International Women’s Day: Men dominate the tech and digital industry, but not really.
In a report published by Adeva IT back in 2018, women held only 25% of all the jobs in the tech industry, despite women making up almost half of the total workforce. Additionally, only 5% of all tech startups are owned by women.
In short, yes, the digital and tech industry is very much dominated by men even today. However, even being a minority workforce, women are making huge contributions in this space today.
In celebration of the International Women’s Day 2021, we’ll be taking turning the spotlight on 5 highly capable women in the tech space who has played a vital part in the continued advancement of the industry.
1. Sheryl Sandberg
Whenever we talk about Facebook, we think of the founder, Mark Zuckeberg. Few are aware that the COO position at Facebook is held by Sheryl Sandberg since 2008.
Sheryl has a hand in helping Facebook grow from a $56 million loss in 2008 to $18.5 billion in profits in 2019. Additionally, her focus on positioning Facebook as a platform for small business advertising helped increase ad revenue by 27% during 2019, to $69.7 billion.
Sheryl is also all for women empowerment in the workforce. She started the Lean In movement with the goal of breaking down barriers that hinder women from pursuing their dreams.
When asked in an interview, “What does it take to run a successful business?“, Sheryl says that she believes in ruthless prioritization. Ruthless prioritization means only focusing on the very best ideas. It means figuring out the 10 things on your list and, if you can’t do all 10, doing the top two really well.
2. Susan Wojcicki
Perhaps most of us are familiar with Susan as the current CEO of YouTube. But did you know that Susan Wojcicki is in fact Google’s sixteenth employee?
In fact, Susan Wojcicki was the landlord who rented her garage to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google. Wojcicki later took on the role as Google’s first marketing manager and the rest is history.
Among Wojcicki’s most notable contributions are the development of AdSense and the acquiring of YouTube. In 2003, she suggested that Google’s ad offerings should extend beyond search results to also include blogs and websites. The product known as AdSense today brought in over US$ 100billion in revenue in 2018.
But more importantly, was Wojcicki’s proposal to acquire YouTube in 2006 for US$1.65 billion. Today, YouTube is expected to be valued at around US$300 billion. Who knows where YouTube would be today if it was not for Wojcicki.
The next time you turn on YouTube for some free entertainment, be sure to thank the lady behind it, Susan Wojcicki.
3. Lisa Su
Lisa Su is the current CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) which is a market leader in producing some of the world’s best computer processors.
If you are running an AMD powered laptop, you have Lisa Su to thank. Lisa took over the role of CEO at a time where AMD was on its brink of bankruptcy back in 2014. Since assuming the role as CEO, Lisa has been able to help AMD bounce back and is now even ahead of Intel in certain areas.
Similar to Sheryl, much of what Lisa had to do was to prioritise and focus on what AMD is really good at. The company decided to make a big bet on high-performance computing architecture. A decision that proved to have paid off.
4. Surina Shukri
Malaysia has its fair share of prominent women in the digital and tech space. Surina Shukri is the current CEO of the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).
MDEC is tasked with organising and leading Malaysia’s Digital Economy forward. With the recent announcement of the MyDigital Blueprint, MDEC has an important role in ensuring the continual growth of Malaysia’s digital landscape.
Some of the notable initiatives since her appointment include:
- In May 2020, MDEC organised e-Dagang Expo (eDX) a week-long virtual event that engaged over 500,000 micro-entrepreneurs and SMEs looking to take their offline operations to the online space. Partnering with global e-commerce giants, we aimed to address the urgent needs of MSMEs to adopt e-commerce to better mitigate the immediate impact of COVID-19 and beyond.
- At the same time, MDEC also launched eBerkat, a platform to increase SME and B40 awareness and access to SLIP (Savings, Lending, Investment, Payment) digital financial services and instruments. 2,000 MSMEs were onboarded and 13% successfully secured funding.
- In addition, investments have been seen in the digital sector in Malaysia, from January to June 2020 across multiple initiatives such as National IoT Framework (RM141.4 million), National Big Data Analytics Framework (RM264.4 million), The Global Testbed Initiative (RM124.5 million).
(Source: DigitalNewsAsia)
5. Datuk Yasmin binti Mahmood
Another Malaysian powerhouse on the list is Datuk Yasmin binti Mahmood. Datuk Yasmin has an extensive list of experience working with tech and digital giants. She previously served as general manager of Hewlett Packard Malaysia, general manager of Dell Malaysia, managing director of Microsoft Malaysia, and CEO of MDEC.
Currently, Datuk Yasmin is appointed as an independent non-executive chairman at POS Malaysia and more recently has also been appointed as Chair of Heriot-Watt University Malaysia’s board of directors.
Datuk Yasmin’s vast knowledge and experience in the tech and digital world is invaluable to the country and she continues to find different ways to help propel Malaysia’s digital growth forward be it in logistics or education.
Final Thoughts
It is through the diversity of genders and races do we truly progress as humans. These passion-driven women featured in this article is a prime example of what women are capable of bringing to the table.
In line with this year’s International Women’s Day hashtag, #choosetochallenge, we do think it is important for us to challenge the status quo of hiring decisions, workplace ethics and even educational opportunities.
Breaking down barriers and empowering women to pursue their passion and dreams is an effort for all to partake in.
