McKinsey’s recent finding that $12 trillion could be added to global GDP by 2025 by advancing women’s equality is becoming widely cited.  In the Netherlands specifically, if women participated in the Dutch labor force “at the rate of the country’s best-performing peers”, this would add more than €100 billion to GDP. 

Catalystas Consulting’s Gender and Mainstreaming practice is currently focusing on the rapidly growing tech sector in the Netherlands because women are largely underrepresented across all roles from individual contributors (non-managerial) to founders all the way to board members despite the demands of the market.  Catalystas’ research will drill down to the root cause of the gender disparity, explore the implications of gender-sensitive human resources planning in the Dutch tech sector and analyze how the core issue may be that the data that is driving the tech industry’s human resources model is biased in its methods.

This is a grave problem to address.  Apart from the fact that gender equality and empowerment are human rights issues, gender equality and empowerment are also economic development issues. Investors are increasingly looking at a company’s gender balance as a viable indicator of potential growth.  Research and case studies show how a diverse workforce is correlated to increased capacity to innovate better products and services, improved performance and profitability.  

Globally, the technology sector is recognized as the fastest growing industry.  Demand for information and technology skills is expected to grow as much as 90% over the next 15 years, giving companies good reason for concern about strong competition for the best talent to fulfill these roles.  Already companies claim to be struggling to find the right people.

Tech companies acknowledge there is a massive gender imbalance in their own workforce and in the industry at large. Yet solutions to this problem have proven elusive, with little progress despite the best intentions of companies in the sector. We will investigate feasible and sustainable approaches to retention of qualified female staff and the elimination of bias in hiring, promotion and remuneration. Catalystas’ research project will focus on the Dutch tech sector in particular and how it compares to the tech sector in the US.

To Learn more about the research methodology  Please click here.