Women and the world of IT
When most people think of a career in IT, they probably picture working in a team of ‘geeky’ middle aged men and sitting bored in front of a computer screen all day, every day. This is just one of the myths about the industry that needs to be broken. The IT sector is in fact a great place for women, as well as men, to work, offering a vast range of job opportunities in addition to good salaries and the chance to make a real difference to an organisation’s success. However it remains true that women are the minority in the IT world, and that despite making up around half of the UK’s workforce, less than 20 per cent of all technical roles in the country are occupied by women. However it is essential that this figure increases - having more female role models and decision makers is key to combating some of the difficulties that they can encounter.
Motherhood penalty
The ‘motherhood penalty’ is a major challenge faced by women in all areas of business, but particularly applies to the IT sector – some believe this is because of such a rapid pace of change in the industry, while others attribute it to the dominance of male attitudes. But what does it mean? Many women feel that they pay a heavy price or ‘penalty’ for having time out of their career to have children, finding themselves subjected to a distinct lack of available opportunities and often a lack of compassion for their situation.
womenintechnology.co.uk has conducted research in conjunction with both Microsoft and the British Computer Society (BCS) with some interesting comments from female technologists. One said “after two very short maternity leaves I was warned by my boss that another baby and I would lose my job” whilst another told us “I’ve got two kids, and was just 12 weeks not working. But the nine months before - and even 12 months after the birth - my company showed no interest in me and I got only the jobs no other wanted. It took me three years to show that I'm still ‘in the game’.” A third respondent commented “I've never seen any man have a career-stopping problem because he happened to work on a legacy project (i.e. out of touch with the newest, hottest, tech) for more than six months, but for women it seems that six months off to have a baby is too long for some employers. Double standard rules again.”
Other women cited the decreased chance of promotion for women of child bearing age from employers who fear they will go on maternity leave, as well as the lack of support in the form of re-training and flexible working options that would allow more women to return to work and make that transition as smooth as possible. With so many women leaving the sector – 50,000 between 1999 and 2003 according to the University of Cambridge – the motherhood penalty is something that needs to be addressed rather urgently.
Judged harshly
The majority of IT teams are dominated by men, and although most women are not deterred by the prospect of being the minority, the stereotype of the male technologist often rules supreme and causes many women to be viewed with an air of uncertainty as they do not fit the traditional mould. Our recent research highlighted that many women in IT believe that they are held to much higher standards for being female and judged more harshly than men. One woman summed up her experience by saying, “It is simpler for [male bosses] to promote men, as they relate to them more easily. [Women] are subject to comments such as ‘but does she know what she’s talking about?’, whereas men are assumed to know. Women really have to blow their own trumpets and can then be seen as pushy and aggressive.” However it’s not all negative. Some women said their presence in a very male environment meant that they stood out and were more likely to be remembered.
This is all very well, you may be thinking, but why does it matter that there are so few women in IT? First, as mentioned earlier, the more women that enter the field, the more visible they will be and the more women there will be in influential, senior positions. This will subsequently provide more female role models, help eradicate the conception that you have to ‘call the IT guys’ if you have a technical problem and encourage a more balanced workforce which is more supportive of both male and female talent. Second, a diverse team can have an array of benefits for an organisation. Research from McKinsey, the strategy consultancy, suggests that promoting women has its financial advantages - European organisations with the highest proportion of women in influential leadership roles showed better than average financial performance.
Women can also aid a business’s success with the different skills they bring to the table. It’s a generalisation, but on the whole women tend to possess the softer skills like strong communication, that men often do not. A more diverse team also means a wider range of ideas and it more accurately reflects an organisation’s customer and client base, enabling more understanding, better negotiations, and increased productivity. Furthermore, with the baby boom generation nearing retirement and a lack of new talent entering the IT sector, there is a threat of a severe talent shortage encompassing the industry in the not so distant future. Women form a large and often untapped source of talent that for the IT sector needs to take advantage of if it wants to remain competitive.
Support & solidarity
Many businesses are beginning to realise the importance of female IT talent and implementing schemes to ensure that this talent is nurtured. Some have established groups for female technologists to provide support and solidarity – an example being IT company Connect and its initiative called ‘Google Girls’, introduced to attract more female talent. This aims to make the company’s internal culture more attractive for women and also provides support in the form of job sharing and childcare vouchers. As CEO Mark MacGregor states, “The key to success will be attracting the right calibre of skilled people into the industry – and by that we mean technical expertise, client liaison skills, creative potential and so on – not necessarily people with a penchant for weightlifting or a degree in Klingon. With the EU predicting a shortfall of 300,000 qualified IT staff within three years, it would be madness to ignore 50 percent of the potential target audience.”
Mentoring and re-training are also programmes that work well. Providing training for women who have taken a career break due to family commitments can arm them with the up to date technical knowledge and therefore the confidence to return to work. IT consultancy, ThoughtWorks, did just that, by offering free training which eased many women back into jobs in the IT industry.
Over the years more and more legislation has been brought in which has improved the position of women in business and in IT enormously, and companies are increasingly stepping up efforts to recruit and retain female talent. However there is still a good way to go yet, and that is what organisations like womenintechnology.co.uk are concentrating their efforts on. IT is a woman’s world too!
Maggie Berry is Director of womenintechnology.co.uk, the career and networking portal for women in the IT industry.
