On Wednesday 27th of November we had the pleasure to be hosted by The Embassy of Hungary, a beautiful building in the very lovely Belgravia, London.
A delicious breakfast of pastries and coffee was followed by a panel discussion on “Women in a Technology Driven World” moderated by Melanie Seymour, Head of BlackRock Budapest and Head of Global Client Service and WIBF Advisory Board Member.
Our expert panel included: Julianne Miles MBE - CEO & Co-Founder, Women Returners Anna Brailsford - CEO, Code First: Girls Clare Black - Director of Corporate Affairs & Communications, Innovate Finance Mr Akos Janza - MD, Application Management and Quality Assurance, Head of Office Budapest, MSCI Inc
Our takeaways from the day were:
• Only 3% of investment in fintech goes to women currently. Innovate Finance plan to double that next year.
• 78% of girls at school can’t name a famous female tech person (a role model) so… ultimately you can’t be what you can’t see.
• In fintech women are 1/3 of workforce but only 17% of them are in senior positions.
• Female graduates from computer science and engineering consist of 20% (80% of those graduates are men). The number hasn’t changed in the last 5 years. As a result, only 3% of women choose a career in technology as their first choice, hence organisation such as Code First: Girls would like to encourage women to consider technology as a career, regardless of what they studied.
• Gender pay gap in tech is around 23%.
• Data shows that when companies invest in women led companies the return is greater and faster!
• 50% of workforce in the BlackRock Hungarian office don’t have financial backgrounds, Melanie believes the mindset, behaviour, desire and ability to learn is all it takes.
The panel discussion was followed by a few questions allowing the attendees to get into depth of the areas of their interest.
It was a highly interactive, engaging and informative panel! It’s a shame we couldn’t spend more time with our high-profile panelists, however, they welcomed one to one questions and mingled with us over coffee afterwards.
Huge thanks to Ambassador Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky, our panellists and to The Hungarian Embassy for hosting in their beautiful building.