Women cannot win in the IT jobs stakes, no matter how skilled they
are, according to research presented to a recent BCS meeting
John Kavanagh.
The meeting also heard that women need to be more confident in
their job applications if they are to beat men.
If men have the social skills needed in systems analysis and
consultancy, they are seen as having great social acumen to deal
with changing situations, while women are described as "nice". If
techie men are loners they are described as wizards and highly
intelligent, whereas techie women are seen as boring and
withdrawn.
These were the findings of research presented to a joint meeting
of London BCS Women and BCS affiliate Women into Computing by Ruth
Woodfield, a lecturer at Sussex University, who has spent years
researching the role of women in IT - during which time male
dominance of the industry has grown to more than 75%.
According to Woodfield, the problem is that men and women bring
with them the social status that accords to their gender in the
outside world.
"At work, what you do and the skills you perform are never
judged completely objectively," she said.
Woodfield's most recent research was carried out in an unnamed
software company which claimed it valued social skills as highly as
technical skills. But while male staff were given jobs with
customers in which they were forced to learn social skills - not
always successfully - women with equal qualifications and
experience who already had the skills were described as "nice" but
not clever enough.
Woodfield highlighted a need for objective measuring of skills
that cannot be tested in the same way as technical knowledge.
Hazel Lapierre, technical architect and principal consultant at
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, who has 25 years' experience in IT,
backed Woodfield's views but held out some hope for the future.
"There is a confidence issue among women," she said. "If a job
ad asks for 10 years' experience and knowledge of three software
packages, a man with three years' experience and use of one package
will have a go. But a woman will say, 'I've only got nine years'
experience, and I ought to have a few more, to make up for that
maternity leave I took.'"
Lapierre saw more opportunities for women now. "When I started
you could almost know everything, but now you have to focus," she
said. "You can be a technologist with in-depth knowledge of one
area, you can understand business needs, you can design Web
sites.
"Meanwhile more and more companies are talking about the softer
skills," she added. "Women do not tend to come forward, yet this is
an excellent field for them with great opportunities."