Only 4% of secondary school girls in the UK name tech as their top career choice, and just 27% would consider it at all, against 61% of boys (Women in Technology UK). Ask most parents why, and you get a version of “girls just aren’t as interested in computers.” Ask most schools, and you get “we need more STEM engagement.”
Both answers let everyone off the hook. Neither matches what actually moves the number.
The problem isn’t interest. It’s who they’ve seen doing the job.
Women make up roughly 29% of the UK tech workforce overall, but that figure hides a steep drop-off further up. Women hold around 21% of senior tech roles, and in senior technical developer positions specifically, representation falls to about 16% (Women in Technology UK, 2026 Overview). A 14-year-old girl who has never seen a woman doing a technical job, in person, up close, has no reason to picture herself in one. She can hear “STEM is great for girls” in an assembly every year and it won’t do what one actual conversation with one actual woman in a technical role does.
That’s the gap a “STEM is fun” campaign can’t close. It’s not a messaging problem. It’s an exposure problem.
I didn’t know my own job existed until after I’d left education. I dropped out of college, went into an apprenticeship almost by accident, and found my way into GIS, spatial data work, the bit where messy real-world information gets turned into something a system can use, without anyone ever having told me the role was an option. I found my feet the hard way, learning on the job rather than being pointed at a path.
Looking back, I wish someone had shown me that route earlier, not to change what I ended up doing, but to skip the years of finding it by accident. That’s the gap this piece is about. Not a lack of ability or interest, a lack of anyone showing me the job existed before I had to go looking for it myself.
— Eilish, founder, Essex Women in Tech
What doesn’t work
Generic encouragement doesn’t work, because it’s not specific enough to argue with or believe. Telling a girl “you’d be great at coding” when she’s never seen what a day in a technical role looks like is asking her to take it on faith.
Careers fairs with a single tech company stand don’t work either, not because the people staffing them aren’t well-meaning, but because one stand can’t stand in for “this is a normal thing women do.” A teenager needs to see it more than once, from more than one source, to believe it applies to her.
And leaving it to schools alone doesn’t work, because most schools don’t have a technical woman on staff to point to. If the only adult modelling a tech career is a man, “girls don’t picture themselves in tech” isn’t a mystery. It’s the predictable result.
What actually shifts it
Put a real person in front of her, not a poster. If you’re a parent, that might mean asking your own network: do you know a woman in a technical role who’d talk to your daughter for twenty minutes? It doesn’t need to be a formal mentorship scheme. It needs to be one real conversation, ideally more than one, with someone who can say what the job is actually like day to day, including the boring parts.
Make the job visible, not just the pitch. “Tech is a great career for women” is an opinion. “Here’s what I actually did this week” is evidence. If a girl can get into a workplace for even an hour, an office visit, a shadow day, a five-minute video call, that does more than any assembly. She’s not being sold something. She’s watching someone do it.
Say the job title, specifically. “Tech” is too vague to picture. GIS analyst, cybersecurity consultant, data engineer, product manager, none of these are on the careers wall at most schools, because most schools don’t know they exist as routes. A specific target is easier to aim at than a category.
Do it before the subject choices lock her out. The number of girls in England taking a GCSE in computing has more than halved since 2015, and of those who opt out, 74% say they simply didn’t enjoy the subject as taught, compared with 53% of boys (King’s College London). By the time GCSE options are picked, some routes are already narrower. If a girl decides at 13 that computing “isn’t for her,” she may never take the subject that would have made a later switch straightforward. The window to show her a different picture is earlier than most parents assume, not sixth form, not university open days.
Don’t make it a one-off. One inspiring talk from one visiting speaker is a nice afternoon. It’s not what shifts a career choice. What shifts it is a girl seeing more than one woman, more than once, doing more than one kind of technical work, until it stops looking exceptional and starts looking normal.
Don’t wait for the formal route. Not every girl who finds her way into tech does it through the expected path of GCSEs, A levels, and a computing degree. Some, like Eilish, get there through an apprenticeship, a career change, or a subject that looks unrelated on paper. If a girl doesn’t fit the standard pipeline, that’s not a sign tech isn’t for her, it’s a sign the pipeline is narrower than the range of people who could do the job well.
What this looks like in practice, this term
If you’re a parent reading this in September, the actionable version is small. Find one woman in a technical field, ask her for twenty minutes, and let your daughter ask the questions. Don’t script it as inspiration. Let it be ordinary. “What do you actually do on a Tuesday” is a better question than “why did you choose tech.”
If you’re a woman working in a technical role and reading this, the equivalent is just as small. Say yes when a friend, a school, or a group like ours asks you to talk to a room of teenagers. You are the visible person someone else’s daughter hasn’t met yet.
This is part of why Essex Women in Tech exists, not as a campaign but as a standing answer to “do you know anyone.” If you’re in Essex and looking for a real conversation with a woman in a technical role, get in touch. That’s the whole model: not a poster, a person.
References
- 8 facts about women in the tech industry, Women in Technology UK.
- Women in Technology & STEM in the UK (2026 Overview), Women in Technology UK.
- Stark decline in girls studying computing could harm the UK’s ambition to be a tech ‘superpower’, King’s College London, Nuffield Foundation-funded research.