Jobs for the girls: Can tech turn a corner?
Published: 12 Mar 2008 15:04 GMT
...a dozen female university students who have shown exceptional promise in computing; the Google Anita Borg Scholarship is worth €5,000 (£3,800) over one academic year.
The scholarship recognises the work of Dr Anita Borg, a New York computer scientist who fought over many years to dismantle the barriers which prevented women entering computing careers.
Microsoft: Opening Windows of potential
Despite its size, Microsoft hasn't lost sight of the issues involved in attracting and retaining women recruits, and its initiatives to tackle the problem start at board level.
Gordon Frazer, Microsoft UK managing director, chairs an occasional roundtable of the company's most prominent female staff to discuss the challenges and opportunities they are met with. According to Dave Gartenberg, human resources director for Microsoft UK, such discussions might revolve around topics such as returning to work after maternity leave, contact with the workplace during maternity leave, or mentoring.
Microsoft also organises an annual, two-day Women's Conference to which it sends some of its most prominent managers, and it pays for several hundred North American student scholarships for three categories of under-represented groups: women, ethnic minorities and disabled people.
The software giant also encourages its employees to work flexibly, providing every member of staff with paid-for broadband at home, a smartphone and a tablet PC. That initiative is intended to help all workers, but it has proven particularly helpful for some women who are juggling both a career and childcare, according to Microsoft.
Gartenberg said that Microsoft's male-to-female ratio is 72:28, while over 30 percent of new recruits are female. He said that the ratio is the same for IT disciplines but that there are a higher proportion of men in "hard-core technical".
"We could always do better. We still have room to grow," he said, "but, looking at our peers, we are doing very well".
But Microsoft said it will not recruit women, or any other under-represented group, purely for the sake of it. "We are kind of blind when we go for that," said Gartenberg. "What this is about is removing the barriers to people realising their potential."
Cisco and IBM: A low-profile approach
Cisco revealed at its annual European conference in January that it had launched an "incredibly successful" female-recruitment drive, and that, as a result, just over one-quarter of its staff are now female.
The network giant's European president, Chris Dedicoat, told reporters at Cisco's Networkers event that the company had implemented a policy whereby a manager who successfully recruits a woman from outside the IT industry is given a budgetary refund on their recruitment costs as a reward for their efforts. The new starter is then placed on a special programme to equip them with the necessary IT skills and knowledge.
However, when approached for more details, the network equipment maker was unwilling to comment.
Similarly, when IBM was asked for details of how it encouraged under-represented groups into its workforce, the company offered no information.
Public-sector success
In the public sector, one shining example of positive action around issues of diversity stands out.
The ICT department of Barking and Dagenham Council in East London is staffed by considerable numbers of both men and women. For example, while first-line helpdesk support is constituted of mostly male employees, business support is mostly staffed by women, and application support by a roughly equal split of the sexes.
The department is run by Sarah Bryant, who won the British Computer Society's Women in IT award 2006 for her work in setting up a women's network at the council.
That award was won when the network was in its early days. "It's council-wide now," said Bryant. "We talk about learning, leadership and management."
Bryant is keen to show female IT staff that there are plenty of opportunities in technology careers and that it's possible for women to work their way up the career ladder even if they start with little experience. Bryant herself started as a relatively lowly systems architect.
She said that attitudes have changed a lot in recent years and that there are growing numbers of women in public-sector IT. "Ten years ago, people thought I was someone's PA. It still seems to be a man's world, but now there are a lot more women," she said.
One of the critical factors in retaining staff, particularly women, Bryant said, is providing flexibility. "Everyone is unique in what they mean by [flexibility]," said Bryant. "It's about meeting those needs. No one size fits all."
Bryant dismissed the suggestion that there is a pay gap and that women are being paid less than men for doing the same job. "I've always worked in the public sector but I've never come across that," she said. "You are paid [the same] whether you are male or female."
If the likes of Bryant are to be believed, statistic-induced doom and gloom about women's position in the IT industry is not reflective of reality. At any rate, the positive efforts of such individuals are starting to challenge traditional stereotypes and assumptions, and help mould a new future for women in IT. Perhaps this most male-dominated, and supposedly unfair, of industries really has started to turn the corner.
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