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Women in IT: Problems and solutions

Judy Armstrong Tech Republic

Published: 22 Jun 2005 16:00 BST

Within an overall workforce comprising over 50 percent women, only 20 percent of the IT workforce is female, and an even smaller portion of CIOs is female. Something definitely appears to be wrong with this picture.

It has been clearly demonstrated that many women bring valuable skills to IT organisations. Moving into the new millennium, companies that can learn to recruit, develop, and retain women CIOs and managers will be far ahead of the others. How can we better tap this vast resource? I explore this issue in detail, based on my real-life experiences as a CIO as well as the experiences of others. In this article, I'll discuss some possible answers to questions such as:

Why IT is unfriendly to women?
What IT is really losing by limiting women in the workforce?
How IT can change to attract and retain more women?
Why some women have been successful despite the constraints and limitations?
How can we learn from the experiences of other women CIOs?

While women appear to face some unique issues, many of these issues arise from common problems that all CIOs face — man or women, young or old. This article highlights the importance of looking at common issues from different perspectives. Successful CIOs do this every day.

Why single out a particular group of CIOs?
According to a study by the US Department of Labor Women's Bureau, women receive only 9 percent of engineering-related bachelor's degrees and fewer than 28 percent of computer science bachelor's degrees. This represents a decline of 37 percent over the past 20 years. Several other recent surveys indicate that few women become CIOs because the lifestyle and the work environment are unfriendly to women.

Women CIOs have success stories, but the truth is that most people — including those in our own profession — don't hear about them or seem to care.

My belief is that it is important to take a closer look at why IT is unfriendly to women, what IT is losing by remaining unfriendly, what we can do about it, and most importantly, to highlight the attributes of those women who, in spite of all this, have been successful.