Sunday (March 8th) is this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD), with a theme this year of ‘each for equal’.
A global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women, International Women’s Day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality. The first IWD gathering in 1911, and was supported by over a million people; today, IWD belongs to all groups collectively everywhere, with the organisers stressing that “IWD is not country, group or organisation specific”.

As is unfortunately well-known, women’s low participation rate in technology remains an on-going issue in the tech industry. New research from The Knowledge Economy shared in time for the day provides an interesting insight into what choices women are making at A-Levels when it comes to careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).
It’s been looking at which science degrees most sought after by women, and which degree has seen the highest increase over one year. Highlights from the research include:
- Figures have shown a 3.1% increase in women enrolling in science subjects from 2017/2018 to 2018/19
- Most women chose to study subjects allied to medicine (229,895 enrolments in 2018/2019)
- The science degree least sought after by women is Veterinary sciences.
To be clear, when we speak about subjects “allied to medicine”, that’s defined as subjects including ‘Anatomy & Physiology, Pharmacology, Pharmacy, Nutrition, Ophthalmics, Audiology, Nursing, Medical technology, Other medical subjects, Balanced combination’.
But the research also provides some cheer for us in the tech sector, as
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- The degree which sees the highest percentage increase in female students is Computer sciences – 11.6%
- The UK is actually only just below the EU average for the number of women in science and tech: figures from Eurostat have shown that out of the total percentage of people in science and tech in the EU, 41% of them are women – in the UK, there are 40.7% women in IT right now.
A positive sign, yes – but from Digital Identity to Cybersecurity, more needs to be done on ‘each for equal’ for all participants in emerging Digital Economies.
We recommend you check out the main IWD website here, and mark the day as you and your team think appropriate.
Think Digital Partners is committed to diversity and inclusion in all aspects of life, and will support Sunday as much as we can – this year, and moving forward!
#EachforEqual
#IWD2020
The Knowledge Economy claims to be the world’s “largest and most established provider of training courses”, with the capability to deliver over 30,000 courses in 1200 locations, across 200 countries and which claims to have successfully trained over 1 million people so far.