To summarise all of our efforts, we identified the issue of gender inequality in the workplace as well as the wage-gap between the two genders in the technology sector. Electrohootendo, our coalition of corporations, then formulated a plan to counter this issue by pitching a partnership with BC Tech Association in order to make this an industry wide change. Through this initiative, our corporations hope to reduce the imbalance of the genders in the workplace and to empower more women, especially the younger generation to interact more with technology and become more adept at it.

Our call to action to our readers is to actively strive for inclusivity, equality and diversity in every industry. Equal opportunity should be normalised, not something we have to fight for. We also aim is to make ‘Women in Tech Day’ an industry norm starting with British Columbia and then slowly see it progress to other parts of Canada. We hope that through this campaign, everyone in the tech industry will regard this issue as highly as we do and work towards creating a more diverse community in the workplace, which welcomes people from all walks of life to come and work in the technological sector.

Electrohootendo’s initiative will have short and long-term effects on the market and some of the areas we will be tackling with time are explained below in detail:

Short-term Effects:

We define the short-term as a range between 6 months to 18 months. In the short-term, we will be targeting the market nationally in order to spread awareness about our campaign which will only be our focus for a few months after publishing it online. We also aim to encourage more discussions on women empowerment and the wage-gap between the two genders in the industry as it will spread the word to more people and through these discussions, we wish to bring this issue into public light and inform the younger generations who were born into this age of technology.

Long-term Effects:

We define the long-term as a range between 3 to 5 years as this is the time it will take for our campaign to have more traction and we hope that by then the number of women working in technology will increase as well. We estimate the long-term effects to kick in after 3 years is because big changes take place slowly and need time to grow, therefore, after 3 years of running the project, we estimate that changes will occur. We also hope that our campaign gives other countries wind of what we are trying to achieve in Canada starting right here in B.C. and we hope that as society progresses, other nations will also jump onto the bandwagon and will try to restore the balance of genders in the technological sector in their countries.

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that the campaigns we have introduced in previous blog posts are being set in motion! We have created a tentative timeline in which you, our reader, can follow along with us on our journey to change the BC tech space for women for good. We will cover five major events: Planning Process, Pitching to the BC Tech Association, #EveryoneCanPlay, Women in Tech Day, and Follow-Up.

Planning
We recognized an issue in our industry, and decided to do something about it. Three major influential companies, Nintendo, Hootsuite, and Electronic Arts, high-fived and banded together to initiate a movement to promote industry-wide change. There is a significant lack of female representation in the tech industry, and we found many concrete reasons for why that is. We are eager and enthusiastic about encouraging women to join the tech space. This is the time to brainstorm and come up with possible initiatives we can implement to achieve our collaborative goal.

Pitch to the BC Tech Association
Schedule a meeting with executives from the BC Tech Association to pitch our collaborative initiatives: #EveryoneCanPlay and Women in Tech Day. One representative from each company will be at the meeting to present our ideas and answer any questions from the panel. Upon the approval from the board of executives, we will need time to plan our social media campaign, and hope to initiate it in full force in six to nine months.

#EveryoneCanPlay
This hashtag, #EveryoneCanPlay, is the start of a new movement in the BC tech industry. Although the origin of this hashtag was inspired by the lack of female representation in the tech industry, this hashtag is for everyone. #EveryoneCanPlay is a campaign that promotes everything it states: that everyone – despite being young, old, amateur, professional, female, male, non-binary, ethnic background, religious views, sexual orientation, competitiveness, and everything in between – can play. Nine months after pitching to the BC Tech Association, we plan to have #EveryoneCanPlay become a fully-realized, powerful hashtag that promotes inclusivity and diversity in gaming.

Women in Tech Day
Along with #EveryoneCanPlay, we plan on initiating a Women in Tech Day every calendar year in the BC Tech Industry. It is a day dedicated to celebrating the women who occupy spaces in the tech industry, and how empowering it is to be a part of a movement for women in tech. We are eager to host a conference or seminar on Women in Tech Day to promote careers in tech to young women. After the campaign #EveryoneCanPlay gathers enough attention on social media, we will be implementing Women in Tech Day one year following. One year of planning gives us enough time to reflect on what we have achieved through the social media campaign, what important ideas we want to feature in our conference, and any administrative prospects to consider.

Follow Up
After we implement the first ever Women in Tech Day in BC, we have one year to reflect on our bearings. We will look at the social media campaign stats: we will measure engagement, positive responses, negative responses, critiques, and how the campaign made people feel. For Women in Tech Day, we will consider what we did well, what we want to improve on, and what we learned from this process. We will also encourage attendees to share their feedback on the event, and share their ideas on what they wish to see for future Women in Tech Days. We wish to keep the ball rolling and continue to host a Women in Tech Day annually in BC for many legacies to come, and even influence other provinces (and countries!) to follow suit.

One for all and all for one.

As a football player, I look up to Cristiano Ronaldo. It’s no surprise that when people want to feel motivated, they look up to their role models for guidance. Often accomplished individuals, role models offer such support to anyone feeling the need for it. Similarly, we believe that ‘empowered women empower women.’ One way to truly bring about equality is through creating an environment for women where they can look up to other female role models. This may serve as just the encouragement that they need to prosper.

In collaboration with the BC Tech Association, we are aiming to hold one calendar day a year when all tech companies come together to promote gender equality, inclusivity and diversity in the industry.

We call it: ‘Women in Tech Day’

We feel that this recognition is important to spread awareness to every level of every company. Moreover, we are planning to hold monthly seminars and conferences where the focus will be on mentorship and development programs for female, or anyone feeling left behind in the tech industry. Our vision for these involve potentially bringing in having Lucy Peng (CEO, Alibaba), Susan Wojcicki (CEO, Youtube) and/or Meg Whitman (Ex-CEO, eBay) to headline our campaign as these women normalize female leadership in any industry at the highest level. Their participation will no doubt motivate and encourage younger women to feel empowered, as they are very accomplished individuals.

Our goal is to promote equality and there’s no better way to do that through raising awareness and bringing in heroes. This initiative will help us do both. When the younger generations look at these women and see how they’ve actively fought stereotypes and barriers, it will no doubt push them to feel empowered. This is why we truly believe that ‘empowered women empower women.’

We at ElectroHooTendo came up with #EveryoneCanPlay because we noticed the problem of inequality in our industry and we decided to tackle the issue head on and to change this. The hashtag is a medium for us to advertise our mission and goals and to reach as many people with technology as we can. This is due to the fact that most people do not even realize the importance of equality in the workplace and most people are also oblivious to the fact that this inequality still exists today especially in the technological sector.

#EveryoneCanPlay was initially formulated in order to attract more women to approach technology and to empower them to become more adept at using it. But this hashtag also targets all those groups that are considered minorities, helping us in empowering them as we believe that technology is made for everyone.

We plan on promoting this initiative through our partner, Hootsuite Inc, which, as of now, is one of the top-performing marketing companies in British Columbia, catering to a large audience around the world. Together, Hootsuite Inc, Nintendo Inc, and EA Sports would be able to spread awareness for our campaign given the large amount of market share we have in the market.

We hope that this campaign will gain a lot of traction and awareness. As an action step, we will also be holding free sign-up gaming tournaments and hack-a-thons in order to encourage more younger women to participate and become more confident with technology.

Friends are always there for us, through thick and thin.

As we move forward with our initiative, it is imperative to recognise that despite our combined stature and size, we need to solicit help to fully tackle gender inequality in our industry. One such association that can help us maximise the impact of our initiative is the BC Tech Association. The BC Tech Association is comprised of small and large-scale tech companies that are situated or working in British Columbia.

So this blog’s about our new friend on this journey – The BC Tech Association. Even though achieving our objective is not going to be simple, this collaboration will certainly be beneficial for everyone involved. So how can the BC Tech Association help us and what do we need from them? It’s simple; our aim involves bringing about significant change both internally, and externally. Through leveraging our partnership with the BC Tech Association and accessing their vast network, we can influence a large majority of the tech companies internally, existing in BC. Their network is key to spreading our message throughout the industry and gaining awareness – ensuring maximum external impact as well.F

So let’s welcome the BC Tech Association in our fight for inclusivity. Our initiative calls for maximum support, and having the BC Tech Association on board certainly provides us with a boost to achieve equality, diversity and inclusivity.

It’s action time.

Yeah, you heard us right. For a long time, the tech industry has failed to address the issues that exist within it. Not only do we notice this in our companies, but we also see these trends in the industry as a whole. But now, we – Electronic Arts, Nintendo Canada and Hootsuite, believe that it’s time to take a stand bring about a change.

We are: ElectroHootendo!

Equal representation is not achieved by a 50/50 distribution, but rather by achieving a working culture where equality is at the forefront. Opportunities should be equal based on talent and drive, not personal factors such as race or gender. At Electronic Arts, we strongly believe in inclusivity and diversity. We don’t believe it to be an obligation, but rather an opportunity to better ourselves in every way. At Hootsuite, we believe in empowering women through our ‘Ladies Learning Code’ program where we teach women to code. We want women to feel empowered rather than intimidated when it comes to working in tech. At Nintendo, we aim to create games for everyone, regardless of their age, gender or status, games that bring joy to everyone.

We believe that while individually we try, together we can. ElectroHootendo represents what we’re trying to achieve here – inclusivity, equality and diversity. It’s a long road, and we’re the first to recognize that, but change has to start somewhere. With our combined market share, we hope we can influence the industry to recognize these issues and collectively fight against them.

Where did this all start?
Let’s start with a little history lesson.

We shall begin with the graph below:

As you can see, the red line indicating the percentage of of women who majored in computer science has drastically decreased since 1985. Although the statistics show data until about 2012, this article by jaxenter indicates that recent research found that the percentage of women who major in computer science now is only 16.5%!

Female computer programmers made up 40% of jobs in programming, but that number slowly decreased as time went on. Women occupied back-end jobs, mostly working in software development. Men, on the other hand, worked on hardware, and represented the “face” of programming. As computers became more popular, many women lost their jobs because of the abundance and availability of technology, and the fact that many people were learning computing skills from home.

What happened in the 1980s?
As personalized computers gained popularity in the 1980s for general use, computers were being brought home. As expected, the original computers that were created were very limited in abilities and scope – it had few functions, but consumers were delightfully curious about them all the same. Since marketing efforts were limited, original marketing tactics were targeted towards boys and men. The games that were available on PC at the time were shooter games, designed for male consumption. Even in the 80s, males were more likely to purchase computers than females. Women did not represent the target market, and were excluded from advertisements and their curiosity ignored.

As time went on, hundreds of thousands of men became more familiar with computers in general because of these early decisions made by computing companies.

Comparing genders in STEM and non-STEM fields in 2016, we are given the data below:

37% of STEM graduates were female.
Women are more likely to pursue science-oriented STEM degrees rather than computer science, engineering, or math.
Female workers in STEM tend to be lower paid.

Women now represent 47% of the workforce, as compared to 38% in the 1970s, yet the percentage of women in computer science-relating careers have steadily decreased since the 1980s. In the last fifteen years alone, the percentage of women working in these professions have dropped from 35% to 25%.

Now that we’ve faced the facts, let us initiate the change and put our effort into reversing the effect history, marketing, and stereotypes have created.

Yup. You heard us.

Where are all the ladies?

As representatives of the BC tech space, our Inclusivity and Diversity Team has recognized one overall trend throughout our industry: there are very few women here.

This realization sparked curiosity and concern within our industry. Thus, we decided to investigate.

According to this article published by Small Business Trends, only 20% of jobs in the tech industry are held by women. Looking at the same statistic on a smaller, more relevant scale using BC Tech Association’s TechTalent BC Report, we can observe similar results: in BC, women only make up 15-20% of all tech jobs. Not a huge difference.

Why are the number of female employees in tech so low?

We have come up with a few assumptions as to why women are underrepresented in the tech space.

First, we attribute this trend to the lack of representation of women in technology. There are few female role models in the industry (but when we do have her, she’s the CEO of YouTube. Booyah!), and successful female leaders are stretched far and wide. We think that young girls who show interest in pursuing technology at a young age often grow up without external motivation to reinforce that decision, thus they slowly lose interest over time and will choose to change careers.

Second, we are aware of the stereotypes that surround the tech space. Generally, we do not see a woman when we envision a generic computer science major or a computer programmer. Instead, we suggest that the vision is of a man, one most likely sporting glasses and fits a “geeky” characterization. We even Googled “computer programmer” in Google images and this is what came up. He’s pretty much exactly who I see when I think “programmer”. There is an invisible barrier holding women back from entering the tech industry, solely because recruiters and managers have a stereotype bias that women are not the “right fit”.

Finally, women may be hesitant to join the tech space because they are aware of the statistics around their underrepresentation, and find being a visible minority in the workplace unattractive and unappetizing. Knowing that the technology industry is a “man’s world” can be extremely off-putting for some women, and although there was initial interest in the industry, that interest fizzles out due to internal pressures.

These are a few reasons we came up with on why women could be reluctant to pursue careers in tech. By simply being a woman, she experiences a plethora of barriers to entry to the tech industry.

That’s not very fair now, is it?

We have now laid this ongoing issue on the table, and we are wholly invested in finding ways to tackle this issue and making the tech space more welcoming for women. We wish to empower women to join tech, because we miss them!

Bookmark our blog and stayed tuned as we dive deeper into this issue. Follow us on our journey to find ways we can do our part to battle the stigma around women in tech, and what changes we wish to see in the industry. See you soon!