Worrying decline in the number of women in IT continues

The research, which benchmarks the UK against 33 countries, demonstrates that while the UK performs favourably for the total number of women in the workforce, the number of women employed in the IT sector has fallen to just 16%. The research also highlights that in the UK, many of the women employed are clustered in the lower skilled and lower paid areas of the industry rather than the more professional/technical positions.

Overall, when compared with the rest of the EU, Canada, Australia and the USA, the UK lies seventh in terms of female representation within ITEC (IT, Electronics and Communications) occupations. The research shows that the UK's percentage of females in ICT jobs has fallen over the last five years, despite industry's and government's growing awareness of the need to broaden its recruitment and retention policies to address skills shortages.

Commenting, Carrie Hartnell, private sector programme manager at Intellect, said:
"The continuing drop in the number of women in the IT industry, though an international phenomenon, continues to have serious and far reaching implications for the UK economy and can no longer be regarded as just a diversity issue. There are good initiatives but these have clearly not been pervasive enough or resulted in the necessary improvements. As an industry we must begin by tackling the cultural barriers, which have prevented the effective recruitment and retention of women. If this is achieved the presence of women in the high- end sectors of the economy will benefit both the industry and the UK."

Commenting Gillian Arnold, Chair of Intellect's Women in IT Forum said:
"Key companies in the sector have stepped up to tackle the inequalities which deter women from entering or remaining in the IT industry. Through the Women in IT Forum we disseminate best practice. However, much more can be done to resolve the wide IT Gender Pay Gap, enhance women's options for flexibility, and elevate career prospects. The existing culture perpetuates recruitment of identical candidates, excludes women and ignores their differing and beneficial skills. When we have greater progress with these issues, we should see a rise in the retention rates for women within the industry."

Other findings from the research include:
- the UK's strongest representation occurred within the computing associate professionals occupation group, lying third out of eighteen countries surveyed which had comparable data available
- the highest overall levels of representation were observed within the USA, Canada, Ireland, Hungary and the Scandinavian member states (notably Sweden and Finland) with Hungary in particular noted for the high levels of female representation within electronics occupations
- female representation in ITEC occupations appears to be on the decline worldwide though there are a few countries, Germany in particular, in which the opposite seems to have occurred (over the 2000-2005 period at least)

Related links to this article:
Intellect

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