Senior women in IT called for a campaign to boost the
number of female IT workers at a roundtable last week.
At the event, hosted by trade association
Intellect, the women said that the UK's economic
competitiveness is at risk unless the IT skills gap is plugged with
more female staff.
Gillian Arnold, hardware outsourcing executive at IBM, said,
"This needs to be done on a full time basis. We can only devote
three to four hours a week and there needs to be real resources put
into it. The industry should pay because it will benefit."
The group agreed that attraction and retention of women need
urgent attention. Within those issues, efforts need to go into
getting young girls interested in technology, tackling the gender
pay gap, changing the "old boys' network" and "geeky" culture of
IT, making working flexible and child care available, and
increasing retraining for women returning after having
families.
