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Building a profession that is good for women and better for all. The British Computer Society is working together with sector leaders and IT professionals to attract, retain and advance more women into leadership in the IT industry.Many people consider taking career breaks these days - but, as they excitedly plan that world tour or prepare for parenthood, few look beyond the break itself to the important issue of getting back into work.If you hope to return to work you need to plan for your break carefully and then make sure you take all opportunities to improve your prospects of going back to the right job at the right level.This BCS guide aims to show how, with proper planning and the right approach during a break, leaving work for months or even years need not mean the end of your hard-won career or professional ambitions.
“Studies have shown that, for a variety of reasons, workforce diversity boosts a company’s bottom line,” states Dr. Caroline Simard, director of research for the Anita Borg Institute and co-author of the study. “This fact, combined with the lower number of men and women entering technical fields, makes it critical for high tech companies to focus on eliminating the barriers to retention and advancement of their technical women.”
The statistics for getting British women into science and technology are not great, but a growing awareness of the issues, and a host of innovative solutions to tackle them, is beginning to make a real difference.
Women scientists from 60 countries descended on Seoul, South Korea earlier this month. An international conference of women physicists and a forum of the UKKoreanWomen in Science project gave us the opportunity to compare our position with women scientists overseas. Our statistics may not be the best; the UK, along with the other English-speaking countries sits close to the global average for the percentage of women working in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). In contrast to a country like South Korea, where the government is handsomely funding projects to increase the number of women in science, our growth rate is slow. However, in terms of programmes and initiatives to attract, retain and advance women in STEM subjects, we have thought hard about the issues, and taken action.
This briefing paper addresses key issues relating to the gender imbalance in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) occupations.There is a growing demand for people with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills in today’s economy. It is widely acknowledged that to remain globally competitive the UK needs a Science and Engineering skilled workforce. Moreover, this need must be set in the context of an overall decline in the proportion of students studying Engineering and Technology and a generally poor perception of Engineering and Technology careers. There is also a challenge in that many STEM graduates move into unrelated occupations, where their analytical skills are sought after. This briefing paper looks at the potential pool of female employees as a key answer to the skills challenges that the UK faces. Women are one of the country’s most under-utilised resources and this is particularly prevalent in the Physical Sciences and Engineering where only a minority choose a career in these sectors.
The high-technology field has long been pegged as one that is inhospitable to women because it has been - and continues to be - dominated numerically by men. Common wisdom and previous research suggested that the barriers to advancement that women in technology companies faced and the experiences that they had as a result of the male dominance and pervasively masculine culture of the field led to dissatisfaction among women employees.
Moreover, among women in technical jobs, dissatisfaction and disenchantment were found to be especially acute. In recent years, however, the climate for women in technology companies has begun to change. With a very robust market for jobs in information technology, companies have had to respond to employees’ demands for better working environments. Indeed, companies have found themselves in competition to attract and retain highly qualified talent - including women and men.
Good for business: Increasing women’s participation in the labour market and reducing gender segregation in the workplace is estimated to be worth between £15 billion and £23 billion to the UK economy. There are a number of studies that show a link between gender distribution in a company’s management and its profitability. Research from Catalyst in the USA shows companies with the highest representation of women on their top management teams delivered 35.1% higher return on equity, and 34% higher total return to shareholders than companies with the lowest representation.
We are facing serious skill shortages in fast growth technology sectors, in particular in the ICT industry. There are frequent calls by top industrialists for more efforts to attract more young people into the sector, but in fact very little has been done to interest one half of the this population: young women. This is a mistake and this report shows how big a mistake we are making. At the age of 15 both girls and boys have about the same preferences and ability in science and technology, but as they progress to become adults girls drop out of engineering and technology in favour of othersubjects. By the time they get to university and on to grad school, female computer scientists are out-numbered six to one by men and the situation is even worse inengineering. This is in spite of women outnumbering men in third level education overall. This imbalance persists on into industry: women R&D personnel in tech sectors account for below 20% of researchers and later on women earn less and find themselves in management roles less often: only 30% of European Mangers are women.
