By Steve Ranger, 27 February 2006 16:35
NEWS
Flexible working, a macho culture and equal pay all need to be addressed if the IT industry is to attract more women, according to UK IT supplier body Intellect.
A report by the Women and Work Commission published today has revealed that women in full-time work were earning 17 per cent less than men.
But removing barriers to women working in occupations traditionally done by men, and increasing women's participation in the labour market, could be add between £15bn and £23bn to GDP.
IT is one of the sectors where women are particularly under-represented - for example, of the 110,000 people working in financial services IT, only 27,000 are women.
But pay is just one issue that needs to be fixed if more women are to be attracted into technology jobs, said IT industry body Intellect.
Intellect programme manager Carrie Hartnell said in a statement: "Government, industry and unions must come together to discuss and examine pay schemes. This is fundamental in attracting the right people. Failing to address such issues will affect our global competitiveness."
But she added: "If we want our organisations to grow then we must consider all the issues, not just pay; lack of flexible working, male-dominated environment, industry culture and company values and practices, are the core reasons why the IT sector is unattractive to women."
Comments
There are 13 comments. Join the discussion
1. Richard Reece
If pay is genuinely unequal then that absolutely should be tackled, however my experience is that women tend to do pretty well compared to their male colleagues, especially if they end up in (project) management roles. I'm not sure macho culture has anything to do with it- look round the average development team and tell me how many macho people you see, unless macho means talking about playing online Warcraft.
2. anonymous
One of the reasons IT might be unattractive to women is that so many IT projects fail to deliver real business change because they're operating in a vacuum. The job becomes a dream to someone who just likes fiddling with 'stuff' to see what it can be made to do, with little/no regard for how it impacts or supposedly improves the worker's day-to-day life.
For an industry that has largely been told its skills are a commodity for the last 5 years, it's difficult to see how anyone of either gender would be encouraged to enter. Media coverage has frequently focused upon work being sent away rather than the real value added by the skilled resources onshore. Short-term one might earn a lot of cash, but long-term it's easy to perceive that there's no sustainable future in it here in the UK.
Perhaps UK Plc needs to up the ante in selling its expertise in this space better...?
3. Margaret Smith
To the younger women they see IT as where the techie nerds go to work. The image of the industry needs to change if we are to attract more women and convince them that IT is an sttractive career. The school and university curriculum need to address this issue too
4. anonymous
Salary as whole has gone down due to outsourcing.Also as quoted by the previous comment,the IT industry at times is very uncertain. Also its not just women who would appreciate flexi working hours, all would benefits in an industry where normal hours are never ever adhered to.
5. Jay
No women I know want to work in IT, they're more intersted in the arts etc, look at the lack of female car mechanics. they aren't bothered about it, do us men want to do floristry or cleaning (not many)
does anyone else see what i mean?
ps theres nothing macho about IT, is there?!
6. Anne Beaumont
In this IT section of a large research library, both Application Support & Web Unit are predominantly female (one male in each of the sections to 3+ females) and each have female managers, Operations is the reverse, predominantly male, only 1 female, the manager is male, and 4 of the males work flexible part-time. Only one of the women works part-time. Some of the women love listening to & discussing cricket & football, some of the men are mainly interested in classical music. A happy, remarkably stable (very low turnover) group of IT staff.
7. Mike
Financial services are macho, but not all industry. There are real opportunities for women in IT in companies that make real products - and they get to make real changes to the way the company works. That is, unless the IT still reports to the dead hand of the financial director.
8. anonymous
Oh Jay, please - Cleaning??
I hope you are trying to be ironic.
Despite having a flair for IT and trying to change my career into this area with a MSC in Computing, I found as a 30 something female. The doors were definately shut.
9. anonymous
Right...the report highlighted pay inequalities, but the women's advocacy analyst chose instead to wander into the vague realm of unsubstantiated generalizations.
I am always suspicious of spin: a lopsided ratio of men to women, yes; pay differentials, sure, I can believe that and they should be addressed for the benefit of all.
But to indict an entire profession as "macho" or insensitive to "women's needs"...I'm sorry, but this advocate sounded like she was promoting herself as a business consultant on diversity.
I don't pretend to have the insight to understand why the rato of women to men is so unbalanced. Frankly, I can't even explain why I'm still in IT. What I do know is that, at one time, IT was considered to be a very lucrative profession with vast professional opportunity.
That is no longer the case.
I'm more inclined to believe that as women's opportunities and aspirations ramped up over the past 20 years, the lustre came off of this profession.
Flex-time and closing the 17% pay gap will not attract women. There are far better ways to earn a living in business today...that is why women (and men) don't enter this profession...they know that they have better alternatives to choose from.
10. anonymous
Anon from Cardiff.
You should work for us then.
Have a staff of 9 on support
5 women and 4 blokes.
of the women, all apart from one have joined in the last 4 years and all apart from that one are over 30. One is over 40.
Ok this doesn't reflect the industry as a whole but I agree that more women want to go into the arts rather than spending their days taking PCs to bits and fiddling with gadgets. IT is different to a lot of careers in that you have to be a bit of a geek. You can generally tell an IT worker outside of their workplace (yes HUGE generalisation and don't mention the I.T. crowd - I know ;-) ). However most women don't fit into this techie/taking things apart/geeky type. Those who do IMHO excel in IT in exactly the same way the men do.
11. Rebecca
I've worked in IT for just under ten years now and made a concious decision to leave publishing and move to IT b/c of the lure of a higher salary. In my first role at a software company, I found out a male colleague with less experience than myself was earning significantly more, but I think this was primarily b/c he was a pushy sod, not due to any sinister discrimination and it's made me push for more money myself since. I don't find IT companies have a macho culture, but I am surprised by how badly pregant women and returning mums are treated in IT. I've seen hard-working intelligent women totally side-lined after generally short maternities, which is a complete waste and probably puts many women who want to have families and careers off the industry.
Also just while I'm here, can someone kick Jay for me? Floristry and cleaning? As if!!!
12. Joyce Richardson
Well Jay, it may just be because there are a lot of men like you in IT, that put women off! I worked with about 300 men in IT support and I loved it. Not for the reasons you may think. I just adapted to being one of the lads, and it was great. I was the only woman amongst them. I love nothing more than building and repairing computers, setting up networks etc. I Love trouble shooting, and keeping up with the latest technology news. Luckily I am no spring chicken, as I am 59 years old. The ages of the lads I worked with were around 26 to 30 years. A lot of them were not that good on trouble shooting computers, some being graduates had no hands on experience. So their main cure was to format as the easy way out. A younger woman may well have been threatened in the same position. For a start men do seem pick thier noses, re-arange their balls, and go through a lot of porn sites on thier computers, and say F--k a lot. I think when I first started the lads must have thought "God look at that old trout what does she know, I hope she is not working beside me." But we all became good friends I loved thier humour, and wit. The motto for women I think in situations like this is, when in Rome do as the Romans do. Although I could not scratch balls like them, I was told I had balls on many occassions, I opted out of the nose picking and the porn, but could say F--k as well as them after a while, also use the common phrase "She must be blonde" which seemed to be mandatory when women have computer problems that want solving. Oh and by the way I may be an old boiler but no I don't look like a bloke. I am not a lonely old bint either. Joyce
13. anonymous
"Lack of Flexitime". I have worked in IT for many years now and it must be one of the worst indsutries to work in. Salaries are not in line with the amount of hours that have to be in (no such thing as a 40 hour week in IT), and it seems that anyone in IT is on 24/7/365 "On Call".
I accept it's a mission critical industry, but frankly, it stinks for both men and woman.