Beyond the barriers: What women want in IT

In March of 2000, the Australian Government published a report on the under-representation of women in IT careers. The report, -Women in IT - What are the barriers?" concluded that misconceptions of the industry, the enduring 'geek' image and a perceived lack of advancement opportunities were chief culprits in women's reluctance to enter the field.

Five years on, little progress has been made. Have the initiatives implemented since 2000 been inadequate, misdirected, under-funded, or are women simply not interested in information technology?

Research done by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), shows that women make up about 20 percent of the ICT workforce. While this level of participation is low enough to warrant investigation, of further concern is the very low proportion of females in higher-level positions. With a lack of visible, high-profile females and the level of women enrolled in tertiary IT study remaining steady - or in some cases, declining - there is a need to re-think the current strategies for getting girls interested in IT.

According to Su Spencer, Program Director of the recently-established ACS Women board, efforts to increase female involvement in IT have been focused in the wrong direction. -The focus has always been on what it is about women that stops them from coming into the industry, rather than what it is about the industry that doesn't attract women", she says.

One of the enduring problems in the under-representation of females in IT is the reciprocal relationship between the image women have of the industry and the reality of working in it. Women who decide to follow a technology career may get to the workplace and find a lack of senior females and a preponderance of young men who work family-unfriendly hours. Discouraged to find that rumours of a boys' club may have been true, such women bail out of the industry, thereby perpetuating the dearth of female role models in IT.

With a need for more role models and a lack of women willing to step up, how can IT achieve a more balanced gender ratio? We'll take a look at the current issues and see how individuals and groups hope to forge a way forward.

Dot-com damage and a doubtful future
When looking at women's reluctance to jump on the IT bandwagon, it is important to consider the global issues affecting the IT industry over the last five years. Mere months after the government report was released, the infamous dot-com crash transformed the image of IT from a halcyon land of fortune to a layoff-loaded wasteland. According to Spencer, the sudden infiltration of job insecurity and uncertainty had a counteractive effect. -As the reports of the skills shortage dried up and the dot-com crashes came through, you had that negative publicity acting against the initiatives that had been started [to recruit more women]", she says.

In the years following the dot-com crash, the image of the industry has also been tainted by the offshoring and outsourcing trends, which contributed to the notion that IT is a path to an unstable career. Women have been reluctant to enter an industry that appears fraught with vulnerability, especially if they have plans to start a family.

A drive to recruit more women in the early 2000s as part of the general skills shortage panic did not have significant effects on the gender ratio, says Spencer. -When the skills shortage dried up, a lot of the interest in the participation of women dried up as well".

The geek stereotype
When asked what an IT employee does, many girls will conjure images of socially inept programmers who spend their work days alone inside, cast in the lonely glow of a computer monitor. Such stereotypes, perpetuated by the geeks in glasses and high pants who inhabit popular culture, tend to overshadow the fact that an IT career often involves teamwork, communication and creativity.

Kim Roy, Operations Manager for the Women in Technology (WIT) association, says that many females continue to have a narrow view of what a career in IT actually involves. -The biggest issue is that women do not understand the variety of options available to them", she says. -They still think that IT means software programming and hardware maintenance."

This misconception needs to be remedied, according to Didar Zowghi, an Associate Professor in Software Engineering at the University of Technology, Sydney. -It is so important to recruit more women in IT in order to create a sense of balance and to bring the more human side of computing and IT into focus".

The confusion over what a career in technology actually involves is such that some women will actually progress through school, university and the initial stages of their career before realising that the real world of IT is markedly more expansive than public perception. Phylina Zhang, a lead software developer for Customware Asia Pacific, remembers being surprised by the variety that IT has to offer. -When I started, I thought IT was mainly about programming", she says. -But after working in a real IT setting for a while, I realised there is a lot more to it than that, even if you are a developer".

The irony is that more females would be entering the field if they were aware of what IT careers actually involve. Even the oft-cited argument that women's minds are more suited to creative pursuits than mathematical ones shouldn't prevent females from excelling in IT.

-Computing can be quite mathematical and the ability to think logically is essential, but the amount of numbers you have to deal with really depends on the direction you want your career to take", says Victoria Vitaver, a recent graduate of Software Engineering at UNSW. -Designing a 'user friendly' system has about as much maths in it as there are dodos in this world." Zhang agrees: -IT marketing, business analysis, etc are all creative fields in IT which females will find interesting and will be good at."