Women pivoting to digital

The Women Pivoting to Digital Taskforce brings together business, government, third sector, and industry groups to bring more attention to and action around supporting women from non-technical backgrounds to pivot to digital roles.  

This Taskforce will run for two years starting from April 2024, and will focus on supporting women with five years' non-related workforce experience or more transition into a digital career.  

In almost every specialist digital role across all sectors of the economy, women are significantly underrepresented. There will be one woman for every 128 tech roles by 2025, according to Tech Talent Charter. 

In the artificial intelligence and data science fields in particular, less than 25% of employees are women, according to the Alan Turing Institute. Additionally, women are more likely to be in lower wage and less technical roles compared to men. While there are ethical issues, this also creates wider societal issues. 

The aim of the taskforce is to address the underrepresentation of women working in digital careers by providing women with vital skills to future proof the digital workforce. 

The Taskforce has three workstreams:  

1. Workstream 1 Objective: Encourage businesses to reskill female employees into digital roles, particularly those at risk of redundancy, and to hire women into digital roles from non-technical backgrounds. Help employers understand the business case for upskilling/reskilling and hiring from non-traditional routes as well as understand future digital skills needs.
2. Workstream 2 Objective: support employers, training providers and local boroughs to attract and reskill women from non-technical backgrounds.
3. Workstream 3 Objective: Capitalise on the momentum around AI and digital skills by working with Government, regulators and academic experts to advocate for funding and using existing/develop new policy levers to greater support female career changers.