Fiona Tatton is the award-winning founder and CEO of Womanthology, the digital magazine and professional community powered by female energy and ingenuity. For over a decade, she has led its growth into an international platform that champions equal recognition and reward for everyone, while connecting women across sectors through stories, ideas and opportunities. Under her leadership, Womanthology continues to challenge outdated thinking and open up new conversations about work, leadership and equity.
“Innovation shouldn’t only be about the next big product — it should be about new ways into work, new definitions of success and making the system work for more than a privileged few.”
Getting over “pipeline problems”
The tech industry loves to talk about “pipeline problems” — the idea that women and underrepresented groups are missing because they don’t enter the field. But this narrative misses the point: the real issue is power — who defines success, holds decision-making roles, and shapes culture. Exclusion hides in plain sight when default norms exclude those who don’t fit.
For decades, initiatives to “fix the pipeline” haven’t translated into meaningful representation in leadership, entrepreneurship, or workplace influence. Women, ethnically diverse people, neurodivergent individuals and caregivers remain sidelined — not because they lack ambition, but because tech’s power structures and cultural norms were never built for them.
Remote working remains a privilege for higher earners
Research consistently shows that remote working is largely a middle-class privilege. A 2023 report from the Resolution Foundation found that workers in the top income quintile are five times more likely to have access to remote work than those in the lowest quintile.
A study in the Economic and Labour Relations Review similarly found that those able to work from home during COVID typically earned two to three times more than those who could not. Research by economist, Juan Palomino, found the biggest factor in whether or not someone can work remotely is access to higher education, which also governs earning potential. During the pandemic, the Trades Union Congress reported that about 60% of higher-paid professionals worked from home, compared to just 23% of working-class occupations, highlighting a growing “class divide.”
Evidence from the UK Parliament Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee similarly concludes that flexible working remains largely a luxury for better-paid, office-based roles.
If flexibility becomes a perk reserved for some, caregivers, disabled workers, and those on lower incomes will be excluded. Tech’s future cannot be truly inclusive if it enforces rigid 9-to-5 (or longer) attendance policies.
Defaults that exclude
Everyday norms in tech reinforce exclusion:
- Events and networking: Late night beer and pizza socials exclude non-drinkers, people with dietary requirements, carers, and introverts.
- Job ads and ATS filters: Jargon-heavy ads fuel reliance on generic, AI-generated resumes while punishing authenticity. It’s ironic that some employers discourage AI use in applications when their own job posts were likely created using AI.
- Fixed term hiring and employer National Insurance hikes: To manage rising National Insurance costs, many UK employers currently favour fixed term contracts — creating insecurity and pressure, disproportionately affecting those without safety nets. This is partly a response to the hike in employer National Insurance contributions and also uncertainty around the upcoming Employment Rights Bill, which will increase workers’ rights by strengthening unfair dismissal protections and enhancing redundancy rights, but add costs for employers.
- Salary opacity: Many ads omit pay, disproportionately harming underrepresented candidates who are less likely to negotiate effectively. Campaigns like Show the Salary are crucial to redress this.
- Neurodiversity and disability disclosure: Candidates can ask for reasonable adjustments but risk stigma. Employers often fear disclosures damage productivity or invite future problems. Adjustments should be standard — not exceptions — otherwise people hide critical parts of themselves to gain access.
Shortcuts that feel inclusive — but aren’t
So much of exclusion in tech isn’t overt—it’s rooted in unconscious bias and mental shortcuts. Women are often introduced to each other on the assumption they’d naturally get on because they’re both women. No one would ever say, “You’re both men — you’ll get on!” Yet this assumption reduces women to tokens.
This happens in who’s invited to speak, who’s assumed to be junior, and who’s overlooked in meetings. Marginalised people are often treated as interchangeable. Without intentional inclusion, tech remains performative rather than progressive.
Power and funding
The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship asserted, “If women started and scaled businesses at the same rate as men, the UK economy could increase by £250 billion.” Yet funding outcomes remain grim: in 2024, a pitiful 2% of UK VC funding went to all-female founding teams, down from 2.5% in 2023.
This disparity sidelines entrepreneurs creating social, cooperative, and sustainability-aligned businesses — reinforcing a narrow tech narrative that prizes scale over impact.
Consider Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva. Despite facing over 100 rejections from investors — some doubting a tech startup from Australia, others dismissing her for being a woman — she persevered. Canva reached a US $40 billion valuation in 2021, with 170 million users and over US $3 billion in annual revenue⁴. Despite this success, she and co-founder Cliff Obrecht were criticised because of their relationship. They now hold about 18% of the company each⁵.
Even more troubling: research shows women pitching for venture funding face appearance-based bias:
- A Swiss study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that when the same pitch was delivered by two women — one conventionally attractive and one less so — investors gave a 21-percentage point greater likelihood of investment to the attractive presenter.
- In PNAS experiments, investors significantly preferred pitches by men — especially attractive ones — even with identical content; female appearance had no effect on outcomes at all.
According to a survey conducted by Savanta, Women are also more likely to be asked aggressive, risk-focused questions like “What if you lose interest after having a baby?”, while men get asked about growth opportunities and future milestones.
Female founders working in femtech — technology focused on women’s health — face especially harsh and inappropriate scrutiny. For example, one founder was repeatedly questioned in dismissive and uncomfortable terms about her “vagina products”, with investors showing discomfort or misunderstanding about women’s health issues.
These examples aren’t isolated incidents — they highlight a broader problem of investor homophily: investors tend to back founders who look, think, and act like themselves, often sidelining those who don’t fit that narrow profile.
If female founders with Perkins’ profile still face sexism, imagine the barriers for those without her access, visibility or resilience.
AI, the internet’s revolution
AI is transforming work — much like the internet did decades ago. But its benefits will accrue to those who know how to use it. Women in roles like HR, communications, admin and care are particularly at risk — not from AI replacing them, but from being outpaced by colleagues who harness AI tools adeptly.
Here’s where positive power comes in — not punishment. Shoosmiths, a major UK law firm, is leading by example. Their emerging talent programme teaches staff and candidates how AI can boost legal research and everyday efficiency. Critically, Shoosmiths offers bonuses for AI use, rewarding those who integrate it into their workflows. That sends a clear message: AI competence is valued, and mastery matters. In effect, AI becomes an ally — not a threat.
Yet AI raises ethical and environmental concerns — massive data centres can guzzle energy and water. Without diverse leadership demanding sustainable AI, we risk letting the most powerful tech dominate without accountability.
An oversight that spoke volumes
At London Tech Week recently, Davina Schonle, founder of Humanvantage AI, was turned away at the door for bringing her baby. The venue cited insurance restrictions on under-16s. It was clumsy, humiliating, and ultimately avoidable.
But it also reveals something deeper: most people don’t think about inclusion unless they’ve been excluded themselves. Was it malicious? Probably not. Was it revealing of who tech spaces are designed for? Absolutely. Unless we start designing events and spaces with caregivers, disabled people, and diverse identities in mind from the outset, we’ll keep failing them — even unintentionally.
Inclusive innovation: don’t cut the ladder off behind you
Inclusion also means rethinking innovation — not just in tech, but in how we access careers in the first place.
The UK government’s defunding of Level 7 apprenticeships — the equivalent of Master’s-level training — is a mistake. These programmes are critical for people who don’t take a “traditional” route into tech. Career switchers, returners and older adults trying to re-enter the workforce often use Level 7 pathways to gain credibility and skills in a second career. Removing them means pulling up the ladder behind anyone who didn’t follow the ‘graduate, intern, permanent hire’ model.
We need training and hiring structures that include older people, second-chancers and those without postgraduate credentials. Innovation should widen the door — not slam it.
Innovation shouldn’t only be about the next big product — it should be about new ways into work, new definitions of success and making the system work for more than a privileged few. That includes creating work experience for older people, mentoring across generations and recognising that inclusion without access is just a slogan.
Diverse roles drive tech
Tech isn’t just engineers. It needs UX designers, policy experts, ethicists, narrative strategists, sustainability leads and community-builders — areas where women and underrepresented groups already thrive.
But the sector often neglects these roles in its definition of “tech talent.” Broadening the narrative — and backing it with boots-on-the-ground programmes — shifts power and redefines who gets recognised and can shift power away from a narrow tech elite.
Recruitment bias and the risk of disclosure
Recruitment reveals who holds power — and who gets filtered out.
Although candidates are told they can request reasonable adjustments, many refrain. Disclosing a health condition often raises unstated fears: Will they need extra leave? Could this become a burden? That stigma forces people to hide, leading to less equitable hiring.
Employers must stop treating adjustments as charity and set inclusion as baseline infrastructure. That means normalising accessible recruitment — not special exceptions.
Shifting power should be the goal
If tech is to work for everyone, it must distribute power — across culture, training, hiring, funding, policy, and opportunity.
- Protect flexible working as a fundamental right.
- Design events, workplaces, and systems with accessibility built in.
- Mandate salary transparency — and endorse Show the Salary.
- Reduce reliance on fixed term contracts and invest in permanence.
- Incentivise AI proficiency across all roles.
- Diversify investment to support varied business models.
- Reinstate Level 7 apprenticeships to preserve alternative career routes.
- Support and empower disability and neurodiversity disclosure.
- Reject assumptions of interchangeability — treat individuals with nuance and respect.
The pipeline may deliver people — power shapes inclusion. Until that landscape is undeniably reshaped, exclusion will continue to hide in plain sight.
