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Why IT really is women's work

Posted on 16 Jun 2008 at 17:22

The BlackBerry Women and Technology Awards also showcase female tech success by recognising and rewarding role models in the hope that more women will follow suit and join the industry.

Taey Kim of SMARTlab, a shortlisted awards entrant, is looking forward to the day people don't stop and stare when a woman opens a PC case. "If I roll up my sleeves and set about fixing a machine people look on in amazement," she said. "Certain prejudices mean that those who work in technology are expected to fit a certain typecast. But such challenges can give rise to increased levels of determination in women, making us even more determined to perform and succeed so that we quash these stereotypes and start to explore new ways of working."

Indeed, organisations would do well to remember that IT users span both genders when they're recruiting. "We put a lot of energy into increasing the number of talented female engineers," said Sue Haber, HR project manager at Google. "After all, our users are very diverse people, and we think we can address them better through having a diverse set of people working at Google." Haber runs the Anita Borg Scholarship, which aims to create more female tech role models and leaders. The search giant won the BCS Women in IT Award in 2007 as recognition of its efforts in this area.

Others clearly echo Google's sentiments. "Don't be afraid of it - good technology should be designed with usability and with the man, or woman, on the street in mind," said Anita Moss, managing director of Edunation. "Play with it, experience it and don't forget that you are the end user, too. See yourself as the customer and don't lose sight of a great idea. Worry about who'll fit together the nuts and bolts further down the line."

Only the beginning

So here we are in 2008 with women still being stared at for daring to fiddle with a motherboard and fewer females working in the industry than almost a decade ago. Yet BCS president Rachel Burnett still finds room for optimism. "I joined [this industry] because it's an exciting career with lots of different angles to it and lots of scope," she said. "It was very new. It still is very new. There's an enormous amount of development that is going to be taking place over the next 30 years. I think it's a very exciting industry to get involved with and there's a variety of ways we can get involved. There are so many different careers that would suit and fascinate women. They must be able to be confident about going for the jobs they would like to do."

But while beefing up the number of women in the IT workplace is of paramount concern, government and businesses must avoid the temptation to positively discriminate, warns Nikki Walker, director of inclusion and diversity in the European markets team at networking giant Cisco. "Both the UK workforce and the global business environment are changing, and in order to ensure the UK remains competitive, we need to ensure the IT industry recruits and retains the best talent," she said. "We want to move the needle and encourage more women to come into Cisco as a higher proportion of the workforce by being the best candidate and because we want to continue to hire the best talent; not through positive discrimination.

"It's a worst-case scenario to have [the perception that] someone was only hired because they're a woman," Walker added. "Even if they are highly talented, they're on the back foot before they've even started."