Focusing on women in tech for International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day began as a protest, and that protest is still needed – a century later. Women in the UK earn a median hourly rate 11% less than men, but if they work in tech it’s nearer 16%.¹

This year’s theme for IWD is Embracing Equity. To check ourselves, we researched the current landscape for women in tech and reported the stats against Ticker’s own numbers to everyone in the business.

Read some extracts from Ticker’s Women in Tech report:

International Women’s Day started its life more than 100 years ago, as a protest for women’s rights in the workforce. It’s not just a day to turn to a woman and say, “Well done, woman!” – it’s a day to think about how we can continue the work to making the world more equitable. And that’s the theme for IWD this year: embracing equity. We hear these words used interchangeably all the time, but they’re actually different concepts. Equality means everyone has the same rights, like the right to vote. But equality doesn’t equal access. If it’s legal for everyone to vote but the government makes it difficult for certain groups, that’s equality with no equity – no opportunity to exercise their rights. Equity is about everyone having the same invitation, encouragement and help to take part in a facet of society.

If equity is about access and support, that needs to be a consideration in everything we do. At work, that means how we hire, how we support people to progress and how we all work together.

While we have even better results in these areas than in 2022, our next employee survey will include more granularity to make sure we’re not missing any imbalances in gender or race.

Something that makes Ticker accessible is working remote-first. This provides a far greater opportunity for people to join us, regardless of where they are, what their health situation is and what care responsibilities they have.

A major subject for IWD this year is women in tech – something we know a thing or two about. Tech, like insurance, is a male-dominated field. When you combine the two, it’s easy to see the issue could be compounded.
Women make up about half the UK labour market. But when you look at tech, just 26% of workers are female.

From our earliest days, Ticker set out to achieve an equal gender split for the business overall and particularly at leadership level, because it's vital for young women to see female role models. Right now, 43% of our staff are women. This obviously fluctuates as we hire, but it's still a big focus for us to keep this balanced. The median hourly rate for women generally is 11% less than for men, but it’s 16% in tech. Ninety-one percent of tech businesses pay men more than women. Another Ticker win to be proud of: we have overall pay parity at junior and senior levels. While the gender split at management level has improved in the UK as a whole, tech is lagging behind: just 12% of leadership roles are filled by women. At Ticker, 46% of our management roles are held by women.

Embracing equity is a guiding Ticker principle

As the numbers show, maintaining our gender balance (and pay) in leadership roles has been a huge focus since the beginning of Ticker. We set extremely high standards for ourselves, so we sometimes forget to recognise our progress.

We’ll never stop working on diversity and inclusion but today, we’re proud of how fully equity is embraced at Ticker.

“I’m very lucky to be surrounded by so many women in leadership roles at Ticker – in fact, nearly 50% of our leaders are women. We always wanted to have an equal gender split, and we’ll keep working to make sure it’s maintained.”
Richard King
Ticker founder and CEO

¹ Information Age

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March 8, 2023 10:16 am - Published by Ticker

Focusing on women in tech for International Women’s Day

Read some extracts from Ticker’s Women in Tech report:

Embracing equity is a guiding Ticker principle

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