Boosting Women in Tech Leadership

Despite the fact Trade Me is a technology company, and tech workers make up 45% of our workforce, Trade Me has significant gender disparities:

• Women in the tech workforce: only 27% of Trade Me’s tech workforce are women.
• Leadership roles: Just 11% of technology leadership positions are held by women.
• Engineering roles: just 2 out of 36 Lead and Principal Software Engineer roles are held by women.

Trade Me firmly believes the world needs to be designed by and for all people. Research consistently shows that diverse teams lead to better decision-making and ideas. And the reverse is true - a lack of diversity can result in missing key user insights. Women are key technology consumers and end-users and their current underrepresentation in tech development can mean valuable insights are overlooked in the innovation process.

Gender diversity is positively associated with improved financial performance. Recent research from McKinsey, BlackRock and others shows firms with gender diversity outperform less diverse companies. By fostering gender diversity in tech leadership, Trade Me aims to further enhance its performance as well as create solutions that resonate with broad audiences.

Over the past two years, Trade Me has implemented 28 different initiatives to try to improve diversity within the tech workforce, including

• Mandating that 50% of interviewees for tech leadership roles be women
• Updating job advertisements to use more inclusive language
• Sponsorship and mentoring programmes
• Providing unconscious bias and allyship training

Trade Me is introducing special measures to proactively address the underrepresentation of women in our technology leadership workforce. We are drawing on provisions in the New Zealand Human Rights Act which enable the use of special measures to proactively address existing inequalities.

1. Active Preference for Women Candidates: Women will be preferred when filling technology leadership roles. Of course, women will need to meet key criteria for the role.
2. Holistic Candidate Evaluation: Beyond skill and experience , candidates will be assessed on future potential, diversity, and the unique contribution they can bring to Trade Me
3. Extended Vacancy Periods: Positions will remain open for up to six months to identify suitable women candidates.
4. Time bound: If no suitable woman candidate is found within six months, the preference requirement will be lifted for that vacancy.
5. Goal linked: These measures will remain until Trade Me achieves its goal of having 22% of technical leadership roles filled by women.