Where are the women in tech?

In the context of discussing Josef Langerman’s online IT management course, he asked me “only about 10% of readers [of the course] are female. You can also see that play out in the organizational demographics for IT. We struggle to attract females. … What can be done to attract more females to the material and also how do we attract more females to IT?” Which basically come down to: Where are the woman in tech?

That’s a thorny issue. Back when I was active in the IT world there were many women among the programmers that I employed and several of them went on to more senior roles in project management, systems architecture and IT management roles. I’d be interested in whether the proportion of women in IT has actually decreased since the 1990s, but I don’t have any stats on that.

The lack of women in IT is a worldwide phenomenon, not just a South African one, although interestingly India bucks the trend with large numbers of women in IT. A recent article, I think it was in the ACM Communications, unpacked that and concluded that in India IT was seen as a safe and respectable field for women to work in.

I suspect too that the prominence of IT as a career option in India plays a part. Research conducted by an honours student of mine found that high school girls in Gauteng had no idea what information systems was or that there were job opportunities in that line of work. Those who had heard of it had relatives in IT jobs. So perhaps we need to educate school guidance teachers on the option, although I imagine that it is hard for them to really sell the careers that they have no knowledge of.

But I think that the bigger problem, especially at the senior levels, is that IT jobs are simply not very nice jobs and that men are more likely to feel obliged to stick it out than women. I may need to explain what I mean by a nice job here.

My experience of the high end of the IT world (meaning rare technical and management skills) is that the jobs are well paid and carry all the usual perks that are associated with a good job, but they also are generally embedded in corporate cultures that emphasize competition and conflict rather than co-operative solution seeking. I think that most big businesses are very masculine in that regard. Women (broadly generalising here) would I think be more comfortable in companies that are cooperative in nature.

Because of the nature of IT – companies depend on it, when it goes wrong there is a lot of pressure to fix it quickly, and there is a lot of money tied up in IT solutions that makes senior management nervous but helpless in the face of things they don’t understand – it’s a stressful environment. That stress makes it an environment where poor human interactions get worse and the usual corporate mechanisms for dealing with such situations (professionalism, working harder, figuring out who to blame or how to stay out of the firing line) are not really helpful.

I think that women look at this and go “I don’t need this in my life”. I know I did. I left the IT industry years ago and have never had the urge to go back. Men are under more pressure to keep the big salary and so are more likely to stick it out.

So what I think is needed is organisations that are designed to run more cooperatively, where people feel supported and where problems are tackled in a less aggressive manner with a focus on pooling skills to find solutions. For that we may need to address the gender imbalance in the ranks of senior management first, or create whole new businesses that are not premised on competition. (I know that many who have been conditioned to see business as inherently competitive struggle to even conceive of what such businesses might look like.)

I see many young women start out in the industry who report that they find the work interesting, but don’t really like the corporate culture. Those that do continue often adapt to the more masculine ways of being, and many are very successful. (I was one of them.) Those that have alternatives take them.

Of course there are other forces at work too and this is a big, multifaceted subject. For example, role models really matter.

I remember giving a lecture and discussing a problem that I had faced as a CIO. One of the young women followed me out of the lecture theatre and asked if I had really been a CIO. She said that she had never heard of a woman in that position and that she was thinking of changing careers so that she had more of a chance of getting to the top of her field. She assumed that in IT she would never be able to take her career that far. Ambitious young women may be put off by the lack of successful role models.

So I think that there are many women who could enjoy and thrive in IT and take on leadership roles, but they need to (1) know that the option exists (2) see female role models in those positions and (3) find the environment appealing before they will be lining up for these jobs.

There is another conversation to be had about involving young women at the entry levels of IT, but that is for another day.

This article first appeared here: Where are the woman in IT Management?

This was a guest post by Prof. Judy Backhouse. She is an artist and entrepreneur, having recently launched a co-working space in Johannesburg. She has worked in academia, lecturing in a range of topics, including mathematics, Information Technology and Management at a number of universities. Her research is into Smart Cities in Africa, Technology Education and Doctoral Education in South Africa. She also worked in the IT industry in positions ranging from technical to management.

Women in Tech

Women in Tech is a major theme here at Langerman Panta Rhei. Women are vastly under-represented and access to their skills is a loss for our industry.

Listen to our podcast with prominent women in Tech:

• Brenda Niehaus (CIO)
• Tanya Momberg (Relationship Manager)
• Rika Gertenbach (CIO)