[Music] This paper is about four theories - gendering of careers, the glass ceiling,
gender stereotypes, and work life balance. All of this is about the inclusion of women in the
technology sector and having a certain phase validity when we look at the country Nigeria.
Nigeria is historically known as a patriarchal Nation. It's been undergoing significant growth
in penetration, of course, also, diffusion in the technology sector. The article was
the first to further develop these theories, using a critical realist exploration. I will
look at the experiences of female senior managers in the Nigerian technology sector.
This project was inspired by my career experiences, whilst I was working in the technology sector
straight out of school. So, I worked there for a while and eventually rose to a Senior Management
leadership position in the later years of my career. The inspiration for this project was
very much Anne. I would say that I noticed Anne has a desire to challenge and improve herself
which is why she embarked on the doctorate business administration or DBA at the University
of Bradford. I also noticed that Anne is keen to connect with other women's experiences of
improving themselves and the challenges they face in doing so, and comes across as extremely
capable and optimistic, and is inclined to see the positive side of any challenge.
We came to work together by chance. I was working on this research topic for my doctoral thesis at the
University of Bradford, and my supervisors just kept abandoning ship, and eventually
Peter was assigned to me and the rest you know his history. I joined the University
of Bradford with a history of research and people's experiences of healthcare,
and how to improve them. This has included gendered experiences of healthcare and as
I built relationships with colleagues across the university, I learned about
Anne's research. I was incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to become her supervisor.
A challenge for us was that 90% of the time we had to meet and work virtually.
I had opportunities to travel in year 2020 but all of those had to be canceled because
of the restrictions of movement, due to the covid-19 pandemic. The main challenges were
also strangely, that opportunities and what is often unique about DBA and was an international
student based in Nigeria, so there was limited opportunity to connect informally and build a
good working relationship. This also meant that Anne had little opportunity to connect with my
other research students as they joined the team. Had and lived locally, I could imagine that she
would have welcomed them with open arms and took them under her wing. Nevertheless, this also meant
that Anne was integrated within the community that she was researching and therefore had a wealth
of knowledge and connections from which she controlled.
It was surprising to uncover that, despite the narratives of discrimination, work-life conflicts, that African women particularly face
living in a patriarchal Nation, working in a gendered organization, and occupying a gendered
role the participants, in this study they remained ambitious and driven to get to the pinnacle
of their careers. Now they had developed coping mechanisms and this worked for them, and they were
eventually leading the best version of themselves, so this was really surprising for us. The fourth
area of the lack of inclusion of women in the technology sector are really well developed with
hundreds of research publications, so I was really quite surprised to see how little was from, and/or
about Africa, and opened my eyes to the thriving technology sector in Nigeri.
This research has hopefully impacted younger women working in this technology career by
igniting their hope and fulfilling their career aspirations, despite having similar challenges in
this domain. This research has also added a voice to narratives of inequalities in the professional
world, particularly in gendered organizations, that's where we amplify our voices, we hope that these
efforts will contribute towards achieving the 2030 sustainable development goals, particularly
goal five, towards achieving gender parity in the workplace. Anne has done such a fantastic job that
I want to share her work with as many students as possible. My other postgraduate researchers
were really pleased to see her pass her DBA and become a Doctor. They're also really pleased to
see that Anne had published her research and it had won this research development award.
Now, for next steps I have an exploring research on inequalities in similar masculine organizations. I
want to see if the findings of this research are transferable. Now, we hope to take this
further by looking at the cross-continent study within Africa and one of the western
more developed nations. This coming year, I plan to include Anne's research in my teaching, so that students
benefit from her incredible efforts. I have a topic on coaching psychology and can imagine
using this research to get them thinking about how they would use their skills to
advise others who want to scale the barriers they face in the workplace.