By Nick Heath, 15 April 2008 16:39
NEWS
The future of the UK's IT industry hangs on its ability to attract and employ more women.
Women hold the key to plugging a critical skills shortfall that is affecting the entire UK tech industry, says the IT & Telecoms Insights 2008 report by e-skills UK based on Gartner research.
A survey of CIOs last year projected skill gaps in every area of IT by 2010, with the largest rift in business intelligence and business process improvement.
Filling this hole will be impossible while the tech industry does not appeal to 51 per cent of the population who are female, the report says.
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Last year just 16 per cent of tech workers were women and the report warns that new talent in the IT industry is "diminishing at an alarming rate" as enrolments in technology intensive courses decline and women remain unconvinced of a career in IT.
The report says: "Expanding the pool of IT talent is a business and national imperative as an increasing portion of UK GDP can be attributed either directly or indirectly to IT activity. IT jobs are increasingly disproportionately held by men. Gender balance in IT is not only an issue of social equality; rather it is central to the viability of an industry."
The telecommunications industry's need for new skills will be driven by a swathe of its workforce reaching retirement age, the report says.
The report adds that the UK must reduce its reliance on skilled offshore workers and rebuild its domestic IT labour force to serve emerging areas such as analytics, information management, design and innovation.
The report tells IT professionals to change the way they "recruit, train and foster subordinates' career", particularly in government, and stresses the need for new teaching courses that interest students in IT and provide employers with the right mix of skills.
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Karen Challinor
so looking at recent stories on Silicon.Com they've looked at university graduates and pleaded for more to take up IT to fill the skills gap they say is there
they've bemoaned the lack of skills in depth in the immigrant workforce and asked for immigration filters so only those with the required skills are allowed in the country
now they want women to fill this non existent skills gap
it's a list of industry prejudice in order of acceptability when you think about it,
"oh we'll have a graduate they don't need paying much, failing that we'll have an immigrant, bit more expensive though and failing that I suppose we'll have to settle for a woman..."
and by all means they should keep looking everywhere except at the older generation we'll still be here when they run out of options, we'll still have the skills they need in depth and we'll still be ignored because they think we are past it
2. Andrew Robb
I think the report misses the point; while IT only seems to attractive to a fifth as many women as men, the main problem is in attracting the young.
What young person would be well advised to move into a sector which is moving itself off shore as fast as it can?
Perhaps business analysts need to be moved away from the cost-concious IT cost centre and towards the money making core business. "Dont expect promotion if you're missing IT skills."
3. Alan L
or of course, they could start utilising the existing huge talent pool... of the 40+year old IT workers.
Proven expertise, demonstrable experience. And not necessearily demanding high salaries.
of course, the /real/ shortage is in post-graduates (or young), limited experience, will work for all hours on all tasks, for peanuts. Read the between the lines... there is no skills shortage, just a fodder shortage.
4. Mike King
Hear! Hear! Well said Alan.
If true how come I am into my eighth month of unemployment?
For rent - 7 years MS VC++, 15 years total commercial computing, 10 years technical sales, 5 years office management, MSc & BSc.
5. anonymous
The biggest problem is promotion of all these over-optimistic types. A realistic (where realistic is neither pessimistic nor optimistic) 40+ year old is never going to get a job when a graduate programmer and a project manager can make something look like it works in VB and have it limp across the project go-live, add it to their CVs and everyone walks away.
6. anonymous
Quite frankly, people are turned away from working in IT because of the politics and bureaucracy that controls, stifles and inhibits true technological development. We, humanity, have not yet really started scratching the surface of what technology can do, and even when we start to, the very goals we seek are hidden, distorted and mutated by powers that don't understand technology, or don't stand to make enough from it!