Proportionally, fewer women are engaged in IT today than 20 years ago. Women make up 43 per cent of the workforce, but only 24 per cent of IT staffing. Only 17 per cent of senior IT positions are held by women, and only 20 per cent of university enrolments in IT courses are female. Dropout rates from those courses are much higher for women than men so that relatively few of those who start a course continue to graduation. We need more mentoring programs for women because the Internet and ecommerce are such peopleoriented fields in which people who can deal with change are very valuable.
Women do that very well.
Young women think of IT and see pallid, pimply, gangling blokes sitting in dark rooms hiding their lack of social skills. That's inaccurate, but that perception is still strong. Doug Grant, head of the school of information technology at Swinburne University, says the lack of women pursuing IT careers is a worldwide problem. We have been trying to attack it at Swinburne, but it's difficult. There are some signs this is changing.