Tech companies must work hard to bridge gender gap - Australia's Brendon Dowling

Australia’s Ambassador for Cyber Affairs and Critical Technology, Brendon Dowling, has urged major tech companies to ramp up efforts and institute measures that will encourage women's participation and employment in the space.

Contributing to a panel discussion held by the Faculty of Computing and Information Systems of Ghana Communication Technology University in collaboration with the Australian High Commission, Brendon Dowling observed with worry the low number of women representation in the cybersecurity and tech spaces.

Armed with data which places the number of women employed in the global cybersecurity industry at 10%, Brendon Dowling demanded urgent intervention that will make the industry appealing to women.

Speaking on the theme, ‘Cyber Preparedness in the 4/5th Industrial Revolutions: A Gender-Based Perspective’, Brendon Dowling noted that more work needed to be done to improve women's presence in the space.

”Men are more equipped or naturally prepared to work in the cybersecurity or technical professional space. This means that only 10% of women are employed in the cybersecurity space globally. It is a real problem because we struggled to feel some security jobs or we struggled to ensure gender is recognized in the development of technology because we don’t have enough women working in the technology space,” he said.

Brendon Dowling also called on tech companies and social media platforms to institute implementation that will limit the abuse and harassment of women on their platforms.

According to him, the companies have an obligation to guarantee the safety of women on their platform, hence, the need for them to initiate interventions that will deter abusers and ensure the safety of women.

“Although technology has provided the opportunity for women to take control of their lives, unfortunately, technology has provided new means for abuse, discrimination and harassment against women and girls. We see on social media that women are subjected to more abuse, trolling, and tracking of their movement and their opinions.

“I spent a lot of time talking to global technology platforms such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook and not enough is being done to ensure women are safe online. Not enough is done to identify perpetrators of this abuse or to take done contents that are damaging to women," he stated.

Other panel members included Dr. Millicent Akotam Agangiba- Head of the Department of Information Technology, UPSA, Solomon Atta Owusu Manteaw- Chief Information Security Officer at Stanbic Bank, Representative from Cybersecurity Ghana.

They encouraged the students to take their studies seriously and take up the challenge in the technology space.

EK