Women
spurning tech jobs
By Jane Wakefield
BBC News Online technology staff
Making sure women stay in technology jobs is as
important as persuading girls to pursue such careers in the first place.
This was the view of a succession of speakers at the third annual Women
in Information Technology conference held in London on Wednesday.
Currently too many women are leaving the profession and this flow must
be stemmed if the UK is to have an equal percentage of men and women in
the tech sector, said Trade and Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia
Hewitt. They are quitting their jobs, either to have children or
to pursue other interests, she said. "Over one third of new
recruits in the technology industry are women but they don't stay so
something is going wrong on the issue of retention," she said.
'Workaholic culture'
Part of the problem, said Ms Hewitt, is a perception that it was
impossible to balance a career and children in the often tough world of
technology. More flexible working and "giving more women the
confidence to challenge a workaholic culture" were crucial she
added. Despite much work at government and industry level to
address the problem of recruiting and retaining females in technology
jobs, the figures still make for depressing reading. Speakers from
high-profile tech firms such as Oracle, Cisco and Dell admitted that
less than 20% of their managers are women. The average starting
salary for a female technology graduates is £3,000 less than her male
counterpart and only one third of new recruits are women. Reasons to be
cheerful. Some speakers and delegates vented their frustration
that little seemed to have changed in the last 10 years.
Information technology can be very creative, you can use it to edit
music and video and to create animations Kay Baker, Kendrick School for
Girls. "Twenty years ago
we celebrated the fact that a woman engineer had been appointed to a
vice president post," said Pat Haikin, director of the charity
Training for Life. "I suspect that we would get just as excited
today," she added. There were some reasons to be optimistic
however. An initiative launched at last year's conference - Computer
Clubs for Girls - had taken off in 24 schools in the South East with
plans to go nationwide. And they are proving very popular with the
teenage girls that they are aimed at. "Girls are more independent
and more creative than in traditional information technology
lessons," explained Katy Baker from the Kendrick School for Girls,
who acts as facilitator at her school's computer club. "Information
technology can be very creative, you can use it to edit music and video
and to create animations. If that was made more of then more girls would
go into technology," she said.
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