YNAP launches sponsorship plan to foster next-gen female tech leaders

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Mar 9, 2020

Yoox-Net-A-Porter Group said on Monday that as part of its ongoing efforts to support gender diversity in technology roles, it's launching a new internal sponsorship program. This will see it pairing rising female talent in technology with senior leaders from across its business.

The company said it has long supported the advancement of women in tech and at the moment, 27% of its tech workforce is made up of women, which is ahead of the industry average.

Its new pilot program will allow sponsors and those they're sponsoring “to provide new learning opportunities and design new ways of working that will support gender parity in technology”.

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With the company being fully focused on web and app-based retail, technology is clearly important to it and it said the program, which will cover a period of 10 months, “derives from the commitment that [CEO] Federico Marchetti made as a founding member of Male Champions of Change’s Global Tech Group”.

This is a coalition of leaders that includes representatives from the BBC, Condé Nast and Microsoft Ventures. They’ve all got together to “accelerate the advancement of gender equality in the technology industry”.

“Our ambition is to be the number one employer for female talent in the technology industry,” Marchetti said. “We already employ more women in tech than the industry average, but we have to be relentless in our mission. I have always believed in the power of knowledge and the power of opportunity. We want even more women to excel in technology leadership roles, and this requires new ways of working. In this respect, everyone involved in the programme is an innovator – redesigning how we collaborate and supporting greater diversity of thinking”.

The company has already had a number of other initiatives running including its Women in Tech community and its Digital Education Workshops that were launched in 2016.

A recent YouGov survey of young women aged 18-25 across the UK, US and Italy that YNAP commissioned highlighted that only 23% of respondents consider themselves to be tech savvy. The same relatively small percentage believed tech skills to be important for a career in fashion.