Diversity is crucial to innovation

Fernanda Catarino is head of channel, alliances and ecosystem Europe, product business at Fujitsu. She notes that diversity is crucial to drive innovation.

“Being able to draw on a wide variety of perspectives and ideas allows us to challenge established ideas and to innovate more effectively. We also know that diverse companies perform better, are more successful at recruiting and retaining employees, and have more engaged workforces. But despite this, women remain underrepresented in IT.”

Catarino too attributes the gender imbalance to the false impression that a career in technology is more suitable for men, or for people with deep technical skills.

“That’s clearly not the case at all. But these false beliefs are stopping many women from exploring the rich possibilities offered by a career in technology. I would go so far as to argue that technology companies present incredible opportunities for anyone in any non-technical professions.”

These could be anything from lawyers to human resources to marketing team members.

“It’s also a self-perpetuating problem,” she adds. “If women or people from different minority groups don’t see themselves represented in various positions, it’s much less likely that they will consider them as current or future employment possibilities. As an industry we should do a better job of shining a light on the many valuable contributions of extraordinary people from many different backgrounds. This will have the effect of creating potential role models and ensuring that the industry benefits from more diverse future generations.”