By Gail Balfour

TECHNOLOGY JOBS OFFER WOMEN HIGH PAY, POSITIVE WORK - LIFE BALANCE, FLEXIBLE HOURS AND MANY OTHER BENEFITS.

SO WHY IS FEMALE ENROLMENT IN TECH COURSES THE LOWEST IT HAS BEEN SINCE THE 1980s?

Roberta Fox learned to repair tractors when she was just a child, loved math and could add up telephone numbers from the phone book at random.

Yet it took a whole decade after graduating from high school before she was encouraged to try a career in technology.

“In 1972...I wanted to study manufacturing technology,” said Fox, president and senior partner with FOX GROUP Consulting, a Markham, Ont.- based professional services and analyst firm specializing in telecommunications, networking and call centres.

“And the guidance counsellor said, ‘If you get accepted, and if you pass, no one is going to hire you anyway.’ It took me 10 years to realize that she was wrong.”

Fox’s experience was not unique, nor much outdated, unfortunately. She said bulletin boards outside guidance offices today “still have segregation” when listing opportunities for boys and girls.

“I fought that battle in 1972, and Holy Moses, 32 years later and it’s still the same. And that just makes me furious, frankly.”

Instead of going into manufacturing, Fox got married early and started her career as a secretary at a laser company. After a few years, people at her office started encouraging her to pursue engineering, commenting on her ability to understand the complex data that was part of her job’s paperwork.

But it wasn’t until she was going through a divorce, financially struggling and still working as a secretary when she finally said, “This is crazy; I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life.”

JOBS ALL OVER
Fox went back to school to study engineering. This is a route fewer and fewer women are taking today. Overall enrolment in tech courses is down across the country, but more so for women. According to the Software Human Resources Council (SHRC), currently about 22.8 per cent of the IT workforce in Canada is female; this is down from 25.4 per cent in 2000, and from 30 per cent in 1991.

“What students see are reports (in the press) that technology is dead,” said Faye West, director of IS at the Edmonton-based Alberta Research Council, chair of the SHRC, and former national president of the Canadian Information Processing Society.

“Technology is no longer on a rocket path — but it is still growing,” West said.

“There are now 575,000 people working in IT in this country. So there’s more people than there used to be, but that’s not commonly known.”

SHRC predicts about 27,000 new people are needed in IT every year, but colleges and universities combined are currently only graduating about 13,000 per year.

“That’s nowhere near (the number) we need, because this is nowhere near a dying industry.”

Gary Closson, dean of the School of Applied Computing & Engineering Sciences at Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Oakville, Ont., said the decrease in enrolment means there are even more opportunities for students today than in the past.

“We have fewer people now (in technology courses), and as a result, have been able to place 100 per cent of our students in co-op placements, in good, high-paying jobs,” he said.

Closson added that the downturn of enrolment will have an effect on all businesses sooner rather than later. “This is going to really hit home in about two years.”

Fox agreed. “As an employer, it’s going to come back to bite us. If 52 per cent of the population is not going into tech programs, then we are not going to have enough people. It’s simple business.”

According to Joanne Moore, a technical resources program manager for Markham, Ont.-based IBM Canada, girls who decide not to try at least one technical course in high school are putting themselves at a disadvantage.

“It doesn’t matter whether you are going to take a job in retail or you are going to be a financial analyst. You need to use technology today — it’s everywhere; it touches every aspect of our lives.”

Rena Clamen, president and sole proprietor of Guelph, Ont.- based Techporium, a Web site creation, hosting and network support firm, echoes that point.

“I can’t think of an area of my life that has not been influenced by technology. It has left its deep mark on how I make my living, how I keep in touch with friends, how I learn new skills or shop, or research the answer to almost every question.”

ACCIDENT TECHIES
Interestingly enough, Fox, who also spends a lot of time advocating for women in technology and giving presentations on the topic, said most female colleagues she talks to are like her, in that they “fell into” tech jobs, rather than setting out to do them from the first.

Lynn Greiner, vice-president of technical services for Torontobased Ipsos-NPD Canada Inc., calls her career in tech “very much an accident.” She worked for a market research company doing spec (technical) writing. When the company redesigned its system, she found herself writing a computer program.

“I came up with something that saved them a mint, basically. I left that job when my (male) boss took credit for everything.” She got another job spec writing and “discovered an affinity for the contraption” that they were running the specs on.

“As time went on the affinity grew. I just sort of flipped into IT.”

Flexible hours are another element women look for in a career.

And technology jobs can offer you that, Moore said. “I work on a part-time basis, so I can juggle my work-life balance, and I can raise my kids at the same time as have a fulfilling career. IT professions (often) allow people to work remotely. I think if more women knew and understood that, a lot more of them would be encouraged to go (into IT).”

Clamen agreed. “Technology has allowed me to move with my family from Toronto to Guelph, and to meet the school bus at 3:45, instead of paying $1-a-minute overtime after 6:00 p.m. to daycare providers.”

In fact, Wendy Cukier, associate dean of the Faculty of Business, professor of Information Technology Management and director of the Diversity Management & Technology Institute at Ryerson University in Toronto, said women who go into IT often do it in a more roundabout way, and for different reasons, than men.

She said important growth opportunities are found today in the “softer skills” side of IT. If women are not keen on engineering, they may see appeal in courses such as information management and digital media.

West has worked in the technology sector for decades. She said when computers first came out, “they weren’t a ‘guy thing’ — they weren’t an ‘anyone thing’ — they were too new. How did they become a ‘guy thing’? I have no idea.”

SO, WHAT’S WRONG?
Cukier sees a recurrent problem in “well intentioned, but not very effective” campaigns to increase the number of women in tech jobs. IT no longer has a “code warrior” mentality, she said, but too often an organization’s hiring strategies haven’t kept pace with that reality.

“While many companies and associations talk about wanting to encourage more women to seek careers in technology, they persist in using a very narrow definition on what information technology is,” she said.

The industry is left with a situation in which decision-makers in companies are often male computer scientists and engineers, Cukier said. “And they keep talking about the profession in terms that will attract more people just like them.”

In the old days, you had to be a certain height to be a police officer, she said, “then suddenly they actually looked at what police officers did and realised that height requirements had nothing to do with the job. And I think we are at the same point with the IT profession: we need to take a long hard look at what the skill requirements are.”

According to Closson, some of the problem may also lie with the post-secondary teachers themselves. If they have spent many years teaching, they may have not had a chance to see how the real world operates today — they are relying on information from when they were in school, and how things were taught then. “And things have changed dramatically,” he said.

In fact, even after graduating and finding work in a technology role, women today are still not exempt from age-old gender biases. “I have encountered a lot of sexism from people who just simply took the word of men on technology issues more than women,” Clamen said.

“Oh, but you can have fun with that,” Greiner said. “I used to have a boss that was an imposing man, but about as technological as an egg-timer. He and I would go to meetings. People would talk to him...but I would ask the questions. You could almost hear them going, ‘Oh, isn’t that cute.’ So they would answer honestly, figuring I wouldn’t understand what the heck they were talking about,” she said.

“And silly them, I certainly did!”

Web resources
DigitalEve http://www.digitaleve.org
The Wired Women Society http://www.wiredwoman.com
DiscoverIT http://www.discoverit.org
Society of Canadian Woman in Science and Technology http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/scwist
Women in Technology International http://www.witi.com
Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology
www.ccwest.org
Women in Science and Engineering (Wise) Toronto http://www.wisetoronto.com
Association for Women In Science and Engineering (UK) http://www.awise.org
Women in Global Science and Technology (WIGSAT) http://www.wigsat.org
Third World Organization for Women in Science http://www.twows.org