Originally published here.

This report sheds light on diversity and inclusion in UK tech companies

We found that the state of diversity among directors of UK tech companies is unbalanced, and for the first time this research backs up with data-based findings, anecdotal reports of unrepresentative directorship.

The characteristics of tech directors are correlated with the performance of their companies. We found a significant relationship between the gender of directors and company turnover, and nationality and investment raised. We attempt to unpick why this might be the case.

Despite a burgeoning number of interventions that aim to shed light on, and address gender disparity in the boardroom, the proportion of men and women being appointed directors of tech companies in the UK has remained almost exactly the same since 2000.

The state of diversity in UK tech

Diversity and inclusion in the tech sector has received much attention over recent years. From encouraging young women to consider STEM careers to addressing gender gaps in tech boardrooms – a number of interventions have aimed to address a perceived imbalance in representation of some groups.

The Tech Nation Report challenged our perceptions about the people that work in the tech sector. We broke the stereotype that all people working in tech are millennials, in fact, this is only the case in East London – not the UK as a whole. However, we also found that the tech sector is still in the throes of a diversity dilemma when it comes to gender, and this has not really changed over recent years.

But what is the cause of this seemingly intractable imbalance in tech? Is this something that is being driven from the top of companies? If so, what can directorship data tell us about diversity and inclusion, and does it offer a potential solution for addressing some of the broader issues around representation and inclusion in the sector as a whole?

We explore the state of diversity among tech directors in the UK. We look at gender, age and tech sub-sector to unpick trends about the characteristics of directors. And we look at how this has changed over time, to see if the problem is being chipped away, or if it’s getting worse.

When it comes to gender, 77% of tech director roles are fulfilled by men, and 23% women. In the the wider economy, 71% of directors are men, and 29% are women.

While tech directorship is lagging behind the rest of the economy, the tech workforce more broadly is made up of 81% men, and 19% women – meaning that tech leadership has better gender balance than those working in tech.

There may be a number of reasons for this, one of which might be that diversity is promoted on boards in the interest of public relations – company boards are far more visible than their workers.

This finding has a number of implications, some of which challenge how we currently think about promoting diversity. It is often cited that to promote better representation of underrepresented groups in the workforce, boards should lead by example – predicated on the idea that diversity will trickle down. Given that the data shows that boards are more diverse than the workforce, this could either indicate that the workforce has yet to feel the effects of the trickle down phenomenon, or that the hypothesis that ‘diverse board = diverse workforce’ does not hold water in reality.

Baby on board

Going beyond gender, we found that tech company directors are younger than non-tech, by an average of 4 years – but more interestingly, the mean age of directors in both tech and non-tech is north of 45 years. This suggests that age is linked to experience in the appointment of directors. We also found that tech companies are, other things being equal, younger than non-tech firms, and directors at tech firms have been in post for a shorter period of time.

Foreign bodies

We found that tech leadership is highly international. Tech directorships are composed 18% of people with a non-British nationality, compared to 13% in the wider economy. This is higher than the proportion of non-UK nationals working in the tech sector – which is 15% compared to 10% across the whole of the UK economy.

Breaking down tech

The dynamics of directorships across the tech sector are far from uniform. In some sectors, for example, there are much higher proportions of men than women than in tech as a whole. We have already seen the stark contrast between the proportion male and female directors in the games industry – with 87% men, and 13% women.

But there are other interesting differences between directors in tech sub-sectors, and both average director age, and tenure vary dramatically by sector. In Telecommunications, for instance – which is highly male dominated – directors tend to be older, on average, just under 50 years of age, and they work for companies approaching 10 years old. In contrast, in gaming (58210 – Publishing of computer games), directors are under 40 and are associated with younger companies – on average, under 4 years old. Finally, directors in computer manufacturing firms have the highest average age, nearly 52 years – and occupy positions in older companies, which – on average – have been incorporated for 15 years.

The data from this project is open!

Great news. All data featured in this project is available online for non-commercial use by third parties.  The data can be accessed through the data.world platform. If you use the data, please let us know. We would love to showcase your work. A full methodology can be found on the data.world too.

If you'd like know why we are doing this, check out our blog.

You can read the complete article here.