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THREE QUARTERS OF the women working in Ireland’s IT sector “fell into” the career, a new survey has found.
‘Women in IT – Untapped Answer to the Skills Shortage’ also reported that six in ten women in the industry don’t have a computer science degree.
A third of those surveyed cited a lack of educational support as a barrier to a career in IT.
The report was commissioned by recruitment company Hays and surveyed 150 women – ranging in age from 18 to 64 years – who work in start-ups, SMEs and large national and multinational corporations.
Last year a Fastrack to IT skills audit revealed that 4,500 jobs in the sector are currently unfilled in Ireland, and 10,000 more potential jobs are under threat in the short-term, thanks to a skills shortage.
Richard Eardley, Managing Director of Hays Ireland, said the report was commissioned to “try to understand why women are underrepresented in IT”.
Are there barriers that exist? Are there perception issues?
Eardley said it didn’t “stack up” that an industry which is worth €70 billion in exports to Ireland annually had to rely on people “falling into the career”.
He noted that the sector needed to move away from the image of “geeky, nerdy guys in t-shirts coding in rooms” and show the “other realities that people aren’t aware of”.
Other findings in the report include:
Ireland is the second-largest exporter of computer and IT services in the world.
Jean O’Sullivan, Manager of Female Entrepreneurship at Enterprise Ireland (EI), said she had not experienced much sexism herself, but recalled one incident when a colleague told her:
Now Jean, you’d want to start thinking about not having more children if you wanted to keep a seat at the top table.
O’Sullivan noted that men in both Ireland and Europe were “twice as likely” to create a new business than women.
She said that only seven per cent of EI investment went to female-led companies in 2012, but said there was about a 400 per cent increase in the number of women coming to the organisation for finance since they launched an awareness campaign.
During a panel discussion at the launch, Hilary O’Meara, Head of Technology at Accenture Ireland, stressed the importance of women stepping forward to mentor each other.
Women have an obligation to support other women … Women don’t push themselves as much career-wise as men do – that’s just a fact of life.
O’Meara said that flexibility in the workplace was needed for all employees.
“Flexibility is not just for women or women who have children, it’s not gender-speicific. Social responsibility and care giving is for everyone,” she stated.
Elena Martines, Scientific Programme Officer at Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), agreed with the need for flexibility but said: “If decisions are made when flexible workers are not in the workplace, it doesn’t work.”
She also noted the importance of sending a strong message to women that “it’s OK” to take maternity leave.
In February, SFI launched an award that enables women to remain or return to a career in one of the ‘STEM’ subjects: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
O’Meara added that “the [IT] stereotype is broken” and encouraged girls to ”embrace subjects [like science and maths]“.
“Don’t be afraid of them because a stereotype says you should be,” she advised.
This year, coding will be introduced in primary schools in the UK.
Speaking at the launch, Joe Costello, junior minister for trade and development, said the government was looking into the possibility of a similar scheme here.
He said that the junior cycle reforms proposed by Education Minister Ruairi Quinn would include a focus on ICT skills and coding.
Costello remarked that the lack of women in top positions wasn’t an industry specific problem, noting that just under 16 per cent of TDs are female. He added that the number of women sent on government trade missions was “very limited indeed”.
The junior minister said the technology industry was one that continued to grow despite the recession, adding that nine of out the top ten US IT companies have bases in Ireland.
Less than a quarter of the current IT workforce in Ireland are women.
Costello said that increasing this figure would “make a real contribution to the skills shortage” in the industry.
He added that the government remained committed to creating and filling 44,500 ICT jobs by 2018, as part of its Action Plan for Jobs, saying he wanted to see full gender equality in the sector.
Brian MacCraith, President of Dublin City University, said that when young people are deciding on careers they are “driven by societal impact rather than personal advancement” and “the usefulness of what we’re doing rather than the 1s and 0s”.
MacCraith said DCU could double the number of people in its computer-related courses but said students simply “don’t survive” in these programmes due to a lack of foundation knowledge that should be provided in primary and secondary schools.
He said that the push to grow ICT education in schools “cannot be sustained unless we are supporting the teachers”.
Dublin is “fast become the world capital for data analytics” but most people don’t know what it is, according to MacCraith.
He said parents and teachers needed to be made aware of the vast amount of jobs available in the sector as “if [students] don’t know about these jobs they certainly won’t be applying for them”.
McCraith praised the CoderDojoGirls coding initiative for girls at DCU, saying part of its success was that participants are not aware they’re “going through formal learning” due to its interactive nature.
Short answer NO. I’m doing computers in college, 100 in the class, 4 women. And anyway, genders shouldn’t come into play with a shortage
This is what annoys me about feminism. They are demanding equal opportunities and pay which is fair enough. Young women now have very opportunity to do IT but they refuse. How can they then demand equal pay if they don’t have skills with value.?
Also they gossip too much
As someone who has 16 years professional IT experience, I don’t get the demand to incorporate it into schools.
If there are resources to be invested, spend them on getting more kids to do honours maths and at getting those who do it better grades. Working with that background, third-level and industry can turn someone into a decent IT professional.
The big danger with school courses is that they can focus on technologies that will be irrelevant a decade later when the pupil join the work force.
Correct re maths. The minister declared last week that honours maths should be an entry requirement for primary teaching. A bit extreme, I think. But it should certainly be the case for secondary. Commerce, Arts and Science graduates make up the majority of secondary maths teacher. They need to financially incentify maths and engineering graduates to teach. Pay them more.
Brian McCraith of DCU made the point that kids don’t survive IT courses due to lack of grounding in schools. It’s easier to point the finger of blame that to change the way a course is delivered. I think both need to change. I see eastern European kids coming here, who have a competency in basics because of computing subjects in schools, get on better than Irish kids.
I believe all 3 need to change. Better math tuition schools, introduction of IT as a leaving cert subject, and for 3rd level courses to become more sympathetic of the lack of basic understanding of their candidates (don’t just blame schools, work harder with what you’ve got).
Chris, I take your point, but you can currently do a Leaving Cert exam in Hebrew or Classical Studies amongst other obscure subjects and you can still do metalwork at Junior level. Surely there should be room for some IT exam, it would introduce a lot more young people to the idea of Tech as a career as well as a social activity.
Cormac, a huge majority of science graduates have maths in their degrees, especially physics graduates. My degree is physics and maths. They go hand in hand and I’d bet possibly all of the physics graduates who are teaching have maths to degree level. If you want a maths teacher at LC level then hire a maths graduate and not an engineer. If you want someone to teach technology or engineering then hire an engineering graduate. The problem is and you are right about this, is a lot of maths teachers may only have done a year or two of maths at Uni as part of their business or arts degree.
Gary, I said the majority. You are an exception. A physics and maths degree may be closer to or even higher than the level of maths of an engineer. Main stream science and commerce students do maths that is not as high as leaving cert maths and these graduates teach maths in schools.
The point I was making is that the majority of maths teachers are under qualified. Lack a confident understanding.
Every engineer has a high understanding of maths.
Women can do IT but have no interest in it. Men will spend hours tweaking and tinkering with machines just to get a tiny improvement in performance whilst most women don’t even notice a problem with a machine until it comes to a complete halt.
There will always be women who will be the exception and there should not be any barriers to women doing any Job but it has to be recognised lack of women in IT is not a problem for any of us, the same as lack of men in female dominated professions isn’t a problem.
Agreed Nimby . Having taken honors maths & physics for the L .C. I headed off to do computer programming in u.l. but hated it! I just found it so tedious. It’s not that I couldn’t do it I just didn’t like it & switched to teaching which I’ve been doing for 16 yrs now & love every day of it.
NimbY, if you had bothered to actually read the article rather than trOtting out sexist stereotypes, yoU will see that the article sAys that most “of the women woRking in IrEland’s the tech sector “fell into” the career”. Now, maybe, if you’d taken two minutes to reAd this sentenCe and actually notice what it means, you woUld realise that the reason there are so few women in tech is because it is never preseNted to them as a career opTion. It is considered by many to be a “boys subject” or “male career path” and that in itself is a barrier to women having the opportunity to get involved in the profession.
IT courses in colleges in Silicone Valley have 50/50 gender mix. Studies show that kids are influenced by the roll model of their parents. Often both parents work in technology fields there. Time may eventually level it here too as the industry grows.
However the skills shortage in Ireland could be addressed by increasing the intensity of repetitive tuition and revision in college courses for the majority who don’t get coding straight away. A maximum of 20% of any IT class simply get coding very naturally and go on to careers in software. The other 80% struggle, but colleges could do a lot more to make sure those kids get more tutorials at a slower pace until they get the logic too. It’s not that they can’t do it, they just need longer. Coding is always taught at the pace of the fastest kids. So many computer science graduates hate coding because they were left behind during training.
Very true coding ain’t easy but if your determined to master it you will
I have worked in Software for a long time. My partner works in IT as well & we have both spent a fair bit of time on the West coast. There is a big difference between the workplaces here and those in San Francisco & Silicon Valley. The US workplaces are a lot more gender diverse. And it’s not just engineers, there are noticeably more women in Senior Management roles as well. My employer did a software deal with a large bank recently, 20,000 employees, where the CEO, the COO and the CTO were all women. You wouldn’t see that in Ireland I think.
Cornell or one of these other top ranked colleges launched this Blitz to get more female students into Computer Science. It succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations and within a few years the percentage of females on the course had gone from 4% to 45%.
It’s not industry sexism that is the cause of all this , more society’s attitudes. There’s a belief out there amongst parents, teachers and Irish society in general that women & girls should favour the likes of Biology, Home Ec and Primary School Teaching. And not bother their heads with stuff like Engineering or Maths as those are for boys. Load of rubbish of course, especially considering that women do better in Leaving Cert maths and sciences every year.
Where on the West coast were you Paddy, Galway or Mayo ? It’s beautiful over there …
Ha ha! :-) well as it happens I would be a big fan of irelands west coast as well. Beautiful part of the world …
This is sexist nonsense plain and simple…if we have a shortage of skilled IT workers then surely we need to train more kids in IT? I really fail to understand how gender figures in this simple equation.
CTRL ALT DELETE
Ctrl + Shift + Esc
Same thing but one hand ;-)
Ahh a one-handed typist !!!
The skills shortage has nothing to do with woman or the lack there of.
The audit carried out by fastrack to IT ( FIT ) was held in conjunction with employers and found there was a shortage of network engineers. There has since been a plan of action through training put in place that is open to men and women and in my opinion either sex is capable of doing the job once qualified.
I have a degree in IT and a diploma in web design and another in server infrastructure, yet all of these jobs require years of experience. That’s another big problem right there, how can I get experience if you won’t give me any?? And if anyone brings up the job bridge scheme I’ll loose the plot
I work in a large IT company and there are plenty of women there, although mostly sitting in the canteen drinking posy coffee and moaning about discrimination.
I just don’t get IT!
I teach computer systems. .I have one lass in the class.. in my son’s first year..only one class is doing IT..so out 100 students..only 20 will have an understanding…
What a degrading headline.
Yes a generalisation, and probably not as true nowadays as what it used to be BUT:
Women and IT do not mix well
Why do you need a ‘degree’ to work in a call centre?
This explains it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w
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