If there were a general election tomorrow (or next week?), 35.3% of women in tech would vote Labour, followed by 19.1% who’d vote Green, with the same percentage saying they don’t yet know who they’d vote for, so found a member survey conducted by the online community Ada’s List.
The Conservatives would be near the bottom of the pile on 11.8%, followed by the Liberal Democrats on 7.4%. A further 7.4% said they would not be voting at all.
But overall, 56.1% of those surveyed do not align themselves with any particular party, with 62.1% saying they don’t know which party represents the needs of women working in technology.
‘Women’s issues’, like parental leave and equal pay, are still key factors for those surveyed, with 60.6% saying they are very important, compared to the 34.8% who said strengthening the tech sector was a decisive issue.
Education and employment in the tech sector are also still on the agenda, with 47% saying they do not think women have equal access to opportunities here. Nearly 70% of the women surveyed said they would not vote for a party that didn’t have women in tech at its heart.
While half of those surveyed agree that the government knows tech is important for the economy, 59.1% said they don’t trust them to do digital well. The NHS is considered the public body most in need of digital transformation, closely followed by local government.
Merici Vinton, business development lead at IDEO’s OI Engine and cofounder of Ada’s list, said: “We conducted the survey to be able to pinpoint some of the issues that are priorities to women who work in and around technology. Given that the UK digital economy is growing at a rate of 11% per year, we want to ensure that women were given an opportunity to speak up and be a part of shaping that economy.”
The respondents ranged in age from 18 to 55-plus, with salaries from entry-level to £100,000 a year. Women aged 18 to 24 are the least likely to vote out of any demographic, prompting the Youth Media Agency to launch the #XXVote campaign earlier this year.
See the full results of the Ada’s List survey here.