It’s no secret that “women in tech” is an issue. Ditto “girls and the Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects”. Every so often we’re reminded of this with headlines such as “only four girls take A-level computing in Northern Ireland” (admittedly that one was from 2012, but not an awful lot has changed).

And despite two-thirds of teachers being female, edtech seems to be a boys’ club, too. Whenever I speak at conferences, I am in the minority. At one fairly large conference, I was even told I was the first female to speak on the main stage, as usually it’s only men.

I don’t blame the organisers of conferences because it does feel as if there are fewer women speakers to choose from - the majority of edtech leaders are men. 

True reflection? 

Recently, I was asked to put forward some names of teachers worth listening to in edtech and my immediate responses were all men - I struggled to come up with some names of women to balance it out. But is this really a true reflection of the part women play in edtech?

First, perhaps, we need to distinguish between women in edtech and female teachers in edtech. In terms of the former, although men still lead the way, there are more female chief executives and founders of education start-ups than in the rest of the technology sector according to fastcoexist.com (bit.ly/Femaletech). The theory is that it’s because the application of technology to the important issue of education resonates with women.

What about female teachers in edtech, though? Are we really falling behind or is it just that the loudest voices tend to be male? I’ll be honest, my initial reaction to this problem was that I was not that fussed. 

That sounds terribly anti-feminist of me, I know, but I just figured that was the way things were and that was that. Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I began to realise how shortsighted of me that was. 

When you consider that earlier statistic that three out of every four teachers are women, surely there should be a few more feminine voices making themselves heard in the edtech world? 

 I think the problem lies not with the technology itself - it’s not true that men simply understand technology better - and neither is it a case of women lacking confidence and being drowned out by the male voices. The problem is with marketing and perception. Gadgets and technology are sold as masculine entities. 

Take magazines, for example: when I look at technology publications, they are definitely designed with men in mind. One that springs to mind always has an attractive, usually underdressed, female model posing on the cover, which has made me a little uncomfortable when purchasing it in the past. It prides itself as being “the world’s best-selling gadget magazine” and yet it looks like a lads’ mag. It sells itself in such a way that says it’s not really meant for me, a teacher who likes edtech, who has always been a bit gadget happy out of school, writes about coding and happens also to be a woman. 

Then there are the gadgets themselves. Sometimes female versions of gadgets and tech toys are brought out, usually in pink, which sort of suggests that the original was only meant for blokes. The same goes for pink Lego for girls. I have nothing against the colour pink but it sends the wrong message. 

Such male-only messaging has an impact on how some women in edtech self-identifiy. One study, published in the Journal of Technology Education, (bit.ly/JournalMcCarthy) considered common traits in female technology educators in order to shed light on how to get more women into Stem. It found that all of the participants had identified as “tomboys” during childhood. This is a problem beyond education. It is society-wide and needs to be addressed. What we can do in schools, though, is try to take small steps towards that larger goal. 

If we want more girls taking up Stem subjects, seeing more female teachers teach computing and technology-related subjects would help - the focus should be on getting more women into teaching them. 

Identify female teachers

It could be that headteachers identify female teachers who may embrace the chance to train in a second discipline at secondary, or it could be providing training for female teachers in primary who show an interest in leading on computing in their school. 

It is also about teacher training institutions and other training routes being extremely careful about how and to whom they market particular training routes. 

That’s not the whole picture, though. The same study I mentioned above shifts the burden of getting more girls into Stem from women and highlights the need for positive connections with male role models at an early age - this is another theme that all the female educators in the study had in common. 

Apparently, if we want to encourage more girls into Stem subjects, what we need to do, longer term, is to get more men into early-years education to give girls those positive male connections and provide greater balance to the female ones that already exist. We need to blur those boundaries. 

Will this dual approach have a wider impact? Education is a powerful tool. It may be that the current generation of marketing executives has very established ideas about technology and gender that will prove difficult to break down, but when I look at my young coders and see how gender neutral technology has become, I have high hopes that the next generation will have a much more inclusive and mature view of technology for all.

Claire Lotriet is a teacher at Henwick Primary School in London. She tweets @OhLottie and blogs at clairelotriet.com