Traditionally, International Women’s Day (IWD) has been a rallying cry for women to take action to fight for a more gender equal workplace – themes like “Break the Bias”, “Choose to Challenge” or “Press for Progress” have clearly highlighted that there remains challenges in many sectors to achieving that.
However, by many measures, not a lot seems to be changing. Gender pay gaps remain across many sectors. At Men for Inclusion, our research suggests that at the current rates, nearly half of the companies reporting their gender pay gap will never achieve gender parity (i.e. 50/50 male/female) in the upper pay quartile. When it comes to the IT sector, the % of women working in IT in Europe and the US remains stubbornly stuck in the 20 – 25% range (less if you look at core engineering roles) which correlate to similar percentages of women studying computer science at college and university.
A lot of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programmes around gender have been focused on “fixing the women”. It is not enough – we need to fix the system and we need everyone’s help to do that.
This year’s IWD theme is “Inspire Inclusion”. This denotes a shift in emphasis from the earlier themes noted above and moves us towards having more balanced conversations which recognise that if we truly want gender equity in the workplace, then we need discussions across all the genders.
I have spent the last 10 years talking to thousands of men on why this is so important and why they should care. Their behaviour and attitudes towards women in the workplace one of the keys to accelerating change in gender equality and when men are the majority (e.g. in IT), it is easy for them to create more barriers for the female colleagues without even realising.
Are we working in an environment that continues to portray itself as unfriendly to women (unintentional or otherwise)? Are we looking hard enough at the skills that are required and opening our minds to whether graduates from other subjects can be successful in IT (clearly they can)?
So why does this matter? And why does it matter so much now? And what’s it got to do with men who might be reading this?
You can’t move for stories about AI in the media at the moment. And along with the rise in AI and assisted decision making, comes a similar rise in concerns about its long-term impact if it continues to be largely unregulated.
As noted by many commentators, especially the excellent work by Caroline Criado Perez, if assisted decisions are made on the data that assumes an average (probably, white male) human being or is based on data that is highly skewed by the advantages of a previously privileged subset, some of those outcomes are going to be disastrous. Particularly for women, particularly for under-represented communities, particularly for those not in positions of power and influence, particularly for those that need the most help.
Is that the world you want to live in? Or you want your wife, daughter, mother, friends and colleagues to live in?
So, for everyone who works in the IT industry, greater representation of traditionally under-represented groups is a moral imperative. We must do it to protect us from ourselves. This is not necessarily anyone’s fault. We are all influenced by our own cultural upbringing. But it is everyone’s problem.
So, men (in IT and beyond), even though International Women’s Day is now over, I implore you to make to start thinking about how you can take action to attract and retain more women in technology. Attend events, publicly celebrate the women in your team and in your life and join them in learning more about what needs to change.
And when you get back from celebrating, take a long, hard look at your team and ask yourself “are we diverse enough?”, “could we make a critical mistake in our solutions by not considering someone different to us?”.
But if you don’t like the answers, what could you specifically do? At Men for Inclusion, our research shows that there is a lived experience gap between men and women in the workplace, particularly in male dominated sectors, which we believe are also contributing to women not joining or being more likely to leave those sectors. Once you know about these, you can start thinking about specific things you can do to disrupt them.
Here are 4 specific things to think about:
I am sure there are plenty of other ideas that you have to disrupt the lived experience gap. If these challenges exist in your organisation (it would be rare if they didn’t), maybe a quick brainstorm with the team might identify different approaches to your work practices that could make a big difference.
My conclusion is that we all have to start taking action now, in whatever small way we can. The challenge remains significant – if it wasn’t, we would have solved it years ago – but creating a gender balance IT workforce requires everyone’s efforts, because everyone will benefit and the alternatives really are quite alarming.
If you feel you need help with this subject, don’t hesitate to get in touch at gary.ford@menforinclusion.com