Tech: The Parallels

Glorious: So, how do you approach the slope to get to the top of the hill in the tech and sports world?

Josie West: It’s about defining the difference between equality and treating people the same, but these are two different things. I always talk about the analogy of if you build a football ground without disabled access. You’re treating everyone the same, but the disabled people who can’t use stairs can’t access their seats and therefore it’s not equal.

The problem that we have in sports, including the extreme sports world, is that all of them are very immature environments. Mature sports that feature in the Olympics have a real focused attention and policy around them, and with criticism that people have to react to, so it becomes more equal. When you’re in a small circle you can’t call out scenarios where women are being penalised in certain ways, it’s difficult to do that. If you’re a man in that environment, you have a louder voice, but for women it’s seen as feminism as a bad word!

There are two things that I’ve learned from the tech world to the sports world. The first is that It’s not equal and there’s no shame in acknowledging that you might not get to fix it. I think that I denied it for a long time in my career because I was worried about causing a scene. The second thing is that women are unique. We are amazing in the tech world, and there’s not many of us, so we’re like this unicorn amongst a flock of pigeons that are bringing so much innovation, insight and new thinking, which needs it in the tech world because it’s so fast paced.

Glorious: What do you believe is the role of technology in promoting greater diversity?

Josie West: Avanade worked with a small group of women called Girls Who Dare and they sailed across the Pacific from San Francisco to Hawaii. As a sponsor, we built a lot of tech capability so they could monitor themselves. We found that there was no history in recording a woman crossing that distance, but hundreds of 1000s of data points for men. So, there’s a role in the fact that the more data we can get on women, the more we can understand our differences, and therefore the more equitable an environment can be. The only way you can make something more equitable and inclusive is to have research and understanding that can’t be questioned. A lot of the differences between men and women in sport is mental. It’s the way we think, the way we learn, the way emotion comes in, and all of that is subjective. This allows people to say, ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, it’s just toxic femininity.’ But if we had data points approved, we would be treated in a way that was right and accepted.

Josie West: The obvious one for me is inspiration. I work for a global company with 70,000 people and the CEO, Pamela Maynard, is a Black woman. I had never worked for a tech company that has a woman CEO, let alone a Black woman. She is a compassionate leader, she’s very different from any other leader I’ve ever seen and that’s why I work for this company. I was headhunted and I wasn’t that keen on moving from my previous role, but then I read about the CEO and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool.’ She inspires me to bring my whole self to my job, not the person I think I should be. I take pride in finishing on time. I take pride in addressing the elephant in the room when it’s full of men. I take pride in being a compassionate leader. That’s because she has opened up this opportunity for me to be like that.

In sport, it’s the same thing. In 2018 I travelled around the world. I’d spent nine months surfing with many women but they were a similar level to me. Then I went to Sri Lanka, and I met one of the best female kite surfers in the world, Paula Novotná. It opened up opportunities for me because she looked like me. She had a similar style and did tricks that others didn’t do. I suddenly realised that I had spent nine months trying to do tricks and develop myself in a way that wasn’t right to me. When Paula came along and showed me different tricks and other styles of riding, I suddenly became much quicker because I was kite surfing in a way that was right for me.