Where are the women in IT?

The Australian IT industry is largely dominated by men. With a few exceptions, men are in higher level positions and are thriving in one of the world’s fastest growing industries.

In its recently released 2006 IT Hiring Influence Report, recruitment firm Diversiti found women only represent a small proportion of new hires for IT positions.

Out of 3000 organisations surveyed, 56 percent reported less than three in every 10 of their total IT hires in the past 12 months were women. One-fifth (21 percent) claimed the figure was less than one in 10 of their total hires.

Deborah Howard, managing director, Diversiti, said despite the fact that employers were losing sleep over the inability to attract and retain talent, they were failing to address women as a possible solution to the current lack of IT skills. “Females represent half of our population and are grossly under-represented in the [IT] industry. It’s obvious that IT has an ongoing image problem that needs addressing,” she said in the report.

Another 2006 survey based on responses from Australian Computer Society (ACS) members, showed 37 percent of female respondents felt they had been discriminated against on the basis of gender, compared with 1.3 percent of males.

Philip Argy, ACS president, says the industry body survey showed the experiences women had in the industry showed a dark side to the industry. “The age and sex discrimination experienced by some professionals is concerning, as is the pocket of long-term ICT unemployed whose skills are vastly undervalued,” he said.

“Female respondents were more likely to be hourly contract employees or students seeking work.”
So what needs to be done to rectify the problem? CRN gathered some high-profile women in the IT channel to try to find some answers.

Participating in the discussion were: Beth Mackenzie, national business development manager at ISPhone; Alison McQuarrie, general manager at Express Online; Jewel Ding, managing director at Powerhouse PC, Kerry Hyamson, Queensland branch manager at Bluechip Infotech; Maree Lowe, managing director at ASI Solutions; Susan Chen, marketing manager at PacStar Australia; Jenny Southon, business manager at Ingram Micro; Ming Ho, managing director at Also Technology; Amanda Maynard, manager logistics and subscriber services at Brightpoint; Jane Curtain, speech recognition consultant customer interactive solutions at Dimension Data; and Naiad Angel, account manager at WDG.

CRN: What are your perceptions of the IT industry and the role of women?

Curtain: IT is a tough world for women to be in because it’s largely is dominated men. Women are surrounded by testosterone and need to be able to be comfortable with that. They also need to be able to hold their own in a debate, which can be very challenging and tough.

Lowe: There are a lot of women in CIO positions in government departments. Maybe that is because of the government’s equity policy and its strict industry rules and conditions.

Curtain: Some women investigate how many females are [fairing] in middle and upper management. They often feel they have to work a lot harder than their male counterparts to get anywhere in that organisation – so that can be a little off-putting.

Lowe: I think women have become a lot smarter and have worked out that there is better pay in other industries. I think the conditions in the IT industry aren’t as good as a few years ago. Despite being mobile workers we probably work twice as hard. I think a lot of people have come to realise the great conditions and pay of 15 years ago are gone.

Curtain: Does that apply to men
as well?

Lowe: You could use the argument for the downturn of skilled workers in the IT industry in general.

Is IT still viewed as the domain of the ‘geek’?

Lowe: The days of people thinking that it’s the domain of pimply guys doing programming are long gone.
Hyamson: Around four or five years ago I worked closely with high school girls to help them determine a career path. They perceived the IT as a ‘boffin’ industry. They said “I don’t want to repair a computer” and “I don’t want to really get into software, programming is not my thing”.

Is this industry conditioned to think IT jobs from sales to engineering as the domain
of men?

Curtain: If you are in a sales role you need to have that ego about you; I don’t know if that is necessarily intuitive to many women, or if it’s something that they have to work on. Public speaking is a big part of a sales role in IT and that’s not necessarily something women do naturally.

Hyamson: There are a lot of girls in high-powered companies sitting in receptionist positions and not grabbing opportunities. They don’t think along the lines of, “I want to do what he is doing” or “How am I going to get there?”

Curtain: You don’t find many males in receptionist positions or in phone support roles – these positions are mostly dominated by young women. When you are interviewing for a sales role that is a traditional male-dominated position, you have this pre-conceived idea already of what type of person fits that role and the stereotype often comes into play.

Hyamson: What girls don’t realise is women have qualities that men don’t possess and will never have because we are, by nature, nurturers. It’s in-built for us and they don’t realise that whole side of it.

How are things different for men and women?

Ho: I think men and women are balanced on what they know in the IT industry but I also think women need to choose between looking after children and their careers. If you have a family, don’t think you can go away for five days or even 10 days.

Curtain: When I look around at the men in those senior positions they tend to have partners who are dedicated to looking after the children 100 percent of the time, although that is an honourable position to be in. I just don’t think they understand the working women’s lot is quite different from those and they just can’t appreciate it because their suits are dry-cleaned and they already have their dinner cooked when they get home. If they need to go overseas with very little notice they can do it. I don’t think women yet have the same conditions as men and I know plenty of women who haven’t gone for those senior positions because they know they have to let something go because they aren’t prepared to commit that extra time away from families.

Hyamson: I think that comes down to flexibility with employers and the need to work with those who have very young children. So I think employers need to make that flexibility; just because we have young children doesn’t mean we can’t do the job at hand. Also that does come back to what kind of back end support you get from your partner. I know having a three and five year old, based at home I couldn’t do this with out him [my partner].

Southon: Men also don’t have that guilt factor, that guilt factor isn’t built in.

Curtain: Even things like maternity leave costs a lot of money for a company – to have someone go off on maternity and pay for someone to step into that role. Paying for maternity leave like a government department, is very rare in any private industry and that means women are forced to decide whether they really want to go for the promotion or aim for a role.

McQuarrie: People wonder why they assess their situation after 12 months of maternity leave because they don’t have access to the situation [such as] you can’t get your children into daycare centres.

Curtain: I know people in certain positions and they have taken 12 months maternity leave – they have a position in the company but it’s not the same position. It’s still named the same position because legally it has to [be but it is] essentially a different [role] from the one they left.

Mackenzie: So what do I sacrifice? Which one has to go, children and family and loving husband or fantastic career?

Curtain: The bottom line is men can have both.

Southon: That shouldn’t stop the influx of women coming into the industry though.

Is there something that women can do to rectify this?

McQuarrie: Girls are getting the top marks in the HSC and they aren’t going for traditionally male-focused IT jobs. We need to empower women and girls when they are young and that will have a lot do with what careers they think are available to them.

Curtain: I agree and think it really happens at the entry point.

Mackenzie: I think the mistake we are all making is quite simple: the way we position job advertisements on Seek and My Career. Perhaps we are all guilty of making the position look a little more male orientated, instead of saying, “Hello girls, look at the position that is available to you – or at least put your hand up for it”. Maybe it’s the way we have in the past 15 years ... become blinkered?

Hyamson: I definitely agree and will restyle my ads. I want some balance in my office. In the office I work in I have one female receptionist, a couple of females on phone support and four male account managers. There definitely needs to be a balance when it comes to the sales department in my office.

Curtain: Maybe we need to get out to the universities and tell people what it’s really like in the IT industry. I had a complete career change, from academia to an IT consultant. When I was approached to move into IT I resisted – I am just happy to know how my PC works, I’m not interested in computers. Leave it to the boys and the techies and not my cup of tea at all. It took a lot of chasing for me to even welcome the intrusion – and when I did, I thought, how exciting. My peers had the same reaction that I had, until they found out what I do.

Angel: Is it because male employers are thinking “Ah women, hmm kids, hmm maternity leave?” I am putting it very simplistically.

Lowe: From my business perspective, when I’m either interviewing or promoting, I will promote or hire based on whether or not they are doing a good job. There are a number of degrees now – not counting IT as a standalone course – that have a component of IT in them. A lot of women are already using IT in business but not in traditional IT naming roles and I think they are very good at IT.

Hyamson: Definitely. When girls find out about the kind of jobs available in IT they realise the industry can be interesting. It is a very social industry, with these kinds of events going on all the time and there is a fun side to the industry.

Lowe: [Jokingly] They also don’t realise the number of boys they can meet.

Does the responsibility lie with women in lower positioning putting up their hands up for a higher position?

Hyamson: I don’t see that happening, girls tend to sit back.

Lowe: Women are cautious – they are too cautious.

Mackenzie: Women aren’t risk takers, but when we do take that risk – look out!

Lowe: The problem is that they sit back and wait to be recognised and they aren’t good at networking.

Hyamson: It comes down to being able to sell yourself as well. I left the company for about five years. Back then I was a business development manager. When I was ready to come back I did so as a senior manager. My time off didn’t hinder my career progression. During my time off, I made sure I stayed in touch to keep on point with what’s going on in the industry. I rang my contacts and said “I am ready and I am here”.

Curtain: You would be an exception.

Angel: Women sell themselves short and they think, “I have only been doing this for a few years and I’m not good enough to go for that senior position”.

Curtain: Women do as well and get marks as high as men. They do just as well in university and get into the entry-level position, so is it actually moving up that is the challenge. They don’t self-promote. Most male managers and traditional views make it difficult for women to move up.

Maynard: I truly believe that the drive, initiative and desire to succeed (no matter what the industry) comes from within, no matter what gender. Too often, the perpetuation of stereotyped women is perpetuated by women.

Are women networking enough?

Mackenzie: We need to change the nature of networking functions. After that we will find more women gravitating towards each other and creating more business opportunities. I’ll give you an example: there was a breast cancer function and 1000 women turned up. I scanned the room and yes there was a handful of men, but all the women were business women. They are definitely there and it took something as personal as breast cancer to get the women together to network.

Southon: There’s no reason why women can’t do more networking. I have thought a few times of setting up lunches and things like that. Men do it all the time. Most of us here have our networks of females and we stay within that circle, which is more like friendships. We don’t like making new contacts with total strangers. It will be interesting to see in two months time whether any of us make any contact with each other. The difference is men would walk out of here today and then make a call, in a couple of days or even in six months time.

Curtain: It’s not intuitive to us and networking is not something that is done. The other thing I wonder is, because we work long hours, I have female friends not in IT who say, “With all the travel you do with all the long hours, I wouldn’t be able to do it because of my small children”.

What would help the existing women in IT and attract new ones?

McQuarrie: There needs to be more women open to hiring women. Generally speaking, there are exceptions to this, but men hire men and women hire women.

Hyamson: I find they have a lot more flexibility, no matter what industry they are in.

Angel: Particularly with the skill shortage crisis. Things need to start shifting – women need more support, like daycare centre facilities.

Southon: It’s not just women that need support. In my teams, half of them are women but it’s quite interesting because the men are the ones taking more time off to be with their families.

Lowe: I think there is more flexibility now across the industry. Yes, women are taking time out of the industry, more so than a year or even two years ago. Also, a lot of men take maternity leave. Looking at the flexibility issue, if they are good at their job then you can juggle the work hours around them.

Is this change because of women in senior positions?

Southon: I think some women bosses can be a lot harder than men.

Angel: There are women bosses who try to compensate and keep up with the men. They should be embracing who they are because that is their strong point and that is who they are. We can do things that men can’t.

Curtain: I think back on the number of times I sit in a meeting and I try so hard not to put emotion into my strong opinion because I know how that goes down – it is perceived as [just being] emotional. A woman who takes a hard line is seen as being too emotional.

Angel: Or even a bitch.

Mackenzie: A chairman can be just as intimidating or what I call a bully, but intimidation can only go so far. Women are traditionally viewed as soft, delicate child-bearers. When you change that, from a male’s perspective, they get a bit frightened. Women need to remember they aren’t in senior positions because you have a set of testicles, it’s because you are there to do a job.