In the runup to International Women's Day 2025, we've been reflecting on our own progress towards equity in our team, and the great work done by initiatives to increase representation in the tech sector in Manchester and beyond
This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is #AccelerateAction – striving to move more quickly towards “A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that's diverse, equitable, and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated.” It’s an urgent challenge… It’s estimated that at the current rate of progress, it would take until 2158 to achieve gender parity (World Economic Forum)! That equates to roughly five generations from now.
Only one in five software engineers are women or nonbinary
29% of UK tech employees are women or non-binary
21% of senior tech role holders are women
Some groups are still underrepresented, such as those within the global majority, disabled or neurodivergent people, where these figures are smaller still.
In our own team, we encourage people to take on mentorship roles to share their experiences and guidance with those starting out in the industry. Recently Product Management Team Lee Emery shared this lovely writeup of her time mentoring as part of the MentorHER scheme, which is an excellent initiative run by Manchester Digital’s DigitalHER programme.
And for any woman in tech; you don’t have to join a special mentoring scheme, and you don’t have to see yourself as a role model to be one. Just be available to that person sitting next to you, or across the office, or on the other end of the Team chat. Little gestures of support every day can be the difference
Lee Emery, Practice Lead, Product
We’re also proud to partner once again with 300 Seconds as part of Camp Digital 2025, bringing a session of lightning talks to our main stage. This event series, founded by Sharon O’Dea, has a mission to diversify the tech conference circuit by giving up-and-coming speakers from underrepresented groups the chance to gain speaking experience in a friendly and supportive environment.
It’s now our third year running the session, and since we started, our team has been generous with their time, offering coaching and support to speakers who require it. It’s given us the chance to connect with some incredibly talented women, and it’s been a privilege to hear their talks. You can listen to the sessions from 2023 and 2024 here.
We decided to do something about it. We thought: What if we held our own event, showcasing some of the brilliant women we know who are doing interesting work? Then our peers could learn from them, and once those talks were shared on social media, event organisers wouldn’t be able to say “We couldn’t find any women speakers” anymore.
Sharon O'Dea, Co-founder, 300 Seconds
For #IWD2025, we also wanted to share some reporting about the status of our own team – by doing this, we hope to hold ourselves accountable, and hopefully serve as a bit of an example for other organisations considering doing the same.
So, how are we doing?
Across our team of 70 people, here’s how we’re split:
We're 63% women
We've got 20 people in leadership roles, 55% of which are women
Our gender split across different business areas is majority women in every area except technology roles
Leadership roles:
Of the 20 people in the business who hold leadership roles, over half (55%) are women. There is some variation when looking at the individual practice areas - while our delivery and enablement teams are led by a female majority, and design are 50/50, our technology leadership is 60% men.
Of course, there is always more to do. The next few months will see the launch and development of our new ERG, set up by the team around reproductive health. We've also been working hard on our recruitment processes, implementing anonymous recruiting, and working with several different partners to offer routes into employment, including apprenticeships, internships and bootcamps.
We encourage every organisation to think about how you can take practical action to create a more diverse and equitable tech sector. It's up to all of us to narrow the gap and keep advocating for underrepresented groups. Right now, it feels more urgent than ever.
