Women make up 26.7% of the global technology workforce, and 45% of the women who leave tech say culture is the reason. Paige Hookway, Managing Editor of Electronic Specifier, opened this year’s Women in Tech forum at electronica with those two figures and asked the audience to remember the second one. The problem is not only who comes through the door. It is also whether people want to stay once they are inside.
Jackie Mattox, Founder and CEO of WE United, followed with the ‘State of the Union’ keynote based on the organisation’s inaugural ‘Lead Forward Report‘. The report tracks leadership progression across six areas: representation, compensation, workforce participation, corporate initiatives, access to capital, and policy.
In Europe, women hold just 8% of CEO roles and in North America, that drops to 6%. When WE United began as Women in Electronics a decade ago, that figure was 10%. “The data has gone backwards,” said Mattox. Deloitte project that gender parity is still 85 years away at the current rate. The pay gap averages $15,000 a year globally, and female founders receive just 2.3% of all venture capital funding.
However, Mattox said, this isn’t about blame. She instead focused on ten “micro moves” that organisations and individuals can make right away. These include formal sponsorship programmes and hiring and promotion decisions made by diverse teams rather than individuals. She also called for a balanced candidate pool before hiring the best person from it, CVs with names and unnecessary requirements removed, and checks on what AI screening tools are filtering out. She then asked everyone to count the women on their own company’s leadership team. One is not enough, she said. Three should be the minimum.
Following the keynote, Hookway then moderated a panel with Andrea Klein, Founder and CEO of Rand Technology; Thomas Dudenhoeffer, Senior Vice President, Human Resources at TTI Europe; and Carolina Tejle Hartmann, Germany and India Controller at Texas Instruments.
All three panellists said that the next generation of talent was a big concern. Kelin said she now looks for curiosity, adaptability, and people who learn quickly, rather than long experience. She said that companies that treat entry-level roles as a cost rather than an investment are damaging their own pipeline. She described the old style of having a one-week induction as “more an abandonment process,” and that at Rand, new starters need at least 90 days.
Dudenhoeffer spoke about TTI Europe’s cross-functional graduate programme and the company’s annual roundtables, which the company has run for 20 years, where managers discuss their people and succession plans with the next level of management in the room.
Hartmann spoke about Texas Instruments’ career accelerator programme for new graduates, which pairs each one with a sensor mentor. She also spoke about the employee networks she helps run, including the women’s network.
When looking at who is accountable for nurturing talent, Klein argued that developing future leaders has to be built into a leader’s KPIs and linked to their bonus. Hartmann looked to personal accountability. She asked leaders to notice who never speaks in a meeting and to make space for them.
To close the forum, there was a quick-fire talk with Dan Deisz, Vice President of Design Technology at Rochester Electronics; Kristina Hodgson, Director of Digital Marketing and Communications for the Electronics Segment at Littelfuse; and Fiona Treacy, Managing Director of Industrial Automation and Robotics at Analog Devices.
Deisz spoke about why he built a gender-balanced design team. In 2016, the team had no women. Today, around a third of the team are women. Hodgson, said that representation has to run through the whole value chain and not to stop at the front door. Treacy was succinct as she summed up her career lessons in four words: acquire, accumulate, amplify, and aspire.
The forum was sponsored by Rochester Electronics, Rand Technology, Littelfuse, and Analog Devices.
