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The US IT sector is being outpaced by archrival India in the race to attract more women into high-powered technology jobs notoriously dominated by men. Figures from India’s Nasscom reveals female technicians are steadily narrowing the gap on their male rivals as the number one choice for new, intermediate or senior level expertise in the IT department. In the US however, female candidates are being shunned by domestic employers, given the 18.5 per cent slump in their percentage working in IT since 1996, according to the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA). Meanwhile, Indian news portal Rediff, is predicting that the empowerment of women in its IT sector will accelerate in years to come, potentially elevating the men-women ratio in IT employment to 50:50. “It is a possible scenario in the [next] few years,” said Bangalore IT consultant, Madhumita Raghavan. She told the portal an increasing number of new candidates in professional engineering streams, such as computer sciences and electronics are women. “Indian women in the IT fields are very committed,” Raghavan explained. “They acquire software skills quite fast, just like the men.” Currently however, just under a quarter of Indian software professionals are female, whereas 76 per cent are male. Initiatives from software giants Infosys and WiPro to attract more women are already proving successful, with numbers increasing at the former company from 691 in 2001, to 8,262 this year. They play an essential role in Infosys’s total workforce of nearly 40,000, with the steady gains of females at both software companies prompting Nasscom to believe that women’s involvement in IT services will climb a further 10 per cent by 2007. If this influx of female software professionals materialises, the men-women ratio would be narrowed to 65:35, within the next 15 months. Such optimistic forecasts are due to female Indian technologists proving a career in IT is the priority, not marriage or family commitments, as critics initially suggested. Last month, Asha Goyal, IBM Technology veteran and pioneer of certifications, headed up Nasscom’s monthly newsletter with her call for Indian companies to improve the quality of their IT software and services. This female lead characterises India’s contrasting position to the United States, where softer skills and demand for female technicians has declined, just as demand on the subcontinent has accelerated. The Technology Association calculates that in 1996, just over 40 per cent of IT workers were women, while the most recent figure (2004) shows a drop to 32 per cent. “At best the data suggests the number of all women in the [US] IT industry is dropping substantially,” the ITAA report said. “At worst; [the data] illustrates a situation in which women are failing to advance in the managerial and professional ranks and the IT industry is failing to draw on a critical talent base.” The Association concluded the US IT jobs market at the end of 2004, offered “no progress” for women in the management ranks, no progress for women in IT overall, and “no change since 2003” in the barriers facing ethnic minorities seeking careers in IT. Sep 28, 2005 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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