Tanya Cordrey, chief digital officer at The Guardian, says number of tech roles women apply for is “depressing”
The Guardian’s chief digital officer, Tanya Cordrey, led the media group’s migration from a UK to global domain last year and oversaw the recruitment of over one hundred people in the process.
However, she has said that the general number of women applying for tech and engineering roles is depressing and that there are still a lot of myths and misconceptions that need to be broken down.
Speaking to The Drum for its Girl Guides series, Cordrey said: “Even in Silicon Valley where they have coding computer clubs for kids as young as 10 in the summer, there are still so many more boys than girls in them. More work must be done to improve the image of technological and engineering roles for women, to highlight how creative they can be.”
“The engineers in my team are some of the most creative people I’ve ever worked with – often that is a point that’s missed. We need to break down some of these myths and misunderstandings,” she continued.
“When we were doing graduate recruitment it was very depressing looking at the initial number of women that applied, so we made a big push around that. But it’s tough and we have to keep pushing.”
Cordrey also discussed her past at eBay UK, when it was just a “ramshackle” office of 20 people, as well as her future plans for The Guardian’s new website and app rollout.
Read full the interview in the latest issue of The Drum 30 April issue, subscribing to The Drum here – or if you're already a subscriber, can access a downloadable pdf of the latest issue here.
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The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was known from 1821 until 1959 as the Manchester Guardian. Along with its sister papers The Observer and the Guardian...
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