Empowering Women in Tech: Celebrating International Women’s Day

Today we celebrate International Women’s Day and the incredible women who drive and keep the IT Industry ticking. From software engineers to cybersecurity experts, women are driving innovation, breaking barriers and shaping the future of technology in profound ways.

In the past three years, we have experienced significant growth in female representation across the business. While every individual at RDS contributes to our success, we want to take a moment to spotlight a few of our heroes.

We asked them what International Women’s Day (IWD2024) means to them, here is what they had to say.

Georgia Scott – Commercial Operations

Georgia has worked at RDS for 9 months and works in an analytical role that focuses on the commerciality of contracts.

What does IWD2024 mean to you Georgia: “Recognition that women can do anything a man can do and that women have come a long way to fight for that recognition over the years.”

“For me, it’s about teaching and educating the younger generations that we can do anything we set our minds to. There is still a long way to go to continue to create that diversity, but RDS have got a good balance across the business. Stereotypical roles like service roles and engineers are underrepresented still, it’s improving, but there is a long way to go.”

Eda Aksu – Senior Sales Order Administrator

Eda said: “It’s a day to think about the achievements of females in the world today, there is evidence everywhere that it’s improved so much. Even from an ethnicity point of view, there is so much diversity in business, and I see equality in gender and ethnicity in the treatment of people.”

Eda also mentioned that she sees this in her native Turkey, saying it’s becoming a global agenda issue and one we need to continually move forward with. In her 8 years at RDS, she’s seen so much change in what was once a very male-dominated environment. Women, need to continue moving upward up the ladder on their own merits.

Kuljit Haire – IT Support Desk Manager

Kuljit was promoted to IT and Customer Services Desk Manager at the start of the year, managing a key business team of 8 people, and providing essential support to RDS’s clients.

Kuljit commented: “Men have always been recognised for their achievements whereas women were underrepresented. We’re seeing this change now, over the last 5 to 10 years we’re beginning to see more women broadly across the business, a far cry from one of her previous roles where there were just 2 women in the business.”

Kuljit uses the word ‘Manager’ as an example. In the past, the word suggests a male, but today more managers are female, so the stereotype doesn’t fit anymore.

Accelerating through her career, starting out as an apprentice, Kuljit comments that today there are more female apprentices than ever coming through in technical roles, suggesting the stereotypes of women only going into certain types of roles like admin and customer services, are finally changing.

She added: “We need to talk more about women and praise young female entrepreneurs, rather than focusing on men all the time. Young people need to be better educated, everyone is on a journey and no two journeys are the same, so we have to be mindful of the individual too.”

Lisa-Anne Whitehouse – Customer Engagement Manager

Lisa-Anne has worked at RDS for 7 years in a client-facing role, which can sometimes come with its challenges.

Lisa-Anne explains: “Although the world has changed for women in IT, I still feel I must work harder when meeting clients for the first time to earn respect as most men can appear surprised to see me. Once I’ve demonstrated my technical expertise you can feel the situation change. With existing clients there is a professional respect which is maintained, it has changed a lot, but there is still room for improvement.”

Claire McGinnell – Customer Engagement Manager

Claire joined RDS as a Customer Services Manager 5 years ago, having held management positions in the past. When she joined RDS there was only one other woman in customer services.

Claire comments that being in male dominated industries for most of her career, she’s become desensitised to what could sometimes be perceived as inappropriate, but society has changed. “There is a fine line between being offended and it being inappropriate.”

“The generations between 25-35 are reliable and you wouldn’t expect inappropriate behaviour, but it’s not unusual to hear comments from older generations although this has not happened in my experience at RDS.” Claire feels she’s had to work hard to make her way up the ladder in previous roles, but that’s a personal expectation on herself rather than it being a lack of equality.

Maria Brasso – Head of Finance

“It’s about recognition that women can achieve the same as men in society. Men used to control environments, but you can see today that there are so many more women making key decisions.”

“There has been progress, in particularly in senior business roles. Women can be on the same level as men and perform to the same standard.”

Maria started working at RDS 17 years ago, climbing the ladder to become Senior Head of Finance, reporting to Finance Director, Victoria Goryashina. “RDS has always treated me respectfully during my employment. We are a highly diverse company both in gender equality and ethnicity. “

“Today we have several men in finance and a woman running our IT team today, demonstrating our diversity. Although I do want to see the day when we have female engineers in the business too.”

“I’ve also seen male attitudes towards women change. Men do seek and value the female perspective and opinion more than they used to. There are still generational differences in male attitudes, but we’re 80% of the way there.”

“Elevating equality on the agenda has helped. Social media, people talking about it and raising its profile. In the past I think ignorance was often the issue, today everyone talks about it. Female salaries vs. male salaries is a good example. Because it’s highlighted, it’s finally being addressed.”

IWD 2024

We wish everyone a Happy International Women’s Day! Looking at Georgia, Eda, Kuljit, Lisa-Anne, Claire and Maria’s journeys and insights reminds us of the progress we’ve made and the work that still lies ahead in achieving true diversity and equality in the IT industry. Let’s continue the conversation about the importance of diversity and equality in tech!