Discrimination against older and female IT workers is still prevalent in the workplace, according to a survey of industry professionals.
Results of the Australian Computer Society's (ACS) annual ICT employment survey found 20 percent of respondents claimed they had been discriminated on the basis of age at some time in their career.
Over 900 ACS members completed the survey. The Society has about 14,000 members.
Of those IT workers discriminated due to their age, the survey found those aged 45 years or older to be the most likely victims.
As a result, many of these workers were self-employed.
This could not be allowed to continue, according to the ACS.
"As the population ages and skilled workers become scarcer it will be important to ensure workers do not face age discrimination,"
said the ACS in the survey.
"We cannot afford to assume that people will be prepared to take the self-employed option to continue to meet the needs of ICT employers."
ACS president Philip Argy said the level of discrimination was concerning.
However, he was hopeful an industry code of ethics could reduce the problem, with support from state governments. The ACS issued a national statement on ICT issues for state governments earlier this year, and is trying to find support.
The level of age discrimination in the industry had fallen when compared with the 2004 survey though. Almost 30 percent of respondents to the 2004 survey had experienced age discrimination. This was not measured in the 2005 survey.
Also common in the 2006 survey was sex discrimination, with 37 percent of female respondents claiming their gender had created problems at the workplace.
These female respondents were "more likely" to be hourly contract workers or students, said the survey.
Only 1.3 percent of male respondents cited sex discrimination experiences.
Other findings of the survey included ICT unemployment levels falling to 5.1 percent.
This was the lowest level in many years, according to the ACS, only 0.3 percent above the national average unemployment figure.
Almost 70 percent of survey respondents were full-time employees.
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jb - 19/09/06
Another for of discrimination that most people seem to just accept is racial preference toward Asians. I am a caucasian, my wife is from India. I have double the experience, in years, of her and most of her friends. But I get fewer offers and less money than they do. They all come to me for help, but I am always considered lower on the pole than they.
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Werner Sandner - 20/09/06
I am 52 years old and 5 years ago I started to study IT database administration. Today I have specialized in C#.NET, mainly building database driven Internet, desktop application and Web services. I am on the top of the skill. I have tried to find employment for the last number of years and to no avail, even though people with my skill set and level are in short supply. I have my own web site (http://www.supremeb.com) where you can download my components for free and you can truly see how highly skilled I am. It does not matter how skilled I am, there is always an job applicant who is younger and I have finally come to the conclusion that perusing a career in the area of employment is useless. I have my own firm but I substitute – I drive taxis – what a shame.
Werner Sandner
PO BOX 4744
CAIRNS QLD 4870
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3
Jasmine - 20/09/06
Well, surprisingly, this doesn't worry me. I blogged about this a couple days ago, sort of. The reason there aren't very many women in IT is because they don't like it. Women don't gravitate toward the field. Can we really expect to hav 50% women in the IT world when it's clear that women just don't like the field? It's stupid to complain about percentages of the workforce. What would be more interesting would be to know the percentage of women who are skilled in IT, but are unemployed, and compare that with the same number for men. Finally, discrimination is a fact of life. We will never eliminate it, and I think that's a good thing. People need to be able to make a decision based on something other than the job skills. People constantly complain about that, but when there's 100 people with the same skills... you can be pretty sure that I'm going to hire the person who I personally like the most. There are things you can do as a job-seeker to improve your chances in that situation, and these are things that women are better at than the men usually.
IT people in the job market need to realise that it's no longer all about being a geeky brainiac. There are skilled programmers out there who are not 'typical' geeks, such as the ladies in the calendar (which doesn't insult me one bit, btw). The geeky brainiacs have to compete with this group of people who are socially competent, attractive and getting younger every day. There is also a huge influx of barely-competent programmers who are becoming a necessary evil in the IT world, but who serve to increase the competition on the job market. I don't think there's any 'special' discrimination going on here. I think it's the same sex discrimination that women see wherever we go.
More about this at my blog...
smoothjazzy.blogspot.com
Jasmine
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4
GINA - 07/07/09
I am a woman in iT and yes I do like it. However it is very much Jobs for the Boys (I also have an MBA, Maths Degree and Diploma in Education). There exists a stereotypical image of women and thos of us that do not display this image pay the price.
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