By Jo Best, 9 March 2007 13:20
NEWS
The tech and telecoms industry needs to get more women on board or risk confronting a shortfall of 300,000 IT workers in 2010, according to the European Commission.
The Commission is hoping to influence more girls still in compulsory education to consider pursuing a career in IT, in an effort to keep the tech workforce on track.
Despite growth in the number of students across Europe studying ICT related subjects, the EC is pushing for more techies in universities - currently 2.3 per cent of all students study IT - to keep Europe up to speed with its industrial rivals, such as the US, where five per cent of graduates are techies, and South Korea, where the figure is six per cent.
Getting more women into IT, says the EC, is the answer. In 2006 a mere 22 per cent of those undertaking tech studies were women.
At the top of the corporate ladder, the picture is even bleaker. In 66 per cent of telecoms companies, there are no women on the board and in 14 major IT companies the figure is less than 10 per cent.
UK IT body Intellect has also warned recently that women are deserting IT, prompted by the long hours and macho culture. The group said only 16 per cent of tech workers are women and even that meagre number is a drop from 18 per cent a couple of years ago.
Comments
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1. anonymous
It appears here that promotion above 2 basic IT grades is restricted to men and single women without kids for the last 20 years - but this is not seen as sexism. Do well in assessment (that's on paper), deliver quality results (lucky in assignment) no matter how well I perform it seems a single parent never has their mind on the job and are not able to do essential (actually mythical) overtime at the drop of a hat.
The regular absence in mind and body and the recovery perod often required by many men to attend sporting events seems not to matter at all.
If you want women in the workplace then don't tolerate sexist claptrap and poor conditions. Ignoring family needs and women's abilities is not only stupid but also inneffective and illegal.
The only true reason for this is divide and rule on artificial grounds of sex in order to depress wages/ conditions. We'd all benefit if we'd stand side by side together and reject such sexist nonsense and poor conditions...
2. Peter Excell
Well, right on sister! But what are we going to do about it?
I have spent forty years in electronics and IT departments in British universities. Right from my earliest days as a student, I perceived that the lack of girls in the subject was a fundamental cancer at its heart, and I still believe that to be the case. I have done my level best to encourage girls (positive discrimination? You may think that, I couldn't possibly comment), but it has always been an uphill struggle. Even those that I have managed to nurture and attempt to steer into an academic career have almost all dropped out and my deep fear is that they have probably made an informed choice: i.e. that it is an insane lifestyle and that there are better ways of making a living (and the men who stick with it are mugs, by implication).
Right now I have a particularly good one whose temporary contract has run out: in the past I would have had a good chance of shifting her into a lectureship, but since the British Government's insane cut of 26% in the funding for computing-related departments a couple of years ago we have been cut to the bone and there is no hope of taking on new people: in fact, the threat of redundancies looms.
I still say the lack of female participation is a cancer at the heart of these subjects, but after forty years of trying, I am close to despairing of finding a solution.