The Cost of Diffidence

It is also clear that women with CIO aspirations must learn from their male counterparts and improve their networking skills if they ever want to see their ambitions fulfilled.

After years of working with both men and women, Women are IT (WA) founding member Yvonne Parle thinks as a generalization, male and female CIOs are more alike than unalike: at executive management level, both sexes really have to bend their personalities to the culture of the executive management team, which tends to flatten out any differences. This, she thinks, is usually a very good thing when it comes to teams working together.

However, if there is one area where Parle sees a stark difference between the sexes, it is that women lack the advantages of men when it comes to being invited into the role of CIO. The boys' club is what keeps men being offered the job over their female counterparts.

Women must learn to build their own networks if they are ever to counter that disadvantage, she believes. And she says men have typically been able to build closer relationships to the CEO than women, and to gain the CEO's confidence.

"I think females who are going to go for the CIO job need to take a close look at who is the CEO in that organization and what support can they expect," she says.

FITT coordinator Carolyn Shaw, who in the 1990s was one of Australia's earliest CIOs (she headed up IT for Nestle), has managed both men and women as she moved up the career ladder. Shaw recalls being urged to "shoot the breeze" with her fellow executives when being groomed for a position as operations executive director with the Melbourne office of a multinational.

Which is all very well for those women self-confident enough to promote themselves for the job; many women do not and will not, Hannah points out. Women tend to go for such roles when they are confident they have the skills and experience to do the job, she says. Men push themselves forward on the assumption that they have the skills to learn the job on the job.

"Men get promoted on their potential," Hannah says. "They say: 'I can't do it now but you give me the job and I will prove to you that I can'. So we [women] are held to a higher standard, whether we like it or not, and it's harder to be heard - literally - and it's harder to get the opportunities to do the things. And I imagine that goes back to the hero stuff too - you know, we're not recognized for having saved PepsiCo or having saved Coca-Cola or whatever. So it's harder to make a name for yourself. That said, I think there are good men around us, men of goodwill and understanding, who say: 'Look, you're really ready for this, do it' . . . It was a male colleague of mine, 20 years ago, who put me on that track of not waiting until you think you can do it before you apply for it, because if you do, most of the men who are the same age as you will have six promotions ahead of you."

Diffidence, Hannah notes, is a secondary sexual characteristic of femininity.

On the other side of that coin are those women who might be said to have adapted all too well. While many women battle to even be considered for the CIO role, consultant Kristy Bennett, who is conducting extensive research into women's employment in IT - from grass roots to corporate mentoring programs through to the potential threats women pose - says some women have the role thrust upon them, very much against their will.

"One of the things that my research is showing is that there are a lot of women who are really, really good at IT who do get pushed into those managerial roles without actually wanting to be there. Women are in most respects better communicators than men and in terms of team management they work better than men, so sometimes they get an unwanted push up," she says.