International Women’s Day

Baroness Rock Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rock (Con)]

My Lords, it is, as ever, a great privilege to contribute to this important International Women’s Day debate, and I add my profound thanks to my noble friend Lady Berridge.

It is also a great honour to follow the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Ranger and to hear about his extraordinary journey and, in particular, his remarkable, resilient and resourceful mother. He is indeed lucky that he is surrounded by so many talented and strong women. He brings a wealth of award-winning business experience, and we all look forward to his future contributions.

We are in the fourth industrial revolution. It has been described as more rapid than the technological changes of the first three. Indeed, it will fundamentally change the way we live and the way we work, alter our perceptions of value and even make us question what it means to be human. It is the most profound change which the human race has yet witnessed.

On this day in this debate, my point is simple. The fourth industrial revolution must, unlike the first three, be driven and delivered by both men and women. Consider today’s economy. Yesterday’s industrial titans have been replaced with IT-driven businesses in, first, hardware, then software. Now, they have been superseded by data-driven businesses: companies that draw their strength from the accumulation and capture of data and their ability to monetise it with AI and machine learning.

From both my roles as a board member of the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation and the House of Lords AI Select Committee, on which I was privileged to serve, I have seen the power of the new business models, but I also see the implications for society if they are not governed, regulated and delivered in a gender-balanced way. Here, I focus in particular on gender-bias in algorithmic decision-making. Take recruitment. Artificial intelligence can screen CVs based on data from previously successful and unsuccessful candidates. But what if that data was drawn from criteria we would now consider unacceptable? We would end up with recruitment practices that perpetuate what is now accepted as gender bias.

What can we do about it? Our findings from the Lords AI Select Committee were simple. If we want more gender-neutral outcomes from our algorithms, we need more gender-neutral inputs. In other words, we need more women coders, programmers, data scientists and analysts. We need more women in tech. This needs to happen now. It needs to happen before more data-driven technology businesses build huge data lakes and create products and services that discriminate against women and minorities—even if it is inadvertent.

It will be a challenge. Statistics from PwC’s Women in Tech programme state that just 3% of women are considering a career in tech, 78% cannot name a famous woman in tech and only 5% of leadership positions in tech are held by women. In engineering, the Royal Academy of Engineering’s latest gender pay gap report states that there is a serious diversity deficit, with a workforce that is still only 12% female.

How do we address this? Technology is not a niche sector: it is everywhere and will change everything. But technology can be a force for good only if it is fair, transparent and equitable. Yes, opportunities abound, but only if we build the right foundations, and women must be part of that.

Last year, I was fortunate to address the inspiring Women in Data UK organisation: more than 1,200 women who recognise not only the profound opportunity of the data economy but the essential opportunity that women have to be an integral part of it. They want analytics and diversity to be top of the agenda, and they are using case studies and mentorship to encourage and enable more women to pursue careers in data science. There are currently four male data scientists to every one woman.

Imagine how much more we can achieve if we work together, and how much more we can achieve with education and mentorship. There is sound economic justification for increasing female participation at every level in every industry, and there is a moral and societal obligation to ensure that the world of data science has proportional representation. It is imperative that children at every level of education cultivate an interest in STEM. To do this, we must demonstrate how STEM can empower girls, women and gender-diverse individuals to be agents of change.

I commend the steps that the Government have taken in providing funding for 2,500 AI and data science conversion degrees, with 1,000 of them scholarships for people from underrepresented groups. There is £5 million to drive innovation in adult learning and £13.5 million for new master’s conversion courses and scholarships at academic institutions. Whether it is girls in school or women looking at a career change or professional development, the opportunities are emerging.

Encouragingly, academic institutions are similarly responding to the challenge. I commend the contribution and ambition of Edinburgh University in this important field. It has a target of 100,000 individuals to be certified in data science-related subjects in the next decade—and this is just part of what is happening at one institution. The UK is leveraging its leading position in academia to stay ahead in data, AI and other emerging technologies.

We must celebrate the role of women in the economy and society, but we must also recognise that we have more to do. As the pace of change accelerates, we must embrace the challenges and the opportunities. Data and AI’s time has come and women have a vital role to play. If we act now, we can achieve it.