Women in tech: step up, talk about your work and be more visible

It takes you a while to think of yourself as a minority. Early in my career in tech I didn't recognise gender inequality was a problem. I found that being a woman working in technology was sometimes a novelty that could be used to my advantage. I enjoyed working in male-dominated teams in the knowledge that being the only woman in the room meant I was affecting the dynamic and making a subtle but satisfying difference.

It wasn't until I started building my own teams and hiring talent that I saw this could be a problem. I was surprised by how differently men and women interview and sell themselves, and at the disparity between what men and women with the same experience and qualifications felt they were worth financially. There was no doubt: we were missing out on female talent.

I've worked in tech for nearly 20 years, and I'm yet to encounter a company in my sector that doesn't have a huge male bias in the software team, and often in the management team too.

There's always a giant air punch when we get a CV through from a female programmer in the Makielab office. We had four founders, two men and two women, when we started in 2011, and we've put a lot of effort into maintaining a 50:50 gender balance.

We have consistently managed to achieve that. But even as an air-punching tech start up proactively seeking female talent, we find ourselves with an entirely male game programming team, making mobile games for young female gamers. This follows a pattern that is seen repeatedly in game studios: male dominated tech teams, and a minority of women in the art teams and in marketing and PR.

What does this imbalance mean for the products that are being created? Most obviously it means that we're lacking a broader perspective; surely if females are mostly playing casual social games (and they are), then females should be playing a big part in making them too? The female artists in our team understand the target audience and how young girls socialise and play from an intimately personal perspective, and that's valuable to us all.

It wouldn't concern me if I thought that girls were just not interested in coding or developing technology, but there are subtle forces at play from a very young age that discourage girls from this path. Sometimes that discouragement is obvious.

When I chose design technology at school I found myself the only girl in a 30-strong classroom of boys, described by my teacher as "a rose between thorns". When they wrapped the hairiest boy in duct tape and climbed onto tables to hang each others' bags from the light fittings, I nerded away in the corner finishing a technical drawing of a motorbike. Most projects were designed to engage 13-year-old boys, and as a 13-year-old girl I felt like an anomaly, one who really liked technical drawing but found motorbikes utterly dull.

In our attempt to maintain gender equality at work, it helps that we have two female founders and a female chair in Martha Lane Fox. We're parent-friendly and offer flexible working hours so both male and female employees are better able to fit child-wrangling around their jobs. Working remotely, job-sharing, part-time hours – all forms of flexibility are accommodated. We do what we can to make work fit snugly around life, not only because we're nice people but also because happier employees are more productive.

As a company we support schools wherever we can: by the age of 10 it is already too late to change the way some girls feel about their own potential. Just a few weeks ago a young girl joined us for behavioural testing of a new mobile game. "Is this the place where the games are made?" she asked. We said it was, and asked if she'd like to make games one day. She responded that she couldn't do that because she found the buttons confusing, but that she was sure some of the boys in her class could do it.

What can we do for young women who have already decided that tech is a man's job? The problem seems rooted in how we raise and teach our children about who they are – and what they have the potential to become. The toys we buy them, the way we speak to them: girls are told they're pretty, boys are told they're brave; girls are bossy while boys are strong.

This will take time to change but good things are happening, including the recent 'Ban Bossy' campaign. There's lots of work being done in schools to encourage girls into science and technology careers, and brilliant initiatives such as Code Club.

So what can those already in the tech industry do? I feel personally that the best thing I can do is make myself visible. The more that women like me are seen in the industry, the more relevant our jobs become to younger women.

I recently spoke at an industry event where I was the only female speaker. The organiser told me that of the eight women he'd ask to speak, seven had either declined or pulled out. This is something we can change. More women must step up and talk about their work, their achievements, and share their unique perspective.

We can raise this issue up the agenda, be aware of it when we're recruiting, in the way that we structure interviews and design work environments, so that we never discourage women and always make opportunities available to everyone. And hopefully, the next time a 10-year-old girl visits a tech office, we'll be able to introduce her to the brilliant men and women in our game programming team.

Jo Roach is co-founder of Makielab

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