Mimecast concerned about under-representation of women in tech

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Mimecast has raised concerns over the under-representation of women in the tech industry, specifically cyber security.

A study by Deloitte revealed that women make up less than 35% of the workforce globally in engineering and technology-related fields.

However, in South Africa, the figure is much lower at only 13%.

Senior Director of Customer Operations at Mimecast, Christelle van der Merwe says more needs to be done to empower women to pursue a career in these fields.

Van der Merwe says, “While we celebrate our 30th year of democracy we have to also acknowledge that we have a lot of challenges faced by our youth. I would say one of those certainly is that gap in giving people especially young women access and exposure to technology from a young age and that goes back to grassroots education.”

“What are we doing in schools ? What are we doing in places where these young girls can get a passion for understanding that technology is something that they can pursue? There’s so much more that can be done with business that can invest in helping young people looking at school programmes, looking at bursary programmes.”

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