Women not on IT-committees – “a phenomenon”

If you’re hanging around Denmark these days, you’ll notice that there has been quite a bit of focus on gender and IT. Many girls stop playing computer games in their teens, teenage women on the whole are not aspiring for an education in IT-related fields, and women are not representative in IT-firms …and so on and so forth.

Computerworld released the news today that out of Denmark’s top 100 IT-firms there are:

no women in the position of board chairperson,

two women holding the position of administrative director, 

and only 9% of all board members are women
[Computerworld Number 38. 20. October 2006].

So the two poles are the idea of the “Old boys club” vs. the idea of a shallow “recruitment pool” of women. Networking does (weirdly) often happen in the “locker room” – a space where not exactly all the “players” are present. So when considering people for positions on the board, individuals may have a tendency to name someone from their own inner network – or as Caroline Søeborg Ahlefeldt noted to Computerworld,

“ …The fact is that there are adequate qualified women, but men recommend other men to head positions” (Computerworld – my translation of Danish text)

Where-as IBM’s vice director refers to another slant – IBM’s efforts in recruiting women to head committee positions has been without great success due to an apparent scarcity of women in the branch itself.

It sounds like a school-yard he-said, she-said – nevertheless, 20+ years down the road we stand and this “variance” has not truly started to be resolved. Norway has an affirmative action policy stating that each sex must represent at least 40% of the members, as noted in the Norwegian Gender Equality Act,

“Since it is not possible to achieve gender equality merely by prohibiting discriminatory treatment, measures which give one sex certain advantages in some areas in the short or the long term are regarded as necessary.” http://www.likestillingsombudet.no/english/act_scope.html

I find it disheartening to think that a law must be implemented to see official IT committees with diversified membership. For that reason, I look forward to seeing renewed efforts to diversify this sector not only by the government, but by the institutions of education (also focusing on how IT is being taught), and by the firms that would proffer from having diversity (thinking more about management training, advancement schemes, and mentoring programs from within).

Diversity is key to innovation. Let’s see initiatives that embed the roots for new growth into an innovative and transformed IT sector.

(Another post not directly related to computer gaming – sorry)