Anna Liu interview continued

More from my conversation with Anna Liu:

Let’s start with an anecdote; a situation that will likely feel very familiar to other women in male dominated workplaces:

Anna mentioned a time early in her career when she was the only woman in a software development team. It was not uncommon for their weekly meeting to descend into a conversation about whatever sporting event was in season: Whether AFL or soccer, boxing or motor sports, these are topics highly likely to exclude a female audience. And while it may not have been intentional, it certainly contributed to a sense of frustration and boredom at the time.

Is this an uncommon experience?

I suspect not. If we accept that women are looking for meaningful human interaction in their workplace (see my earlier “Assumptions” post) then I can see this sort of situation being a major factor in driving women out of male dominated environments and perhaps as a result into less technical roles.

Anna feels that successful IT women have a responsibility to clearly call out to the next generation, to tell them what it is really about.

“This has been a tough career,” she admits. “Whilst I have had some privileged support (for example a Women In Engineering Scholarship throughout), it is a tough profession compared to other areas where you can turn up as a woman and be accepted; even now I attend conferences where they were they didn’t realise I was a woman, and I have had to quickly demonstrate my credibility.”

FITT - Females in Information Technology

Some feedback and discussion points from a conversation with Maggie Alexander at FITT (Females in Information Technology):

Enough research has been done to validate all of those conclusions. The issue is what do about it. We know why these things happen and there are various initiatives (eg Digi-Girls, a TAFE initiative and various university recruitment programs) that help women to get into IT careers and the AIIA (The Australian Information Industry Association) is working at a national level to try to help to retain women in the industry.

Early influences: Typically girls are not encouraged to investigate and to pull things apart in the same way that boys are so that while women do like technology, fewer are interested in how it is made. We find that decisions about what people are going to do with their careers are usually made in year 10 – if you can’t influence girls by year ten they won’t necessarily take up an IT career unless by chance later on.

Financial drivers: There is more money in the ‘business’ side of technology, than in a hands on IT career, so that some women naturally gravitate out of a technical role as their career progresses.

Cultural aspects: While Australia may be struggling to bring women into IT careers, other countries have been very successful indeed. India, Russia, China, to name just three, have been successful at bringing women into technical careers.

FITT conduct regular surveys (results available through their website) on their website and also host numerous networking events.

Interview with Anna Liu at UNSW

On June 22nd I spoke with Anna Liu, Associate Professor at UNSW. Anna's career in IT spans 15 years.

When asked how she first became interested in IT Anna says that it was in the third grade when she asked to go to a Computer Summer Camp. She also sites an earlier episode, when her father identified her interest in mathematics on a first-grade enrolment form. Did she really stand out as a mathematician so early on or did she respond to proactively live up to her father's expectations? She doesn't know for certain, but it seems that she certainly had her parents’ encouragement from an early age.

“But what,” I asked, “about the coolness factor? Were you not worried about what your peers would think?”
Anna laughs "Well I think I was already classed as one of the geeks!"

We chuckle; neither of us were trend setters at school. But does Anna still see the coolness factor as an issue for female high school students with the potential to enter IT studies and careers? Is there still a perception that IT is uncool and does that prevent women from pursuing studies?

"I think that perception has changed a lot" she says, "IT is the cool thing right now, and I can see women getting into it, particularly the social networking aspect."

We decide that coolness is not so much the issue at the moment, but Anna raises another point:

"We don't see enough female participation in the IT industry because we are failing to attract the hardworking female with good HSCs..."

"Generally speaking, girls who get good marks and who enjoy science and maths go straight into medicine. Those who enjoy the communications and English language aspects go straight into law. I don't know if it's a matter of dollars or that we haven't publicised and marketed top IT executives."

It seems a valid point; most of us know lady doctors and lawyers, and I dare say could name a few fictionalised TV characters in those professions too. But there are fewer recognisable people, in real life or TV who demonstrate the success and enjoyment that women can achieve in technical roles.

So how can we encourage women in technical roles to come forward and share their experiences?

I will be posting more from my conversation with Anna, so watch this space.

Veronica, an IT professional talks about studying IT in a male dominated environment

"During the first year of my Computer Science course at USYD, there was no shortage of female students -- the ratio was about 50/50. Most of them Asians, very few of Anglo-Saxon background. I think in Asian culture, "geeky" girls are not classed as uncool at all (at least not in Hong Kong, where I grew up -- they are often viewed as well informed and thus cool).

"After the first semester, numbers of females started to drop drastically. I have asked a lot of friends why they dropped out, and they generally say how they don't really care about IT as much as say Economics or Commerce, or Law, so they switched. Of those, there are also many that felt like it's hard to compete with people (mostly guys) who grew up programming and full of "techniness", while they are just starting to take an interest and learn for the first time.

"My Computer Science course in uni was full of guys who were proud of their hard core programming abilities, and often they would paint females as 'noobs' and 'wannabes' -- in a group work intensive uni course, this is a big disadvantage for female students who are generally interested and want to do well, but were labelled as lame and pretty much ostracised from the group.

"Many I found, dropped out thinking "I don't have to put up with this crap", and end up in other courses where they felt they were taken as equals.

"I also think fewer females start being interested in IT when they're young because of that mental image of a computer nerd with thick glasses who can't communicate -- can't help that, it's a popular stereotype."

Thanks to Veronica Luke for sharing her experiences.

Assumption

I’ve spoken to several people at universities and most people admit that they don’t really know what drives women into (or away from) IT careers. There are a number of assumptions that form the basis of recruitment drives, but it seems that very little research has been conducted amongst female IT professionals to learn what they find genuinely rewarding about their work.

Here are a number of assumptions that I have encountered so far:

1. Young women don’t think IT careers are cool, and still imagine the industry to be populated with uncool ‘geeks’ and ‘nerds’.
2. High schools struggle to present up to date, interesting IT classes and fail to engage the interest of young women.
3. Women want creativity and meaningful human interaction in their work, and they don’t feel that IT careers provide either.
4. Women enjoy using gadgets (eg mobile phones) but are not interested in the technology behind them.

These seem fairly reasonable, and widely held theories, but while so few people in education really know what women find rewarding or off-putting about IT careers, and while they base their recruitment drives on assumption it is no surprise there are so few ladies entering IT careers.

Women think IT careers are not cool

My brother is a Quantitative Developer, my husband is a Broadcast Engineer and while I lived in London my best male friend was an IT Project Manager. All of them, behind the scenes are computer geniuses with skillz, gadgets and bandwidth galore.

Naturally I think information technology is pretty cool. But according to Des Saunders, the Industry Liaison Officer at UTS I am unusual.

In a brief discussion this morning I learnt that high school girls think technical IT careers are "not cool". Software development, for example, is for the geeks and nerds; the guys can keep it.

The university takes this seriously but despite a number of initiatives in place to recruit more women into IT degrees their population remains fairly consistent at around 30%.

Young women leaving high school are clearly not excited by IT or by IT careers. While the university is working hard to turn around the negative perceptions that women have about IT, perhaps it is fighting a losing battle as long as technical IT jobs don’t seem to deliver exciting careers for young women.

It seems a terrible waste – Des advises me that most of the women who do take technical modules are as successful, if not more so than their male counterparts.

More stats from Des at UTS:
In 2009 UTS have an overall figure of 35% females enrolled in IT degrees.
The combined Bachelor of Business/Bachelor of Science in IT has 49.36% girls.
The combined Bachelor of Science in IT/Bachelor of Arts is 50% 50%.
The main IT degree, the Bachelor of Science in IT and the Bachelor of Information Technology Scholarship program both have 25% girls.

Where are all the women?

Nadia is a Recruitment Consultant, a woman and a mum.

Having recruited IT personnel into the banking and finance industry for 3+ years I started to wonder "where are all the women?”

My clients are keen to hire women, but struggle to find candidates who can offer the same skill level as their (predominantly male) existing team members.

It seems reasonable to assume that women are as capable as men when it comes to the fundamental skills that are required to develop C++ software or maintain a Linux server environment, for example. So why are there so few women to be found in those and many other technical IT roles?

Is it a matter of choice? Do women choose not to pursue technical IT roles? Is it to do with the way technology has been promoted to women in the past that makes this sort of career path feel less interesting to women?

Perhaps women encounter more obstacles that hamper their career progress, so that they are steered out of IT careers, following a path of least resistance.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt there would be value in an investigation. I decided to return to my journalistic roots and find out.

I hope to use this blog to report on the progress of my investigation, and am happy to hear from women and men who have an interest or opinion on the matter.