The technology industry needs to promote itself as a diverse and creative workplace if it wants to attract more women to its ranks, according to speakers at the FITT (Females in Information Technology and Telecommunications) trends lunch in Sydney this week.
Keynote speaker Tracey Fellows, managing director at Microsoft Australia told ZDNet Australia that the main reason women are underrepresented in the technology industry is due to an "old and stagnant" perception of it being limited to code-cutters.
"While that's a really important part of our industry, I've never cut code in my life," she said.
"Young women see this industry as being very boring, potentially very nerdy, when it's actually not," agreed fellow presenter Merle Singer, Director, Culture and Reputation at Dimension Data. "It's innovative, it's creative. Perhaps we don't sell that as much."
Carolyn Shaw, chairwoman of the FITT steering committee told ZDNet Australia that the IT industry is "extremely diverse".
"For women today there are a lot of calls for skills in collaboration, teamwork, project management, the ability to multitask," she said. "Women tend to have very good skills in these areas."
One of a handful of men at the event, Dimension Data chief technology officer Gerard Florian, said that the industry needs to make people aware that "it's not all about bits and bytes and chips".
"IT is prevalent across everything we do now," agreed Fellows. "If you talk about people in advertising agencies, they are working with IT building Web sites all the time. Do they think of themselves in the IT industry? Probably not. They think of themselves as creatives."
"There are some things we should do that really changes how people think about our industry and that will do a lot to encourage younger people, be they male or female, into the industry."
I feel there a bunch of dinosaurs panic'y about how IT industry is lacking on the females side. When clearly it's not working or all the marketing efforts to steer girls into a career into IT is completely heading in the wrong direction.
Let me tell you something. If we were to conduct a study on IT gurls working currently in the industry. You'd asking about how they've grown-up and how they decided IT was the right career.
In my opinion, Most you'll find
- Someone in the family/relative have influeced them
- They have a higher score in Mortal Kombat or CS:S than you
- They have a interest in some parts of sci-fi and enjoy scrubs
- They maybe into Reading Comics, Japanese Anime and Cosplay
- They had a Barbie collection and Phillips head screwdriver to pull things about
You get the general idea
Having said that current focus is to attract woman that the totally opposite of that description. You maybe convert 2% of the 98% whom chasing administration and retail career.
Thats just the realtity