'Not enough women investing in tech career' says IBM VP of ecosystem

Alison Say told CRN that things can be improved in the partner ecosystem to change this

IBM's vice president of ecosystem in the UK and Ireland says there is "a lot to try and improve" in the partner ecosystem to bring more women into the technology sector.

Alison Say told CRN that Big Blue has made "huge investment" externally and is "really positive" about the diversity of talent coming in.

But she said there is "still not enough" women in the IT marketplace with a shortage coming into the technology sector.

"I've been fortunate enough to recruit a large amount of external people into IBM," Say said.

"But still not enough women are deciding to invest in a technology career. I think in the partner ecosystem, we can do a lot to try and improve that and change that trajectory."

CRN research into gender diversity among top UK resellers has shown the channel has modestly narrowed its own gender imbalance.

Among the 46 UK IT solutions providers that report the relevant pay gap data, the mean pay gap has shrunk by almost two per cent - from 24.4 to 22.2 - since 2018.

Meanwhile, women make up on average just 29 per cent of the workforce of UK IT solution providers.

This has, however, increased since pay gap reporting began in 2018 - the average percentage of female staff working in the industry rose from 27.6 to 29.1 per cent during that four-year period.

Say says IBM is looking to bring more women into the industry by skilling the talent pool up and putting them out in its partner market "as part of their learning rotation".

"There's a huge opportunity for us to educate, skill up and push the pipeline of talent into our partner ecosystem, give them extra skills and bring them back in and continue that rotation so there's this constant flow of new ideas, new energy and growth in skills," she said.

Say added that she felt IBM has done a "really good job" in the last 12 months of investing in a development talent pool amid skill shortages in the industry.

"This is about building the future generation of IBM," she said.

"We're investing early on in bringing young talent into the team, buddying them up with more senior IBMers across our sales and technical organisation and working with our partners to make sure that we've got that talent pipeline for the future."