Why We Don't Need More Women in IT

I'm baffled by the discussion on how to lure girls into STEM, and specifically IT areas of higher education. Why would anybody try to equalize any industry to make it gender-balanced? Does the society need 50% elementary school teachers to be men? Do we want to attract more men into healthcare, human resources, retail, insurance, hospitality, accounting, education, and other traditionally female-dominated industries? And yet, the topic of girls in computer science classes and women in software companies seems to come up pretty often.

I have worked in software engineering for almost 20 years, in two different countries and eight companies. I've made my way from junior developer to director of engineering, hired and worked with men and women in different stages of their career.

My observations and my experience don't support the claim about entry barriers that IT industry supposedly creates for women. I am also skeptical about the glass ceiling in their career growth.

According to the recent labor statistics women represent about 25% of the entire workforce in computer systems design and related services. This seems to be consistent with my experience.

Depending on the company size, the number of women in the Engineering department may fluctuate between 10 to 50%. I remember a few short periods in my professional life when I was the only woman in the entire R&D group. Right now about 45% of my department at Premier are women.

The benefit of being one of the few female employees: you basically have a private restroom.

The distribution of female engineers across different functional groups is not equal. There are not many women software developers, even fewer hardware engineers, system administrators, infrastructure or networking specialists, software architects. But look at business analysts, data analysts, quality assurance engineers, technical writers - most of them are women and they are absolutely great at what they do.

And now we're getting to the interesting and maybe even slightly surprising part. Even though female engineers in the various roles are underrepresented as individual contributors, at the managerial level their percent suddenly jumps up. The number of women managers and directors is usually closer to 50%, even in companies where female engineers represent only 10% of the entire workforce.

Surprising? Not really. Even though women on the average might be less excited about hardware, cables, build servers, routers and firewalls than men, many of us certainly possess the skills that help us to coordinate, organize, establish and optimize processes and routines, support and nurture growth - abilities essential for running a company.

Back when I was 30 and had a baby and a toddler, my manager informed me that one of my peers was promoted to a manager's position. "It was between him and you", he said. "But you are a mom, you probably wouldn't have taken the job anyway". I said nothing. I might have even nodded in agreement. But it bothered me for years, how he made the decision without asking me and used my kids as an reason for my non-promotion.

For me, the question of women in technology is not about entry barriers. I don't believe they exist. People who are interested in computers, programming, software and hardware design can and should attend classes and get their college degree in Computer Science or any other Engineering area regardless of their gender. People who are interested in something else should do what they like and excel in arts, business, finance, life science or marketing.

The gender should be as irrelevant to the choice of a college major as the person's height, weight, skin color, fashion taste or food preference.

However, the question that bothers me is this: can women make careers in Technology and be as successful as men?

I my professional career of 20 years I felt like I was treated differently because I'm a woman twice. Exactly two times people (men in both cases) said things to me that indicated that they evaluated my value based on my gender. But on many other occasions people around me were fair, and made their decisions based on merit, experience, skills and potential, regardless of anybody's gender. Same way I try to make my decisions.

Earlier this year I had a number of interviews for a director's position with a company based in New York. I liked the role, they seemed to like me. For the face to face interview they flew me to the company headquarters. One of the people I met was a senior executive. Very nice guy, at the end of the interview he asked: "Will you be comfortable managing an all-male group?" Then he added something about South and Southern mentality (the job was in North Carolina), implying that the group might object to be managed by a woman, but I felt like he was questioning me as a manager. I didn't get the job, but I also had my doubts about the company culture.

Look up from the first and second levels of management and most likely you'll see all men again. 15-20 years ago when I started my professional career, everybody in the company above director level were men. The good news is, the situation has changed and today many VPs and Senior VPs in IT are women. The bad news: the C-suite is still mostly men.

A few weeks ago I went to Premier annual Values Conference and saw the entire company, over 2000 employees, in one auditorium. About half people in the audience as well as on stage were women, including the CEO and multiple VPs.

But when I look up the executive group on my company's web site, I see only one woman and she is in charge of the traditionally feminine area of HR. My previous employer had lots of women in all levels of management, including VPs and Senior VPs, but only 2 female senior executives.

The C-suite seems to be the last place where the boys club still exists and where women hit the glass ceiling. But I am optimistic. As I see this, it's probably not a gender gap, but a generation problem. The momentum is definitely there. Women are already there, we exist, we are strong and we came so close to the final proof of IT being an industry of equal opportunities.

I believe that in 5 years it will become a norm for IT companies to have female CEOs, CIOs and CTOs. They will probably not reach the 50% mark, but that's OK. I will be happy when one out of four senior executives is a woman. After all, that will reflect the level of interest women in our society seem to have in technology.

That's why I am not worried about high school and college students. My son is a high school sophomore and is enrolled into a Computer Science program. In his small class of 10, only 2 students are girls, but you know what? I'm sure those two really love what they learn and enjoy writing programs in C++. Like I did when I was their age (except I learned Pascal).

So here's my message to my two teenage kids and all their friends, high school and college students. Do what you like and what you do great, love your job and excel in it. It doesn't matter if you're surrounded by your own or opposite gender. Don't get lured into something you don't like or enjoy just because somebody decided there's a gap and it has to be closed.

That's why I don't think we need more women in IT. Instead, we need more talented, curious, smart, fun to work with, hungry for knowledge, ready to learn, opinionated and hard-working engineers. Engineers, who come in different shapes and forms, as well as different genders.