COMMENTARY--Newsflash: Tech industry could be extinct in 125,000 years, more x chromosomes needed to keep the dream alive.
I don't know if you've heard, but apparently men are slowly dying out. Oxford University Professor Bryan Sykes, who specialises in human genetics, is estimating that in 125,000 years the male gender could be extinct.
In case you can't tell, I have been scanning the science news headlines recently. It generally always turns up something interesting or weird, and a lot of time, something just plain funny. This latest story reported on news.com.au is another gem.
According to the story, the Y chromosome (which is found in men, not women) is slowly dying because it is unable to repair itself. For anyone who remembers high school biology, you will know that the father's genes determine the sex of the baby, and it is the Y chromosome that makes baby boys. So if that chromosome dies off, so will men.
Of course the future isn't looking pretty for women either; referring back to my high school health class I know that the human race can't reproduce with only one surviving gender. Which means eventually women will run dry too, spelling the end of the human species.
Luckily for us it isn't that dire--well, for the women anyway. According to the report, scientists are already figuring out ways that women can be impregnated without men, but there is a drawback (aside from the obvious): they have only figured out how to make female babies.
So what does all this have to do with IT? Well as I was at work I had some valuable procrastination time to use up, so I started imagining a world without men. How bad would it be? What do we rely on men for? And then it hit me: the technology industry would slowly die along with the Y chromosome. I don't know if you have taken a look around your IT department lately, but have you noticed a proliferation of that Y chromosome?
The Australian Computer Society released a snapshot of the Australian ICT industry in April this year. It found that 274,000 people work in ICT with 67 percent of those jobs held by men. Further broken down to the professional computing and technical industry, 79 percent of tech jobs are held by men.
If Professor Sykes' theory turns out to be true, the industry is going to need a lot more women to keep it running.
However getting women interested in ICT jobs is proving to be quite a task. One education vendor that used to visit high schools specifically to encourage girls to enter into IT careers told me it has since given up, as the task proved fruitless. Apparently only a small percentage of women attend technical courses, instead they are more likely to attend soft skills courses, such as project management and communication.
| What's going to happen when women are needed to run the technology industry? Maybe it is time to start changing industry practices now. |
Many people have had a guess at why so few women enter the IT industry. One popular theory is because technology jobs have the stigma of containing a lot of dull and repetitive tasks. While that may actually be true, I don't think there are many jobs that don't contain boring, repetitive tasks.
Marketing attracts a lot of women, but I have seen the theory behind it and it isn't making my top list of fun jobs. Call centre work also attracts women, apparently because it requires good communication skills, but it contains its fair share of dull and repetitive tasks too. However, unlike a lot of tech jobs, call centre work has flexibility in its hours and suits people who want to work part time; IT is notorious for its pressures and long hours.
The ACS says it is has initiatives addressing the lack of women in IT, and other industry groups say similar things, but does it really matter if women aren't interested in IT careers? Do we need women in IT? Maybe in 125,000 years when there are no men left, but not necessarily in the short term.
Are women just not interested in IT, or are they being excluded because of the industry's pressures? If it is the latter, then women don't need encouragement, they need solutions.
Natalie Hambly is Assistant Editor of Technology & Business. Send all evolutional theories to edit@zdnet.com.au.
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The tech industry is already in the path to extinction, just look at the job market.