Celebrating women in fintech: past, present and future

International Women’s Day (IWD) started as a protest march through New York City more than a century ago. It went global in 1910 when Clara Zetkin, an advocate for women’s rights in Germany, raised the idea at an international women's conference.

Today, it’s endorsed by the United Nations and celebrated across the world by many different groups.

So, what does IWD mean to TrueLayer? While most of us in the UK and Europe won’t experience the struggles that women once did — and still do in some parts of the world — we recognise that even here, inequality exists. 

The tech industry for example is not always somewhere where women feel welcome, celebrated and supported to progress. Tech Nation found that only 26% of the UK tech workforce are women and women hold only 5% of leadership positions.

It’s a similar story in fintech – a 2017 Deloitte study found that less than 30% of fintech employees in the UK were women. 

At TrueLayer we care deeply about equality, inclusion and diversity. We’re only 29% women today, but we're working to change that. We want to build a more inclusive and diverse community and improve the experience for women colleagues. 

This involves initiatives big and small: from using software to root out gender-biased language in job adverts and partnering with industry bodies like SheCanCode, to introducing better parental leave and return to work policies (like giving primary caregivers the option to work four day weeks for five days pay in their first months back with us). 

We’ll be following up with blogs in the coming weeks, setting out in more detail our commitments to improve equality, inclusion and diversity.

This IWD, we’re also taking the time to talk: about where we’ve been successful, where we’ve failed and the changes we’d like to see. We’re hosting and supporting a number of events this week, with the theme: Celebrating women in fintech: past, present, future. 

To get the discussion going, we posed three questions to our TrueLayer colleagues:

1. What is one thing you wish you’d known when you were starting out in your career? 

2. Who inspires you professionally today? 

3. What is one thing we can do to support the next generation of women in tech? 

You can see some of their responses in the videos below – and join the conversation on LinkedIn.

Marta Hidalgo, Product Manager

Emma Mayer, VP Marketing

Mariko Beising, Head of Payment Partnerships

Rosalie Dowding, Product Manager