{"id":9024,"date":"2015-08-04T10:41:57","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T10:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/the-it-women\/"},"modified":"2021-03-04T14:48:36","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T14:48:36","slug":"the-it-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/","title":{"rendered":"The IT Women"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Women are still under represented in the IT community, whether in management, project, consultancy, infrastructure, technical or development roles.\u00a0 Big tech companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft all hover around the 70:30 male to female ratio mark.\u00a0 However, it doesn\u2019t appear to be a selection issue, more a recruitment issue.\u00a0 From my own experience, and that of many of my female colleagues, the IT sector generally fails to appeal to women.\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The majority of women in SYSPRO Europe along with myself, fell into IT.\u00a0 Our natural tendency towards project management, planning, process, organization, logical thinking, pushed us into IT roles within organizations.\u00a0 Following which we caught the bug and found roles within the IT sector.\u00a0 This approach limits the potential roles, those that require a detailed level of technical learning are much more difficult to move into without taking a step back, returning to education and taking a salary cut (which just isn\u2019t an option for most people).\u00a0 Hence women are far greater represented in project management, support and analytical roles, and much less represented in technical and development roles.<\/p>\n<p>Does this matter?\u00a0 In many ways it doesn\u2019t, most skills valued in IT belong to both genders and are much more related to individual attributes than gender, but by not attracting women to the industry, we are missing out on a huge number of people with the potential to be brilliant.<\/p>\n<p>So then, how do you attract more women into IT?\u00a0 Part of the solution rests with the education system, attracting women into the right degree courses in development, computer science for example, making it cool for women to be geeks.\u00a0 The industry then needs to make sure that it appeals to both genders for graduate programs and internships, with plenty of female role models working with universities on partner programs.\u00a0Our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/study\/undergraduate\/courses\/management-and-information-technology-4-years-including-placement-bsc-hons-gn52\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">UK<\/a>\u00a0and Africa\u00a0teams support such programs.<\/p>\n<p>Once in IT organizations, assigning female mentors to new female IT staff is helpful, providing appropriate working environments to make sure women feel comfortable, particularly if the majority of other staff is male, is essential.\u00a0 Training and support after maternity leave is critical to keep women in the labor force after their 30s.<\/p>\n<p>As a woman in IT, I have had a very successful and rewarding career, worked in many different businesses and travelled all over the world.\u00a0 The challenge, the variety, the intellectual application and the fun couldn\u2019t possibly be rivaled by any other industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 3<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span>Women are still under represented in the IT community, whether in management, project, consultancy, infrastructure, technical or development roles.\u00a0 Big tech companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft all hover around the 70:30 male to female ratio mark.\u00a0 However, it doesn\u2019t appear to be a selection issue, more a recruitment issue.\u00a0 From my own experience, and that &#8230; <a title=\"The IT Women\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about The IT Women\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":6425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-9024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-applying-and-operating-erp","tag-technology-or-enterprise-technology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The IT Women | Women in Power | Women and ERP<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Most skills valued in IT relate to individual attributes rather than gender. By not attracting women to the industry means missing out on a potentially IT-skilled group.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The IT Women | Women in Power | Women and ERP\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Most skills valued in IT relate to individual attributes rather than gender. By not attracting women to the industry means missing out on a potentially IT-skilled group.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"SYSPRO Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-08-04T10:41:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-03-04T14:48:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/cathie_women_in_IT.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"410\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Cathie Hall\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Cathie Hall\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Cathie Hall\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/92fceb2b20d4cd4596ea78bee6179af1\"},\"headline\":\"The IT Women\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-08-04T10:41:57+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-03-04T14:48:36+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/\"},\"wordCount\":410,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/cathie_women_in_IT.png\",\"keywords\":[\"Technology (or Enterprise Technology)\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Applying and Operating ERP\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/\",\"name\":\"The IT Women | Women in Power | Women and ERP\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/applying-and-operating-erp\/the-it-women\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/cathie_women_in_IT.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-08-04T10:41:57+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-03-04T14:48:36+00:00\",\"description\":\"Most skills valued in IT relate to individual attributes rather than gender. 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