Me brainstorming with dynamic and committed MEPs: (from my right) Romana Jordan Cizelj, the hand of Marietje Schaake, Edit Herczog, Arlene McCarthy and Doris Pack. Plus senior Commission official Linda Corugedo Steneberg. Thanks to all of them!
I’ve blogged before about getting Every Woman Digital. I continue to find it troubling that women are under-represented in the ICT sector at every level, and particularly in decision-making positions. And the situation doesn’t seem to be getting better.
I’m worried when people assume that ICT careers wouldn’t offer exciting opportunities for women. But if women are going into the sector and not being made to feel welcome, well, that worries me even more.
Why? Because I believe in equality of opportunity. But also because we can’t afford to exclude anyone. If we want Europe to be world-class in ICT, we’ll need world-class ICT experts. But overall in Europe, not enough people are studying it or choosing it for their career.
Changes in the sector mean that it needs a wider range of skills than ever before. But we are at risk of a “skills gap”, a shortage to the tune of about half a million jobs. Faced with that challenge, we need to make sure we aren’t putting barriers in the way of anyone, in particular that we aren’t keeping women from fulfilling their potential. And in particular that girls and young women, at the stage of career planning, are aware of what they can achieve in this sector. If we only get 50% of Europe digital, that’s bad for the other 50%, and it’s also failing to make the most use of the talent on offer in Europe.
I want to get to the bottom of this problem. Previously the European Commission has developed a code of practice on the issue. This contained some good ideas about what could be done to make IT careers more attractive to and less discriminatory towards women: from school and university education to recruitment practices; and from career development to dealing with those returning from leave.
But I want to explore this further – and ensure that the ideas in the code remain both relevant, and put into practice. On Tuesday I invited some dynamic and committed colleagues from the European Parliament to brainstorm about this lack of female engagement in the sector. I was keen to know how we could improve the access and attractiveness of ICT for women: why are women deterred, and what can we do about it?
We talked about how to inspire people by involving community groups and role models—male and female! We talked about how to promote ICT careers equally to everyone without excluding or ghettoising. And we talked about where to target efforts: if we want to get more female ICT undergraduates we may need to focus more on girls and young women in schools, but we shouldn’t forget about the older generation either.
Our meeting was largely to prepare a bigger gathering we’ll be holding in October; this is just the start of a project which I hope will eventually reach concrete conclusions. But whether the problem comes from culture in the classroom, or behaviour in the boardroom, I’m clear that we need to do something about it – for the sake of equality and for the sake of all our digital futures. And from now on, when I meet a politician, I will ask what she (or he) is doing to address this issue.
Ahead of our October meeting, I’d want to sound out more views. Do you share these concerns? What do you think the European Commission, the industry and our education system could do about them?
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Tags: code of practice on ICT and women, Digital Agenda, European Parliament, gender equality, ICT skills gap, IT girls, MEP, Neelie Kroes, women in ICT
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In my young age (now 61) to be an analytical person, as a woman it was very hard get respected for that way of thinking. My teacher said it was nothing for women. Even today, although not working in ICT it still looks this way of thinking is not positive, you must always be in relation with the other person, and not given a review or observations. Ofcourse you must allways check them. Also sciences has lost his respect. Besides the role models, it would help that an analytical review on what ever subject get more respect. How that must be done is difficult, because everbody can be heard by the social media, may besides the wikipedia a sort of review site with observations /analyses?
I’d suggest that “Unlocking The Clubhouse” is on the reading list for the event. For anyone who hasn’t read it, it’s a very interesting book about the attempts at Carnegie Mellon to improve the number of women (and other minorities) on their Computing course, and the research they did around it. Google have it available to read online for free too, so you’ve no excuse! http://books.google.com/books/about/Unlocking_the_Clubhouse.html?id=StwGQw45YoEC
What do you mean by women not being made to feel welcome?
I personally don’t share these concerns and I don’t think the European Commission, the industry and the education system should do anything about it.
I’m female and it has always been my goal to work in the ICT sector because it’s what I’m passionate about. Perhaps this passion is more common in men than in women, but is that wrong? I’m sure there are other fields that are overrepresented by women. Isn’t it better to just accept that many women would rather work in a different field?
Isn’t it also the bad publicity for ICT? Everything is outsourced and offshored into places far away. If i had daughters i would surely not encourage them to go ICT if they wouldn’t be gravitating there themselves. There’s a lot more money to be made in other careers.
As only 10-20% of ICT and engineering students are female, the solution is primarily in the class room, not in the board room. That being said, we should have 10-20% (2 or 3) female engineers, but we have none (so far). Less than 5% of applicants are female and most are looking for analyst jobs, not the real core development. I’ve read somewhere that the “geek factor” is one of the biggest turn-offs. It is alarming though that the % of female computer engineers is decreasing. It is one of the most game changing jobs out there: a developer in a company like ours could instantly make millions of users happy by building new or improving existing code.
Anyway, thanks for your post. It has made me think of what we could do to get some girls on the development floor. I will discuss with my co-founder and CTO Toon to see how to get our first female engineer asap.
Before wanting to transform society and to introduce women in ICT, it is up to institutions to lead by example and today it is not the case. In the ICT domain, men still hold more than 80% of the positions of middle and top level management. There are women competent, educated and yet nothing changes in the allocation of positions.
Change must begin with the selection system. Currently the positions of middle and top level management are available through internal promotions. It lacks a real strategy of selection for future ICT managarial body.
It is alarming that the number of women in ICT is decreasing. I made it my mission this year to promote and encourage women of all ages and backgrounds into ICT. I’m currently in the process of setting up Web Heroines (and applying for funding) http://www.webheroines.com a not-for-profit group with a mission increase the number of women involved in ICT particularly in tech roles (e.g. web design, graphic design, mobile app development, programming, UX, UI etc.). We want to run a series of extra special podcasts interviewing inspiring women as well as creating an online showcase of positive role models to dispel the myth that a career in IT is geeky.
We also have a survey we’d love you to take part in http://webheroines.com/survey
Keri
I think we are in a situation that is similar to encouraging girls to make driving licensees, while telling them that they shouldn’t touch the cars engine under any circumstances. Only to wonder afterwards why there are only a handful of girls who wants to become car mechanics.
It should be studied in more detail and based on hard facts and not on gut feelings. But my general impression is that schools do a decent job in teaching how to use ICT technologies, but do a horrible job explaining how to fix and create ICT technologies.
Leading to a situation where pupils learn how to use Word & Windows at school, but only learn things like programming or software installation if they have a friend o family member who teaches them how to do it.
That personal ICT teaching environment (if it exists at all) is almost surely be highly male dominated making it less attractive for girls than for boys and we end up in a cycle where male dominance leads to even more males being involved in ICT which is extremely hard to break. Even if you are are aware of the situation and want to help changing it as a male.
reply keri: i like geeky environments. there is nothing wrong with a girl who wants to be part of the coolest gang in town. the problem is, to hang out with coders and copy cats isn’t considered to be cool and hackers are marked as being illegal …anyhow, i think you should include the gaming crowd in your undertaking.
The situation in our business, a supplier of software for governance-business is, that 23% of the personell is women. A lot at first site. Further analyses shows that just 10 to 15% is on engeneering functions. When I adress this as female char(wo)man of our ‘Ondernemingsraad’, I get reactions as ‘that is quite a lot’ or ‘we seek quality!’.
I am currently an ICT teacher and have been teaching over 10 years and I feel that our education systems do not drive young girls to aspire to go into IT…it is true girls see a career in IT more for boys/men. I feel to promote IT towards females we need to start at a young age where not just through teachers but also mums using IT effectively. Also more opportunities for on the job training within organisations should be more available. females should be consider for technical jobs within large organisations I often think there is just a general notion not set out on purpose that women just don’t do IT. In order to have real change it must be driven through education plus industry providing opportunities – school actually have work placements where girls can see what an IT job would involve.
It’s a difficult area… when I was an IT project manager I took part in a campaign here in Groningen a few years ago to get more girls to study IT (http://www.icthelemaaljouwding.nl/index.html) – Ms Kroes will understand the name, but for the non-Dutchies out there the title approximates (bad translation) to “ICT, fits me like a glove, the perfect career for me”. The campaign was run really well but in the end I don’t think it changed a great deal… I think Atrawog might be right, that whole “*squeal* let a man deal with difficult things like car engines” attitude still prevails (much to my disdain! and let’s not forget the “concentrate, here comes the science bit” in those ?L’Oréal? ads either…). Show girls role models in Maths and Science, get more girl-friendly programmes on the Discovery Channel, get documentaries to “go behind the scenes” at Google / Facebook / Skype and (as a side-effect) show how many women work there etc etc etc and IT will hopefully follow.
Sewing a pair of trousers is about as technical as putting together a computer.
Running a family with 4 children, man, 3 grandparents, 6 uncles/aunts plus children, is about as complicated as running an IT department in a DAX company.
In the 1950’s and 1960’s a lot of women worked in fields now called ICT. The first US digital computer ENIAC was programmed by women and in the Netherlands, the public discours on the ‘Millenium Bug’ was lead by a woman IT pioneer.
The fact that the gender-balance in ICT and engineering is so uneven, has not much to do with the work itself. To my opinion it would help the development of effective measures to get women back in ICT and engineering, when hurdles that block women to come in, are being researched and analysed.
Compliments for picking up this tantalysing challenge!
In 1978 I co-founded a handywomen’s collective and later I developed and runned succesful courses for women to learn household technical skills by doing.
In Asia that is completely different.
The amount of feedback and insight in this post and the comments is incredible. Thank you to Neelie for her characteristic lifting the lid off this “taboo” discussion, and for the diversity of reactions it has generated.
There are plenty of reasons why girls and women do not pursue ICT, and these are reinforced on many levels of society — in the classroom, families, social environment, business — you name it. Indeed, women are competent beings and nothing is beyond our capabilities. But passion IS essential (though not always sufficient even!) for success. And this can only be sparked from exposure, encouragement and even having an example to emulate.
So kudos to all of you who are contributing to initiatives which foster these things!
For my part, four other women and I started the Greenlightforgirls.org foundation last year to promote science, technology, engineering and math to girls of all ages and backgrounds — including young and professional women. We are based in Brussels and have a global mission to tackle the important challenges Ms. Kroes raises, as far as we are able. And we are always looking for valued collaborators and partners.
So, apologizing for the shameless self-promotion, if you would like to contribute to our very hands-on work to spark the interest of young girls in ICT — and to reinforce the work of young and professional women in ICT — I would love to hear from you.
I am just approaching the final year of a BSc in Forensic Computing. I went to University at the age of 36 and (at the time) as a mother of 1 (now 2). There are a few other female students on the course, but the Faculty of Technology is dominated by males. The course is fascinating and I can see many opportunities for a rewarding career once I graduate next year. Whenever I tell anyone about my degree they always remark on how interesting it sounds, and this field of study becomes more and more relevant every day. It is a relatively new area of interest in the ICT field, so I find it hard to understand why there are not more females wanting to play a part in this fascinating and essential area of expertise.
I have just spent a year undertaking a very low paid student placement in order to get some good general IT experience under my belt. Where other students came out of their year with some savings to take back to University – because I have children, I have ended up with yet more student debt, as my student placement salary had to cover childcare costs, which my salary simply couldn’t cover.
The company that I worked at was also very male dominated. Some of them men that I worked with chose to make my life quite difficult during the year I was there. Whether this was because I was female – or just because I am me – I really don’t know. I recall a conversation with a colleague in another European office during in which he expressed surprise that I was a woman working in IT – & commented that they had no women at all in their team.
These have been some of my experiences – I really don’t know if there are solutions to deeply embedded cultural attitudes towards women in IT.
I am quite passionate about no giving any influence to MEP like Edith Herczog and Arlene McCarty. Women in power often lack an inner leadership. They sell out to industry in a shameless manner. Of course that is a gender issue. We do not train women as independent mind with personal responsibility and find it natural that they seek others to take inspiration of. In the political sphere that is very very very dangerous. A female tendency to support intrigue may put them into positions of power.