Justin Tomlinson MP recently joined the team from Little Miss Geek, an organisation who work to get more young women involved in the tech industry, for the launch of their 'HER in Hero Campaign' in Westminster.
The purpose of the campaign is to celebrate female heroes of past and present, in order to inspire young girls to become our female heroes of the future, as a part of Ada Lovelace Day on October 15th. Little Miss Geek is providing resources to teachers so they can incorporate female heroes into the curriculum and their assemblies.
The campaign is asking for schools across the UK to host a HER in Hero assembly, and Little Miss Geek have already reached 5,000 girls.
Currently, the UK’s tech workforce is only 17% female, and over the last 10 years this has been dropping by 0.5% each year. If the UK continues at this rate, by 2043 there will be less than 1% women working in technology despite more women being big consumers of technology.
Technology is shaping the future for all industries, so it is essential we increase diversity as this leads to greater innovation - addressing technology’s gender divide is simply smart economics.
Justin Tomlinson MP said: "I am hugely supportive of Little Miss Geek and the fantastic work they do promoting the tech industry to young women. I've seen first-hand how inspiring the group is and how their work is pushing a generation of young women to work in an industry they might not previously have considered."
Belinda Parmar, Founder of Little Miss Geek, said: "We have spent the last three years in inner city London schools understanding why girls are not considering a career in technology. One of the key issues is the perception of the people who work in technology as pizza guzzling nerds who can't get girlfriends. Little Miss Geek is changing that with its HER in Hero campaign, after school tech clubs, enrichment day programme and by providing resources for teachers to inspire our next generation of Ada Lovelace's. In one of our partner schools, we have increased the number of girls taking GCSE Computing by 52%."
