Thursday, November 20, 2008

ACS-W Survey Findings

Last week, The Australian ran a story about low female participation in the ICT industry. You can find it here.

The story highlights a few comments from the latest survey conducted by the ACS regarding women in ICT that I found interesting. The article mentioned remuneration inequality, going on to say that the women who experienced inequality were not new to the field but rather had been working in industry for a while.

This reminded me of a conversation I had recently. A friend of mine mentioned to me that she feels graduates do not notice the inequality, because opportunities for promotion and renumeration increases haven't yet passed their desk. She felt that the more experience I have in IT, the more I will notice opportunities passing me by for a similarly qualified male colleague.

If this is indeed the case, the time to do something about it is now, for the young graduates who are not yet facing these issues. And yet, only 17% of respondents to this survey were graduates or women who have newly entered the workforce. Surely young women in IT make up a larger percentage than this? Is this because they weren't aware of the survey because they aren't members of the ACS? Is it because they didn't see the point? Or perhaps that the numbers of women entering IT is declining - which is a point the article makes?

No comments: