Chelsea FC IT director Elaine Clarke is the only woman on the team.
She talks to Karl Cushing about her daily ups and downs
The IT industry is a notoriously male-dominated environment and,
although the situation has improved in recent years, there is still
a noticeable dearth of women in the top management roles. But there
are some notable exceptions.
A good example is Elaine Clarke. Not content with forcing her way
into the IT boys' club, Clarke has broken into the male bastion of
football as well.
Clarke became the IT director of Chelsea football club and the
Chelsea Village leisure complex three years ago and clearly loves
the role. "No two days are the same," she says. "There's so much
going on." Clarke says it took her 18 months just to get to grips
with it all. When she first arrived only a few people were using
e-mail, the club was still using an AS400 network and staff were
storing information on their C: drives. Clarke wanted to tie
everything together and institute some safer computing practices.
She began by getting everyone on e-mail, installing an NT server
and setting up a proper network.
Clarke began her IT career as a punch operator. She then spent a
number of years as a programmer at financial firm Lombard, moving
through the various divisions, before getting into programme
management. She later took on more of a consultancy role after she
was chosen to conduct a corporate identity project for the
company.
Having taken it "about as far as she could" at Lombard, Clarke took
voluntary redundancy with the intention of forming her own
business, although she quickly found herself in the role of IT
manager for a recruitment agency. Clarke wasn't particularly happy
with the job, however, so when someone at the company's recruitment
software provider, Software for Sport, told Clarke about the group
IT manager position at Chelsea Football Club she was immediately
interested.
Initially, Clarke was reluctant to apply as she didn't think her
chances of getting the job were very high. "I was quite nervous
about it," she says. "I wasn't feeling intimidated about being
interviewed for the job, I just felt it would be very
male-dominated, and it is to a certain extent. You still tend to
find that in a lot of the meetings I'll be the only woman." Clarke
is also the only woman who attends the Software for Sport user
group meetings.
At first the men were not sure how to behave in her presence and
would treat her with kid gloves, apologising for their language and
their behaviour. But things are different now. "I've got used to it
I suppose," she says. "It's been inherent to my career in IT. In
any male-dominated area you definitely get the really fiery people
and you get the bad language and the backlashing. People used to
apologise for themselves, but I just ignore it and join in with it.
You've got to be like that. I don't think about it anymore: it
doesn't even occur to me. I'll fight along with the rest of
them."
But she is quick to counter the idea that women need to be stronger
and more aggressive than their male counterparts. "You have to be
tough, but you don't have to be tougher," she says. "You just have
to be the same."
Clarke was "absolutely thrilled" when she got the job. "It seemed a
huge challenge and I love a challenge," she says. "I can't work
without one. I grabbed it with both hands." She was the only woman
to apply for the job and, even now, she is the only female IT
director in Premiership football.
She still occasionally encounters the attitude that she's not up to
the job. "People try to undermine you and trick you because they
think you don't know your stuff, but this has never unnerved me
because I do," she says. And she doesn't believe this is because
she is a woman. "I've never looked at it that way," she says, and
is quick to point out she has never encountered this attitude at
Chelsea.
Clarke says that she has always been surrounded by men, and having
two sons - both Chelsea fans - helps. She also believes that
attitudes are changing and not just with the men.
"Women also have a different attitude towards what they do," she
says. "They're tougher and go for higher things and try to get
better jobs in management."
Has her experience in IT management changed her? She says that
making the move from programming into management was the hardest
part - especially as the finance company was very old fashioned and
male-dominated. "Your qualifications were the same [as the men] but
you had to push harder," she says. But she doesn't think it has
changed her as a person, although business-wise she can be "as
tough as a man and sometimes even more difficult". She says the
nature of management itself has changed, however, and not attitudes
to gender.
"You have to be mentally tough to get anywhere and forceful with
your case these days," she says. Management is a tough business and
its tough to stay at this level."
Clarke has no plans to move on from Chelsea as "there's still lots
to do", which helps keep the job interesting. She has even become a
bit of a Chelsea fan. What she would like to do now is get a seat
on the board, although she thinks this is unlikely. "I think I
could bring a lot to the board," she says. "I would like to be at
the hub. I think I could be more efficient if I was there."