Opinion: why women in tech Are redesigning safety - and what that means for us all

As we mark International Women's Day this March, I'm reminded that progress is never guaranteed - it's built one conversation, one innovation, one choice at a time.

Every day, I walk into work knowing I'm one of relatively few women leading in a traditionally male-dominated industry. Security technology might not be the first space people think of when they talk about women in tech, but it's precisely in areas like ours that the perspectives and lived experience of women can reshape not just products, but people's sense of safety and confidence in the world around them.

I became passionate about security because it matters in the most personal of ways: how we feel when we leave home, travel to meet friends, walk back from work, and, ultimately, how we feel the moment we arrive at our front door. But in my conversations -  with women colleagues, friends and customers - it became clear that many of the accepted assumptions about safety simply didn't reflect reality.

That's why earlier this year, Ultion published research exploring how women feel about safety after dark. What we found isn't just a set of statistics; it's a narrative about how women adapt their lives in response to fear. More than two-thirds of women reported feeling less safe when the nights draw in, and many adjust their routines - avoiding social plans, altering routes home, calling someone on a walk back - simply to feel safer. Crucially, a significant proportion say the moment they most feel vulnerable is approaching their own front door, fumbling for keys in the dark.

Those insights haven't just shaped our research agenda - they've shaped my view on what smart security must be. Smart technology, from keyless access to app-enabled locks, isn't about bells and whistles. It's about eliminating moments of vulnerability that most of us have learned to tolerate as part of everyday life.

As a woman in this industry, I've also learned that challenging norms isn't optional - it's essential. I've often been the only woman in the room, navigating conversations about engineering, testing, and innovation while bringing the lived experience of real security needs to the table. That perspective, forged through both professional expertise and personal experience, is where true innovation starts.

But progress extends beyond any one company; we need more women in tech, particularly in leadership roles, not as tokens, but as drivers of change. The world's most pressing security challenges, whether at home, at work, or online, cannot be solved by homogeneous thinking. Technology is never truly safe unless the people who build it reflect the people who use it.

This International Women's Day, let's celebrate the women who have already opened doors, both literally and figuratively, and make a collective commitment to widening the path ahead. Let's champion equity in tech not because it's a box to be ticked, but because it results in products that genuinely make lives safer and more inclusive.