Women can fix Britain's tech skills crisis, says Martha Lane Fox

One of Britain’s best known female entrepreneurs, Martha Lane Fox, has called on the tech industry to train up women to help solve the digital skills crisis.

Lane Fox, who began lastminute.com with her business partner Brent Hoberman in 1998, said that teaching unemployed women to code could help to fill the 600,000 vacancies in the tech sector, a figure which is forecast to rise to 1 million by 2020.

Lane Fox, who advises the Government on rolling out broadband and digital services, said that Britain’s tech industry, where women hold just 17% of jobs, could also be stronger if it included more women, especially in leadership positions.

She pointed to the fact that global tech giant Apple launched a health kit in 2014 that lacked any capacity to track a menstrual cycle or menopause, because no women were involved in developing it.

Lane Fox also said that social media platform Twitter might not have as many problems with abusers if women had been involved in its creation.

“Think of the new product areas and untapped markets that the internet has yet to improve: maternity, end-of-life care, mental health. In all these areas women are the main consumers and potential drivers of the next global economy.

“Any company – or, more boldy, country – that dramatically improves its tech diversity will have enormous competitive advantage,” she wrote in an article in the Financial Times.