Recently IT Brief had the opportunity to talk to Rackspace A/NZ director of architecture, onboarding and professional services Emma Pudney about the role women play in tech businesses.

"We’re working towards change, but if women really want to become leaders in cloud computing, they have to stick with it."

"The initiative came about after I had the agency undertake some intelligence on itself to see if our workforce was sufficiently diverse and inclusive to support our mission.”

"According to a Deloitte study, 90% of organisations believe their core business is threatened by new digital competitors."

Adobe announced global pay parity between women and men, delivering on a commitment the company made earlier this year.

Those that make it to the top of the success ladder will often attribute their success to very different factors – according to one MYOB survey, females and males have very different ideas about how they got there.

"We aim to encourage women to get more involved in the security technology space."

Some companies though do an incredible job of recruiting women into their workforces, but they have problems retaining them.

“The GirlBoss Awards recognises the change make-hers, the up-and-comers, the innovators and the bold young women who are shaping the future of NZ."

“A lack of diversity means a lack of important voices in these decisions and will ultimately lead to harmful blind spots in our near future."

It hopes that programmes such as developher will encourage other tech companies to be proactive about attracting women into technical roles.

When it comes to making a difference to gender equality in tech, men tend to come up with excuses on why they shouldn’t be involved.

"We are certain that opportunities like this make a difference in addressing the current gender imbalance in ICT."

Two young women were honoured on day 2 of Red Hat Summit, as part of a focus on Women in technology.

CompTIA’s Advancing Women in Technology Community has created an online resource to help women and girls find their feet in the IT industry.

Looking forward it's essential that the tech sector continues to champion women and encourage them to get involved.

Melissa Firth’s team established Mahuki, the first business accelerator programme in the world focused on opportunities in the culture sector.

RIP Global is a cloud-based expense reporting and bookkeeping solution.

"Women are working harder than men and now appear to be the driving force behind corporate performance."

By the time girls reach high school, they’ve already made major decisions about life direction – so it’s vital to foster an interest in tech early.

The documents show staff working in U.S-based technical jobs filed 238 complaints between 2010-2016.

"The lack of diversity in technology is glaring: according to the 2018 Gartner CIO Survey, 13% of CIOs are female. "

International Women’s Day may have passed, but there’s no reason why society shouldn’t keep up that recognition every day of the year.

Xero’s International Women’s Day tea saw approximately 80 women who were Xero partners, customers, and employees coming together.