Celeste McGinley, Chartered Surveyor – Data Centres for Knight Frank, shares insights on integrating women into the data centre sector, highlighting the importance of broadening awareness about career opportunities, fostering supportive work environments and advocating for flexible working arrangements to help bridge the gender gap in this fast-growing industry.
How can women become more integrated in the data centre space and how should we work collaboratively to encourage and uplift?
The first step, in my view, is to widen the understanding among the general public – not just women – in terms of the opportunities available within the data centre space. It’s not at the forefront of many young career entrants’ minds.
The data centre sector is a really stimulating, interesting field to work in, with a lot of room for growth. Once there’s more clarity on this as a super exciting career, then you can start to target women.
When I started at Knight Frank, I was on a rotational programme and the careers advisor got in touch to say they thought I should meet the data centre team. With no experience or awareness of the sector, I initially (and naively) thought it sounded really dry.
However, within a week or two of joining, I realised what a massive opportunity this was.
I think a lot of people enter the sector in the same way – by chance – so now is the time to capitalise on promoting the opportunities and targeting women with them.
As a young woman in a male dominated field, do you in any way feel at a disadvantage?
No, I don’t feel at a disadvantage, but I think there are often environments where I am the only woman in the room or on a call.
For example, I recently attended a planning meeting where everyone else in the room was male – from the client team, operator, landowner, lawyers, advisors – and maybe I could have seen that as a disadvantage, but I feel I just have to get stuck in.
I think we’ve come a long way in terms of attitudes towards women in the workplace, both from a real estate and data centre perspective, but it will make a big difference once we can actually see more women in the space.
What would you say to young women who might be considering taking up a career in this field?
Go for it! There’s so much room and scope for growth. That applies to young men as well – I think, as a sector, we’re going to grow massively. It’s a fast-paced industry and requires a broad scope of skills which means it can appeal to a broad range of individuals.
However, it’s important to stress there’s not enough senior women to look up to, especially in the sector I’m in, and it would be great to see this change over time.
How can companies do more to accommodate flexible working arrangements for women and how can men better support such initiatives?
I think it’s two-fold; covering both paternity and maternity leave. It’s understanding that if a woman takes a career break, it’s difficult to just slot right back in. It’s important to find flexible arrangements when women return to work – a supportive environment is crucial.
Additionally, we need to look at attitudes towards paternity leave – it’s advanced quite progressively. I believe men are benefitting from taking paternity leave, but it has a massive impact on women too in terms of having support from their partner.
If men were to take career breaks in the same way as women, or even slightly shorter breaks, it would help to level the playing field. Knight Frank’s parental leave policy equalises enhanced leave for all parents, regardless of gender.
Positive attitudes towards paternity and maternity leave and an understanding of being flexible when people return to work are crucial.
Do you have any concerns about the future for women in data centres and, if so, do you think this can be rectified?
If I consider this from my own perspective, I will be in that first bracket of people who come out of university and go straight into data centres from a real estate perspective.
When my boss or his boss started their careers, data centres weren’t a thing.
The challenge might lie with women and whether they’re able to keep up with men at the same rate of acceleration throughout their career. Will we be met with any form of glass ceiling as we progress?
Do you have anything more you’d like to add?
There is a massive data centre skill shortage which is terrifying. It’s a wider problem that everyone needs to put their heads together on.
There’s a problem across STEM generally which will require education as a first step: targeting schools and universities.
Particularly in universities, there’s a lot of groups for women that we should be targeting, providing information to and highlighting just how exciting the data centre sector is.
I am one of the founding members of the Young Data Centre Association. It’s for young people in data centres generally, not specifically women, and we are trying to put events together for young people.
As part of that, I want to reach out to as many young women in the data centre space to get them involved so that as we go through our careers, we can build our own network of young people and the data centre industry and specifically women.