Changing the game: Making space for women in sports and tech

To mark International Women's Day, our VP of Brand and Integrated Marketing Faith Wheller discusses the need for female representation across all parts of the technology industry.

My work at TeamViewer as VP of Brand and Integrated Marketing follows more than 20 years of working in the tech industry. Over those years, I’ve led marketing teams in huge technology companies and seen many positive changes.  
 
One of these is that the teams I’ve been leading have become much more diverse. There now seems to be more women working at all levels in technology companies — something I'm incredibly passionate about.  
 
At TeamViewer, it makes me proud to work in a company with a female Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO), the brilliant Mei Dent — when globally nine out of ten CPTOs are male.  
 
However, this statistic shows that there’s still lots to be done. To achieve gender parity, we need to create conditions that allow us to attract, foster, and hold onto diverse talent. That is a huge motivator for us at TeamViewer.

The current place of women in IT

These days, women can now be found in more significant numbers across IT. Not only those associated with ‘soft’ skills (in fact, anything but soft!), but also in design, research, and development.  

Nonetheless, there’s still progress to be made. Women are still overwhelmingly concentrated in fields like marketing and communications, while men comprise the vast majority in engineering and development. 

In fact, a recent McKinsey study found that women make up only 22 % of all tech roles across European companies. The rate of women working in tech companies (like social networks) is close to parity, but the rate of women working within tech roles (like developers and data engineers) is much lower. 

One cause of this lack of female talent in tech roles is that fewer women are graduating from STEM disciplines. At current rates, according to the same study, the number of women in tech roles in Europe will decline to 21 percent by 2027. 

This lack of female talent has a massive impact. For example, women only make up 9.8% of the people who contribute to open-source software projects — despite 70% of all the software that supports technology infrastructure being open source.  

Despite ongoing positive changes, this means that women still play a much-too-small role in how our technology is designed and made.

But there’s also lots of positive change. For one example, let’s look at the world of sport.  

Creating a level playing field

As you probably know, TeamViewer is proudly partnered with Manchester United — both the men’s and women’s teams.  
 
In recent years, the women’s team has seen huge levels of investment in response to massive interest in the sport. One reason for this is the incredible performance of the Lionesses — the UK national team — in the 2023 World Cup. There are four Lionesses in the Manchester United squad. 
 
Historically, women in smaller clubs have been playing in boots and kits that are designed for male bodies and sometimes suffer because they don’t fit properly. However, with increased investment and interest in women’s football, we are now seeing a much more tailored approach. 
 
At Manchester United, this means championing the idea that the women’s game differs from the men’s. In real terms, this means designing things differently. For example, creating customized kits that reflect the difference between female bodies and their male counterparts. 
 
Of course, it’s still a work in progress. For one thing, across women’s football, female coaches and referees are still vastly outnumbered by men. But designing differently is a brilliant first step in showing women that football — on and off the pitch — is a place for them.