Information Technology: Where are the women?

By Julie Fisher

With women making up 45 per cent of the Australian workforce, why are there so few women working in information technology (IT)? I have been asking this question for many years. 

Only 18 per cent of the IT workforce are currently women; a smaller percentage still hold senior management positions - rarely, for instance, do we hear that the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of a company is a woman. Disturbingly, few women are choosing to study IT at TAFE or university, leaving fewer qualified women to enter the IT workforce.  

The question of why this is happening is even more important today because of an increasing demand for people with IT skills.

Between 2009 and 2010, I surveyed and interviewed women to find out why IT seems to be such a turn off when it comes to career choice. The study asked women about why they chose IT as a career, their qualifications and what they liked about the work. It also explored some of the issues the women faced in their workplace and what they felt would make their working lives better.

For many women IT was not their first choice of career; they came to it because in their previous jobs they enjoyed the work and wanted to do more. When women do take on an IT career, most love the work – so what is the problem? 

The biggest hurdle we face getting women to think about IT as a career is the image of the profession. Negative stereotypes about IT work persist. 

IT is still widely thought of as a career which is isolating and involves nothing more than programming or other technically focused work. Worse still, many girls and women see IT as a career that does not involve interacting with people, something women have a preference for.

These perceptions also pervade the classroom, with most secondary school girls not considering IT for the same reasons. Their aversion is often endorsed by parents and careers teachers, some of whom actively discourage girls from IT careers. 

Girls are often interested in technology in primary and early secondary school. They are heavy users of social networking sites and are avid users of creative applications, suggesting they are not afraid of technology. But their interest wanes as their education progresses.

Another major issue is that girls and women are often not aware of the many and varied roles that are available for IT professionals. They don’t realise that much IT work does involve interactions with people and can be very creative.  Many women, for example, work as web designers, or use their IT skills in marketing and advertising. Women also make excellent business analysts, helping organisations understand what they need in terms of computer applications.

A further hurdle we face is that when we do get women into IT related jobs they often leave.   

Women find it difficult to work in male-dominated workplaces, often describing them as “chilly” or a “boys’ club”. They struggle to develop the kind of networks that allow them to progress, and to be recognised for their skills, particularly if they are in a highly technical area. Women face further challenges when they have a family.  Even though a job in IT offers flexibility, for many women this translates to longer hours, usually at home afterhours. Few women have found flexibility, good in theory, to be really helpful in practice.

What can we do? Encouraging more girls in lower and middle secondary school to see IT as fun, exciting and creative should result in more girls studying IT at university.

I have been involved with a program called Digital Divas which runs in a number of Victorian Secondary Schools, developing a set of learning modules to excite girls’ interest in IT.  In one module, for example, participants are required to design a logo. The girls use software to create their design; lanyards and key rings are created from the best logo for each class.  Women from industry visit the classes as guest speakers and women enrolled in IT courses at university attend classes acting as role models and mentors. The program is demonstrating that by designing interesting learning materials for girls we can change their perceptions. 

With more graduates we will start to see the climate in workplaces change, encouraging women to stay and prosper in the industry.  As long as the industry remains male dominated we will face an uphill battle to see significant changes in the future.

Associate Professor Julie Fisher is the Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Information Technology. She has been researching in the area of gender and IT for the last 20 years.