. We provide learning and development opportunities, build a supportive community of engaged women, industry partners and allies, and ensure PA’s recruitment activities promote equal opportunities.

We never stand still. Within the next five years, we want to create a global community of more than 1,000 women and support 350 women to secure their dream tech role.

This year, we’re proud to have:

Provided women with opportunities to excel in their technical career

We’ve developed and launched our own coding courses through our network of in-house instructors. And by the end of the year, we’ll have trained 120 women in web development and Python programming. What’s more, every one of our students has rated the courses four or five stars.

We’ve also run three ‘In a nutshell’ series within PA on soft skills, the internet of things and architecture. Each series includes between three and five sessions to provide more people with the technical knowledge that’s essential to building a positive human future.

Built a community of female talent and allies to cultivate a network of support and shared learning

We’ve tripled the size of our community of female talent and allies to 550 people, creating a great platform for furthering diversity in tech. Our monthly newsletter to the community shares thoughts on how to enhance inclusion and diversity, demystifies technical topics and celebrates the achievements of inspiring women in tech.

We’ve also partnered with leading organisations, including WeAreTech, Google, IBM, Unilever and Amazon Web Services, to run inspiring events for our community.

Next year, we’ll expand into other geographies to become a truly global community of women in tech.

Optimised recruitment and retention to diversify our team

We’ve launched a mentoring scheme for women who are looking to progress their careers in tech, running the scheme twice in 2021 to support more than 60 ambitious women. We’ve also reached more female graduates than ever before by supporting more than 35 career events and panels at universities and tech diversity networks.

We’ve also set up a Career Changer scheme that will support women to switch to a career in tech.

Thank you to everyone who’s supported us this year and taken part in our initiatives. Our recent video summarises why supporting gender diversity in technology is so important and what we can all do.

We look forward to seeing you next year as we continue to build diversity in tech. If you’re keen to help out, please email womenintech@paconsulting.com.