Addressing gender imbalance in the IT industry: Kaylene O’Brien
- 10 July, 2012 14:50
- Comments 1
Kaylene O'Brien
To address the gender imbalance in IT, the industry needs to rid its “geeky kind of boy’s job” image and better promote the diversity of IT careers to attract women into the industry, said Kaylene O’Brien, a technology partner at Deloitte Consulting.
O’Brien was recently awarded ICT Victorian women of the year, and was recognised for broadening the professional base of IT across backgrounds, gender and cultures.
According to O’Brien, there is still a gender imbalance in the industry because “we’ve allowed a situation to occur where the image of what an IT careers means is way too narrow and isn’t representative of the breadth of the exciting and interesting sorts of careers”.
People that can be more business focussed in their role, or more creative are often the ones who succeed in an IT career, she said.
“People who do really well in their IT career are often entrepreneurial, they have great communication skills, and they are very people focussed. So the people who are quite successful aren’t that image at all.”
Lack of flexibility is another reason to why women may not be taking up or continuing a career in IT, according to O’Brien. “I also think that there is a role for employers to make sure that they are offering flexible career models,” she said.
“I think for similar reasons to why there is a lack of female representation at senior levels is that there is a lack of flexibility in the career models along the way. There are assumptions about the need for continuous employment. So for women, it disadvantages them when they need to take time out of the workforce…
“I also think that in particular for IT it’s exacerbated because at entry levels the proportion of women are so low as well so it tends to just worsen them the more senior they become around a gender balance issue.”
O’Brien said there’s still a “huge way to go” for the industry to become more gender balanced, but she is seeing a positive response from women in the industry, like herself, who volunteer their time to support and encourage other women to take IT up as a career.
“It’s also been really pleasing to see just how many young women that I work with that have also volunteered lots of their time, particularly around the Go Girl, Go for IT event that was held last month in Victoria” she said.
“There were lots of young volunteering women who were in their studies or recently completed their studies and they’ve seen firsthand when they’ve walked into a lecture theatre and realised that women make up less than 10 per cent of their student co-op.
“[So it’s] the willingness to volunteer their time to change the gender imbalance, to change the perceptions, and to make sure that IT careers is seen as incredibly attractive for women.”
Follow Rebecca Merrett on Twitter: @Rebecca_Merrett
Follow CIO Australia on Twitter and Like us on Facebook… Twitter: @CIO_Australia, Facebook: CIO Australia, or take part in the CIO conversation on LinkedIn: CIO Australia
Recommended
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.
- Bookmark this page
- Share this article
- Got more on this story? Email CIO
- Follow CIO on twitter
-
Why change management doesn’t work
-
Larry Page wants to see your medical records
-
Dual-Persona Smartphones Not a BYOD Panacea
-
After two-year hiatus, EFF accepts bitcoin donations again
-
CIOs struggle to deliver timely mobile business apps: survey
-
Endpoint Protection Overview
With the exponential growth and sophistication of malware today, the security industry can no longer afford to ‘bury its head in the sand’. The bottom line is that traditional endpoint security protection is now ineffective due to the sheer volume, quality, and complexity of malware. This paper looks at this problem and how Webroot, by going back to the drawing board on countering malware threats, is revolutionising endpoint protection and solving the issues that hinder existing endpoint security solutions. Download now. -
Leading Through Connections – Insights from the Global Chief Executive Officer Study
IBM’s 2012 Global CEO study follows face-to-face discussions with more than 1,700 CEOs and senior public sector leaders from around the globe. The findings examine how CEOs are responding to the complexity of increasingly interconnected organisations, markets, societies and governments. For example, almost one-quarter of CEOs say their organisations operate below par in terms of driving value from data. CEOs have expressed frustration about their inability to capitalise on available information. This is because: “The time available to capture, interpret and act on information is getting shorter and shorter.” CEO, Chemicals and Petroleum, United States Given the need for deeper business insight, the best performing organisations are more adept at converting complex data into insights, and insights into action. Download Entire Report Now. -
Key Factors in Modernising Backup and Recovery
There is a definite need for better data protection solutions in today’s enterprise data centres. The question is whether to continue with software-only backup and recovery solutions, or to make the move to a purpose-built backup appliance with de-duplication capabilities. This paper discusses the trends that have made modernising backup and recovery an urgent priority. Click to download.
Get exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis. 
Comments
Gender Equality
1
When I check google to see if this is an issue in other industries I get the following: "No results found for gender imbalance +nursing site:au.", nor do find any joy substituting for "hopsitality" or aged care etc. I wonder why it's an issue for the IT industry? Surely it's not that males are in the majority that makes it a problem? That would be a misandrist position to take.
To quote another industry in a similar situation to IT: National President of the Public Relations Institute of Australia Nick Turner said any suggestion that corporate affairs teams made up of only women may not be taken as seriously as a male team was “offensive - to females and males”. “And I think it’s 1900s thinking,”.
Quite so.