With the number of women working in IT-related jobs falling,
government initiatives and industry think-tanks are working
together to redress the balance.
Improving the way IT-related careers are portrayed to women could
have a significant impact on employment patterns and stem the
falling numbers of women in IT, according to government research
published this month.
The government report, Women in Itec (Information Technology,
Electronics and Communications) Courses and Careers, showed the
number of women working in IT-related jobs in the UK has fallen
over the past couple of years. In 1999, 16% of women were working
in technology-related jobs in the UK economy, but within a year,
that number had fallen to only 13%, placing the UK well below the
US, Canada and Ireland.
The trend is worrying because despite the current slowdown in the
jobs market, analysts see the skills shortage getting worse when
the economy recovers. A report published last year by research firm
IDC showed that there was a shortfall of 860,000 in IT-related jobs
in western Europe, which is expected to rise to 1.74 million by
2003.
The European Information Technology Observatory (EITO) sees the
demand for e-business and call centre skills pushing that shortage
up to 3.84 million by 2003.
In response to these figures government and industry have launched
various initiatives to encourage more women to enter IT-related
careers. But recent events, such as the bursting of the dotcom
bubble, have provided a further setback for women in IT.
Jane Millar, research fellow at the University of Sussex and a
joint author of the government paper, said it was likely that the
numbers [of women in IT] had fallen because the data was collected
before the dotcom fall out, at the height of the panic about the
skills shortage in the sector.
"Back then, I would've been more optimistic about women's
participation in the ITEC-related workforce because a lot of people
were being employed in response to the crisis," she said.
The problem, for both young women thinking about a career and those
considering changing to IT, was that IT-related opportunities were
still crippled by negative stereotyped-images, most of which had no
bearing on reality, Millar said.
"The image is that of a geek or a nerd, someone who is not
particularly communicative and is cooped up all day interacting
with a machine. When selecting a career, women seem to be turned
off by this stereotypical image," she said.
Millar added that there needed to be a lot more debate between
Government and industry about promoting the variety of jobs women
could apply for if they took certain decisions during their
education. "If there was a more comprehensive awareness about the
variety of jobs available, and a better mapping of the skills that
women have, it could have an influence on the decisions they make."
The report also touched on the participation of women in
ITEC-related courses, in which they are generally
under-represented, particularly in more technical areas such as
product design and software development. The number of female
graduates from technology-related courses was lower in the UK than
in any of the other five countries studied.
London student Louis Okadiegbo, an undergraduate at Greenwich
University who is completing a four-year course in information
systems and business and management, said that of the 80 students
on his information systems course, only eight were female, compared
with seven out of 10 on the business/management side.
The problem, he agreed, was one of perception. "It's a
psychological thing: most women see it as just a technical or
mechanical job. Someone should educate women about the diversity of
it. There are so many things you can do in IT, like design: it's
not just about support or fixing PCs," he said.
He said IT internship programmes could be a valuable way of showing
what the reality was like. "I think this would help to educate
women about working in an IT environment and probably change their
perception."
Okadiegbo has completed a year's internship at advertising and
marketing giant Grey Global, where he was working under Anne Marie
Wolfe, a regional chief information officer. Wolfe, who started her
career in IT in the early 1980s when she joined a trainee programme
with oil giant Shell, agreed it was crucial that young women
understood the diversity involved in an IT-related career.
"You have to get them at entry level, at the age of 16, and make
them realise just how many opportunities there are in IT," Wolfe
said.
"Working in IT is a hugely diverse and constantly-changing
environment but we've not been very good at showing what it's all
about. We need to see a higher profile of women who have been
successful in IT."
Raising the profile of women achievers was a strong proposition
which was likely to spur understanding about work in the sector,
Miller said. "It's a very good idea but I don't know where the
responsibility for [encouraging] that would lie," she said. She
pointed to certain industries where there had been successful
initiatives to promote "gender champions", such as the Women into
Science & Engineering (Wise) campaign, where women visited
schools to share their experiences. Work was under way to find ways
of extending the profile of these initiatives to other industries,
she said.
For too long IT professionals have presented a narrow image of
working in IT - overemphasising technical skills and glossing over
the need for broader business skills. "Those with deep technical
knowledge have to be willing to accept and value that broader range
of skills but that requires a cultural change that isn't going to
happen overnight. The presence of women in these jobs will
encourage a different culture, but it's a vicious circle because
they have to get there in the first place," she said.
Respondents' comments
The report surveyed women in
IT-related courses and careers in six countries.
- "The industry is not women-friendly. There are long hours,
early starts, late nights and a lot of travel. It's not
family-friendly, or socially friendly. There's still a macho thing
about it."
- "The ideal IT manager is a young, male, he lives and works in
the South East, has a team of about half a dozen and there's one
female in it. He's possibly reluctant to bring in a second because
he worries about their commitment, and he won't recruit older than
himself. The IT manager recruits in his own image. Issues of women
and age sit alongside each other."
- "Most women are employed in user companies because they are
interested in the application of computing and because their
business interests are stronger and their knowledge of IT is
secondary."
- "This is the first systematic analysis of what it is to be a
high flyer, and it confirms many people's fears that it helps to be
a man."
- "Women are changing their acceptance of IT. It used to be that
women saw IT as a geeky, anorak-populated, macho, game-playing
career, and the image was not appealing to them. This is changing
and IT is changing."
- "Being customer-focused is increasingly important in IT, there
has been a rapid growth in the use of customer relationship
management software, all about touchy-feely things like how do you
love your customers. This requires traditional feminine skills.
There is more in IT now that needs the female touch. Now there is a
need to say to women 'there is a career here and you don't need to
be male'."
Further Information:
www.skillsbase.dfes.gov.uk