Balls of steel

IT TAKES just one look at the ICT industry to see the significant changes that have taken place over the last decade. Nevertheless, when looking at the gender split, it`s clear that the industry still has much to do to make it more appealing to the fairer sex.

OR DOES IT?

It`s a state of affairs that has impacted on the ICT Charter, which expects companies to have 15% of senior management positions occupied by black compassing African, Coloured and Indian - women. Similarly, the Department of Trade and Industry expects this position to boast at least 25% representation by black women. Yet there are women who have excelled in the industry without regulatory `encouragement`.

Take for example Joan Joffe. When Joffe entered the IT industry many years ago as a programmer for ICL, she was a rare commodity and viewed as rather strange. Years later, when she started her own business, little - if anything - had changed. And by the time she became a senior executive at Vodacom in the mid `90s, she had acquired the moniker Iron Lady.

Did being a woman hold her back in her climb up the corporate ladder? Not at all, according to Joffe. If anything, it helped.

"I never felt any discrimination. The closest I came was when I interviewed with HP in the early `70s to sell their desktop computers and they were concerned that I might not be strong enough to carry demo equipment around. In fact, being a woman meant that I was noticed more often than my colleagues and that attention probably helped to show off my capabilities," she says.

Another woman who caught the headlines in the industry is Aletha Ling. The first woman to take the Computer Society of South Africa`s IT Personality of the Year award, Ling says that she also never experienced discrimination.

"When I do my own stock take, I know that despite all the talk of gender-based glass ceilings, I never experienced it. Perhaps I was just lucky or perhaps I negated it by refusing to acknowledge that it was there and could affect me. Either way, I got through by continuously focusing on providing exceptional value to the people I worked with," she recalls.

REALITY CHECK

So does this mean that there is no male chauvinism in the ICT industry? Alas, no. Both Joffe and Ling agree that an element of gender dismissal still exists, a factor that HP SA`s Thoko Mokgosi-Mwantembe bears out.

Mokgosi-Mwantembe candidly admits she still battles the stereotypes. "It`s still a struggle. You have to work that much harder to earn respect and trust in order to overcome the prejudices. Is it fair? Definitely not, but if you are willing to work hard it helps you in the long term as you build a culture of delivery," she comments.

Alarmingly, a university student studying IT who prefers to go unnamed says that the stereotype is not just in the realm of business; instead, it pervades both schooling and higher learning institutions.

Despite being a top learner in her high school and a strong performer at university, this learner says that she has been discouraged from pursuing a technology-focused path by family, friends and lecturers. With the help of a close support network, she has gone on to excel in her chosen path but constantly battles gender-based undermining of her skills.

For the women who have succeeded in this industry, it appears that their ability to focus on the task at hand is the single most contributing factor that has enabled them to overcome prejudices. All the same, this path requires you get given the opportunity to do so in the first place.

GENDER BENDER

This is where the real challenge lies. Many people - both women and men - believe that girls don`t have the same affinity for maths, science and technology that their male counterparts do. As a result, it is often easier to enter the industry through the `softer` roles like HR, marketing and customer service.

Microsoft`s mid-market manager Belinda Godfrey explains: "The ICT industry has a diverse range of skill requirements which do not necessarily require IT expertise. I entered with classic business skills and no IT specific experience, but over the years, I have built my contribution and role in the company. Ultimately, there are routes that facilitate entry for women, but this does not mean that there are no opportunities for women in technical roles."

That said, it`s important for South Africans to recognise that experiential evidence suggests that girls have the same ability to excel at maths and science as their male counterparts. As for being tech-savvy, go into a high-school classroom and conduct a cellular-based competition to see which gender has truly captured the opportunities from this pervasive device.

Given the growth of technology literate and savvy women, we have to ask: has the historic assignation of skill aptitudes based on gender stereotypes resulted in the industry being far from representative?

FUNNELLING FAVOUR

In today`s diversity sensitive environment, there is considerably more opportunity for women to enter the industry. Nevertheless, there is a dire shortage of women embarking on the more technical study routes. Accordingly, the pipeline of females due to enter the industry is slim, a factor that can only enhance the stereotypes attributed to gender and technical skills. Ntombikayise Banda, a computer science student at the University of Pretoria, says that she has always been in the minority. "I tried out a technical high school and loved it, but most of my girlfriends moved to academic high schools. By the time I reached Grade 12, I was the only girl doing higher grade maths, science and computer science, but I was also the school`s Dux Scholar [top student]. As for university performance, I am in the top 12 students with a 71% running academic average."

Although her grandmother had aspirations of Banda becoming a medical doctor, she says that her father`s support and encouragement of acquiring maths skills has helped her to overcome several difficulties and pursue her goals. Today, though, she faces different challenges.

"I`m in my fourth year [at university] and have already gained work experience locally and abroad. Now that I am interviewing for jobs, this seems to be swept aside as many companies just see me as a black woman who would fit the equity requirements. This means that I am going to have to start from scratch and prove that my skills and competencies justify my position - not just my race and gender," she says.

BACK TO SCHOOL

Given that her plate is full with her education and job-seeking, you could forgive Banda for not considering the impact she could have on those who may follow in her footsteps. Nevertheless, Banda is making time for the Women in Engineering initiative which goes into schools to speak to girls about the opportunities to be had in engineering.

Dressed to the nines, there`s no doubt Banda has a considerable impact on the girls, particularly as many still believe that the industry is full of `geeks` and is, therefore, `uncool`. The 30 grade nine and ten girls that converged on IBM SA`s offices for the company`s E.X.C.I.T.E camp early last month demonstrate the importance of such initiatives.

When asked at the beginning of the week-long camp whether IT was about computers, the girls replied that while there was an element of computing, IT was more about information, knowledge, the Internet and even channels like TV. However, when asked to describe an IT professional, the answer was a tall, skinny man with long, greasy hair.

In isolation this may not appear to be important; but for teenage girls, image is a critical factor - more so than for their male counterparts. Fortunately, by the end of the camp, this image had changed. The girls had seen smartly dressed career women with significant power in their hands and they were impressed. For some of these girls it was the first time that they considered a career in the ICT industry, while for others the opportunities inherent in technology had their eyes sparkling.

SOLIDARITY

Although networks for women are springing up to provide support, insight and encouragement to women in various business roles, Angela Gahagan, Verizon country manager for the African region, says that women must not forget to provide the same networking and support to school-going girls.

"If women want to see a more diverse industry, then they have to get involved by nurturing and mentoring girls. We have to find opportunities to introduce the younger generation to the industry and remove the harmful perceptions that may be holding them back. Through this, we get more women into the industry, allowing them to prove their mettle and reach the top," she urges.

As with the community spirit of Ubuntu, where those who have been successful seek to give back to the underprivileged, women have a responsibility, as Mokgosi-Mwantembe says: "to pull up those women around us, as we ourselves, accede. The more women there are in the industry, the easier it will be for those who are interested in pursuing an IT career to enter and succeed." Currently there is no empirical evidence to suggest that women are more or less suited to the ICT industry than their male counterparts and there is no guarantee either that given the same support and opportunities a girl would outperform a boy. Ultimately, performance will always be a single player game with gender a non-starter in the debate.