"Tech-savvy" girls don't want to work with technology at all

Good news! Many girls are actually interested in technology. Bad news! "Working with technology" is the least interesting factor behind career choice, even among girls interested in technology.

"We are launching Project X to increase the interest in technology, especially among girls, in order to eventually change the gender imbalance in the industry". How many initiatives, projects and campaigns have been launched on this theme in recent decades? And then, with undisguised surprise, we find that nothing is happening, that the proportion of women in technology-intensive education, industries and professional roles remains poor year after year.

A clue to why nothing is happening can be found by studying the attitude surveys conducted by Ungdomsbarometern. In a wide-ranging survey in 2015, commissioned by Teknikföretagen, 8000 young people aged 15-24 were asked a number of questions about education and career choices. For those who are concerned about getting more girls into technical professions, there are three conclusions in particular that should be taken into account:

1. A large proportion of girls, 37%, say they are interested in science and technology (options 4+5 on a scale where 5 is "very interested"). So the interest in technology is there.
2. But: When girls who are interested in science/technology are asked about their choice of education, there is an even split between engineering/technology and data (38%), medicine and pharmacy (36%), natural sciences (36%) and social sciences (which includes law - 35%). For boys interested in science/technology, engineering/technology and data dominate (66%). For girls, there are other competing interests.
3. MOST IMPORTANT: When a number of factors are listed as decisive for the choice of future work/workplace, the option "that I get to work with technology" comes in a clear last place, EVEN among the girls who stated that they are interested in science and technology.

To say that efforts to "raise interest in technology" in order to attract girls to IT professions would thus be wasted is perhaps taking it a little too far. What is clear, however, is that a different focus is needed, partly because the interest is already there, and partly because technology itself seems to be largely irrelevant to the choice of profession.

The chart below shows the responses linked to point 3 above. If technology/IT employers want to attract girls to their workplaces, they should focus on completely different factors: being able to work with what they are really interested in (which is obviously not technology), having fun at work, a good work/life balance, a good boss, etc.

So what can be done? One simple answer is to meet the young people and let them experience what the jobs are really like. Show the social context. Show them the ways in which your company's products and services benefit their fellow human beings and create a better world. Technology, just as much as law and medicine which today attract ten times more girls, is a means to achieve various forms of self-realization and world improvement, not something that interests in itself.

These insights have helped us create the Next Up initiative, now in its third year in Stockholm and second year in the West region. In Next Up, eighth graders from a total of 19 schools compete against each other to come up with digital solutions to real societal problems, and meet both the companies working on them and (female) students studying IT at university. The aim is not to "raise interest in technology", but to give a real picture of the inspiring opportunities on both a personal and societal level that an IT career offers.

For those IT companies and other IT businesses that seriously want to change both girls' and boys' attitudes and choices to IT professions, invest in being part of next year's Next Up! Contact me now and I will be happy to tell you more!

(If you want to know more about the Youth Barometer surveys, contact Ulrik Simonsson)