Women make up just 24% of the IT workforce - and just 7% of the IT
management layer. Put another way, if the same number of female
graduates as males went into ICT, it would go a long way to
resolving the technology skills crisis.
Only the most fervent misogynist could fail to see that bringing
women into IT is a key challenge for UK firms. But the task for IT
managers is to go beyond platitudes and good intentions and show
leadership in action.
The skills crisis is not uniform. Demand for basic client-server
skills is starting to decline. The big gaps lie in two areas:
competent programmers with Web-related skills; and competent
project managers who can manage people and business processes as
well as development work.
The real challenge is in Web skills. E-developers work unsocial
hours, and that can rule out women with children. Added to that is
the "laddish" culture which makes some workplaces intolerable to
females. On top of that is the dog-eat-dog ethos that seems to
develop wherever employers rely heavily on a large numbers of
contractors.
Today, on International Women's Day, IT chiefs should take a
good look at their own departments, and ask whether a combination
of work practice and informal culture is preventing recruitment and
retention of women.
There are any number of government task forces and initiatives
aimed at getting women into IT. But it is up to individual firms to
make the profession into a career of choice for women.