How we’re creating more opportunities for women in technology

As one of Canada’s biggest technology employers with a focus on building the bank of tomorrow, developing a future-focused tech team is imperative. To us, that’s a workforce that has both the technical skills and the business savvy to thrive in the face of continuous technological disruption and transformation. It’s also one that’s diverse and inclusive, and importantly, gender-balanced.

In RBC’s Technology & Operations team, we’ve set a goal of 50/50 gender parity. To achieve that, we’re accelerating full inclusion to attract, retain and enable the best talent while putting an active focus on women – from students to senior executives.

We’re purposefully creating opportunities for women to advance their careers in technology. And by identifying and supporting high potential women, we’re building the pipeline for a balanced tech leadership team. One example is a special “Women in Tech” edition of our nine-week internal innovation program. The 24 participants this season are all women who are currently in technical roles or interested in a career in technology. They are being challenged to find creative solutions for real business problems while building new skills and relationships to help them take the next step in their careers. 

There are still a number of contributing factors working against us – engineering schools and other tech training programs are graduating gender imbalanced classes and many young women are still not choosing to pursue STEM careers. Yes, these things make achieving parity harder. But we won’t be deterred. 

We’re proud to have achieved parity in many of our student programs. We’re using our community connections to help draw more women to STEM fields, including partnering with Ryerson University and Western University to support diversity in the next generation of tech talent, and hosting events like “Hack the Break”, a hackathon for female students in grades 9-12 coming up during March Break.

International Women’s Day is certainly an opportunity to reflect on the progress and achievements of women in traditionally male-dominated fields like technology. But it’s also just one day in a year. To overcome the gender imbalances we continue to see today, we must continue to work towards our goal for gender parity year-round.