Johannesburg, 21 May 2008
The ICT industry is not as sexist as some, but can still learn from Parliament when it comes to the empowerment of women.
This was the message at the second Women in IT (WIIT) forum, held in Johannesburg yesterday. David Ives, director for developer and platforms strategy at Microsoft SA, and Sandra Botha, parliamentary leader of the Democratic Alliance, addressed the event.
WIIT is an ICT mentorship programme driven by Microsoft and supported by Axiz, HP, Fijitsu Siemens Computers and Verizon.
According to Ives, industries like engineering are far more sexist that ICT.
"There is still a lot of gender stereotyping [in ICT] - it has been programmed into people for years," says Ives, "but we have come a long way."
He says that, while many women in ICT still feel they have to work harder because of their sex, job specifications these days are not gender-specific. In his experience, the skills crisis is so critical that companies are willing to get any competent people on board, regardless of their gender.
According to Ives, it is a reality that some corporate cultures are still exclusive to women, but the introduction of role-models to female ICT professionals could help them better cope with this.
"Use networking and mentoring to win," he advises.
Critical mass
Botha pointed out that Parliament, through the initiative of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), has created a "critical mass" of women in the national legislature.
This came about after the ANC introduced a 30% female quota on its parliamentarians, something other parties copied, and Botha accedes worked well.
"It [female representation] is no longer an issue [in Parliament]. There are small pockets of this [in ICT], but it is certainly not happening everywhere."
However, Botha warns that token, "scorecard" appointments do not empower women.
In closing, she said "there has been some progress" as far as the empowerment of women in society as a whole is concerned. However, new challenges keep coming to the fore, which is why women need to fall back on networking and mentorship programmes to support each other, she noted.
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