The Feminine Touch

So is it temperament, deficit of talent, diffidence or just a lack of desire that locks so many women out of the field - and at any rate, does it really matter? Why, when many researchers see a natural fit between the female psyche and the CIO role, do so few women get offered the CIO gig? Of course generalities are dangerous, and sometimes meaningless - many researchers point to broader differences among the sexes than between them - but theories abound, as growing numbers of scholars turn their minds to ways to address the gender deficit.

One theory says girls lack interest in computing because they think the whole field is populated with geeks. With the IT stereotype being the nerdy guy with poor social skills, Allan Fisher, co-author of Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, says girls in middle school and high school just do not want to travel along the computer science pipeline.

Sue Bartlett, former CIO Unilever and now GM IT at Hudson, has some sympathy with that notion. "It is seen as a male profession and there is part of it - some of the support services, some of your deskside support, help desk - that I think sometimes can be seen as a bit like a motor mechanic's shop," she says.

Small wonder perhaps that a recent NSW Department for Women study found that although 35 percent of Year 8 girls choose ICT-related subjects like maths and science, just 17 percent are still studying them by Year 10 - representing a 50 percent drop-off.

That is an area receiving growing attention from organizations like the CIO Executive Council, which last year launched a Higher Education and Mentoring initiative aimed at generating a new enthusiasm for a career in IT and providing those in the industry with a clear path to certification. The council has forged affiliations with Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Wollongong and the University of Technology Sydney to push forward the Higher Education and Mentoring initiative and start setting standards, and to encourage more women to enter that pipeline.

Females in Information Technology and Telecommunications (FITT) has been supporting the advancement of women in hi-tech jobs since 1989.

But the authors of Where are the Women in Information Technology?, who attempted to answer that question in a literature review for the National Centre for Women and Information Technology, see the entire IT culture as poisonous to women. "Women who enter and remain in IT do so under extremely trying circumstances, which are almost entirely cultural. Given the strides that women are making towards parity in other professional fields, the question really must be phrased: What is wrong with IT that it can't attract and hold women?" they say.

Researchers Nancy Ramsey and Pamela McCorduck find fault with most of the research that has been done to date, pointing out most of it fails to distinguish among the microclimates of IT. They say nearly 80 percent of jobs in IT are in the management information systems departments of non-IT firms, which are very different environments from the frontiers of scientific research, or the climate in start-ups.

"Since all these microclimates are indiscriminately aggregated in nearly all studies, the recommendations these studies make might very well be misleading," Ramsey and McCorduck say. The literature consistently reflects a series of cultural stereo-types that frame the issues by making tacit assumptions about women's skills, and by measuring those skills unfairly. Women themselves often accept these stereotypes, thus poisoning their entire work or learning atmosphere.

They suggest those women who do succeed at the top of IT are those with clarity of purpose and an unusually strong sense of self-worth. "The outlook for climate change is mixed. Women who know how to succeed in the old mode do well, but the disparity persists - indeed, may grow worse, despite early interventions and the deliberate rethinking by a few organizations that are making efforts to change their culture," they write.

To find out what is stopping women from making it to the top, Ramsey and McCorduck spoke to women who have succeeded brilliantly at the highest levels of the field. Several of these women made clear they relished the competition and the long working hours devoted to finishing projects as "a marvellous stimulant, a valued part of their professional lives". They say this challenges the stereotype that women do not like or cannot thrive under competition or prefer to avoid risk or find long hours difficult.

The researchers also found women who succeeded in IT had the benefit not only of good mentors and a sharp appreciation of their own goals but also of corporate cultures that nourished them. For instance women who understand the IBM belief that leaders are made, not born, admire IBM and flourish there. However, they also found that to succeed, women had to recognize and value their own goals, and that the women who most successfully "adapted" to the masculinized domain of IT were those who, like Hannah and Steward, used traditional female habits to perform so-called masculine tasks better.