The gender imbalance in the Tech industry is real and it’s quantifiable.
Summary
Gender parity: “It’s great to see so many women in Tech, absolutely killing it!”
Just 17% of tech jobs in the UK are held by women. It’s the same in Germany, with France and Spain faring only marginally better. In tech leadership roles, the percentages are even lower.
Let’s forget the numbers for a minute, though. Women who do work in technical roles don’t need official statistics to know they’re in a small minority. They see the gender imbalance with their own eyes. Here, they tell their story in their own words.
In this article, four women working in Qonto’s Tech teams describe some of the obstacles they faced earlier in their careers and how they overcame them. They explain what Qonto is doing to ensure women are on the same level playing field as men when it comes to a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
Why? Because we at Qonto believe society needs to talk more and talk louder about the issue of gender parity in STEM careers. Raising awareness of the problem is an essential step on the path to solving it. What’s more, achieving gender parity will only improve the performance of our teams. Jessica, Imen, Ivana and Marianne have trodden the path themselves and want more women to join them.
Here’s what they told us.
The biggest difficulty I’ve faced entering the Tech world is the number of men around you, which could be discouraging at first. During my university years there were more than 200 students of which only about 5 were women.
- Jessica Zappa, Qonto Backend Engineer, based in Italy
There are barriers to tech that women face. The lack of female representation in technical roles made it harder to see myself succeeding in such a male-dominated field. There were also instances where I felt underestimated or taken less seriously than male counterparts, which caused me to doubt myself.
- Imen Ben Arbi, Qonto Lead Frontend, based in Germany
While I don’t think I ever really felt any difficulty entering the tech world as a woman, I did feel in a previous job a sense of ‘men-can-do-things-better’ attitude, where women would not be given much choice when it comes to decision-making. The potential for them to do great things was not nurtured and their work was always double-checked, and put under greater scrutiny than men’s work.
- Ivana Dunisijevic, Qonto Security Engineer, based in France
Female under-representation can create a kind of vicious circle: when women see they make up a small minority, they can sometimes feel there must be a good reason for this.
Women tend to censor themselves, or have an imposter syndrome about being in Tech. I’ve experienced this myself. I was good at school, both in maths and literature but when the moment came to choose between a scientific path and a literary one, I doubted my ability to succeed in the sciences; it felt to me that it was more meant for boys.
Also, as soon as I became a manager and started recruiting for my team, I noticed that, even when women had the same skills test performance, they would rate themselves much lower than men. Where a man might say “I’m super proficient at Python”, a woman with the same result would say something like “I know some bits of Python”.
- Marianne Ducournau, Qonto Head of Data Science, based in France
Finding women for Tech roles
Finding women for Tech roles
So how do we change this? It’s a question Qonto’s teams have been grappling with for some time and, while we can’t claim to have found the perfect answer, we can at least share what’s worked well so far.
Before taking action, we needed to listen. It was through discussing barriers to gender parity with female employees and with DEI partners that the team began to identify potential solutions. The first of these lies at the start of the recruitment process, with Qonto’s Talent Acquisition team.
Qonto’s Talent Acquisition team makes an extra effort to recruit women for tech roles on level terms with men. They seek out women who might not have dared apply in the first place if they weren’t sourced. Concretely, it means that when Qonto opens, say, a software engineering role, a vast majority of candidates are men, but the TA team doesn’t just interview these “inbound” male candidates; it goes to great lengths to reach out on LinkedIn or other social media to women who would also be a good fit for the role.
- Marianne Ducournau
The TA team understood that casting the net wider to reach more candidates meant changing the net. That starts by rethinking the job advertisement to make the position more accessible to women. According to feedback collected in an April 2023 survey of women working at Qonto, HR policies such as parental benefits were the main concern for 54% of respondents when they applied for positions at Qonto
I was mainly attracted to Qonto’s job description: for my role it didn’t require any past experience with the stack languages and it was stating that if the candidate didn’t have any experience then he/she would build it along the way. I appreciated the open-mindedness of the description, especially since nowadays most of the job requirements look like a grocery list.
- Jessica Zappa
Qonto stood out by fostering a collaborative and supportive atmosphere encouraging individual growth and creativity. The non-salary benefits, particularly the parental policies, played a significant role in my job search. The full remote-working policy has been especially important in making my life as a mother much easier.
- Imen Ben Arbi
The next step, the interviewing process, is equally important - for women just as it is for men. Transparency and clarity are the key ingredients.
The approach to interviews and skill testing is very structured and straight-to-the-point, yet not too long. I was interviewed and got an offer all within a week, so if you want to go fast, you can! It’s important not to keep the candidate waiting; rather, showing interest in them, in turn shows them you’re serious about them.
- Ivana Dunisijevic
Compared to other recruitment processes I’ve experienced - which have sometimes lasted months and left me feeling I’d wasted my time and effort - Qonto provides a clear and well-scheduled format. At the beginning of it I knew what the steps were, how I would be evaluated, and had an estimate of how long it would take. After each step, I had a call with the recruiter to share feedback and answer any questions I might have. I felt that my application was important and that the company valued me.
- Jessica Zappa
Keeping women in Tech roles
Keeping women in Tech roles
It’s one thing attracting more women into Tech; it’s another thing being able to keep them there. It’s estimated that up to half of women leave a career in Tech within 10 years because of company culture and the ‘glass ceiling’ that prevents them from rising to the top posts.
Right away I felt women and men were treated the same at Qonto. I felt supported in my journey from the very beginning, and can confidently say, I have an amazing team! I was pleasantly surprised to see so many women were already present in the Tech teams here, and they were killing it! It’s not that there were enablers specifically tailored for women, it just generally feels like a genuinely gender-equal environment.
- Ivana Dunisijevic
Qonto has created a culture that empowers individuals based on their skills and contributions rather than their gender. Moreover, Qonto has implemented various enablers of career advancement for women, such as leadership development initiatives and a commitment to pay equity. These efforts create equal opportunities for everyone to grow and thrive within the organization.
- Imen Ben Arbi
Role models can be an important factor in making women feel that they belong in a Tech environment. This means making women visible at the top end of the hierarchy.
I’ve been at Qonto for a year now and haven’t noticed any barriers to women being able to advance their careers. One very positive and encouraging sign for me is that after Qonto joined forces with Penta last summer, Penta’s CTO, Luise Linden joined us as our VP Product Engineering. Luise is extremely talented, very impressive professionally speaking, and also very kind. All these skills, plus the fact that she has a very high position in Tech, have set her as an example and an inspiration for all Qonto Tech women, including myself.
- Marianne Ducournau
Through Qonto’s partnerships with the likes of Becomtech, ADA Tech School in France and StrongHer in Italy, the goal is to raise awareness of the gender imbalance in Tech. It provides Qontoers themselves with the chance to be the role models and mentors of the future.
At Qonto I’ve participated in different initiatives to promote women in Tech, starting in high school for instance. With BecomTech, I presented my background and my work in Data to several girls in high school, encouraging them to follow their dream of working with maths and to not worry about being in the minority in their chosen paths.
- Marianne Ducournau
A few months after joining, I saw the initiative to support the Becomtech association and decided to take part as a round table speaker in the “Create your startup”, “Round table” and “Public Speaking” workshops. It’s a form of a summer coding school for high school girls to develop Tech skills. The goal is to present the various Tech domains to girls at exactly the right stage, I would say (because it’s when I discovered coding), and inspire them to pursue Tech careers, develop their passion and not feel intimidated into believing that it’s a not an industry fit for girls!
- Ivana Dunisijevic
One of the pillars of Qonto’s company culture (known as The Qonto Way) is continuous learning. This is powered by regular feedback and has been applied to the People team’s strategy to arrive at true gender parity.
I know Qonto is committed to reaching gender parity in those departments and roles where it is harder to find female candidates. In fact, one of our OKRs for this year is to increase the percentage of women in the company and leadership roles. Of course, it is not an easily achievable goal, because it is influenced by the number of women on the job market. Nonetheless, Qonto is actively trying to improve the recruitment process to fit all genders. For example, last month I participated in a survey to get insights from female employees on how the recruitment process was and how it could be improved, and based on the feedback received some actions were actually taken. I hope that our contribution will help to see results in the near future.
- Jessica Zappa
Join us on our journey
Join us on our journey
At Qonto, we're still on our journey to true parity, even if we’re proud of the great strides we’ve already made. Do you want to join us and help us get there?
We take seriously our investment in HR policies that reflect people of all backgrounds, which is why we provide Qontoers with access to everything from extended paid leave for parents to childcare benefits.
If you want to be part of this journey, then we would love to hear from you. The place to start is right here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark worked for 12 years in broadcast journalism before making the switch to business audiences. A Qontoer since 2021, his focus is on writing copy that speaks frankly and directly to customers.
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