The Curious Conundrum Of The Vanishing Ladies In Information Technology, And How They Might Be Found Again

Over the past half century, women have made major inroads into many male-dominated areas, including the professions and boardrooms. Women have not to date attained equal representation in leading posts, and yet progress is encouraging. By contrast, in one important and growing industry, things seem to be heading backwards. A specialist survey six years ago indicated that the proportion of females working in the field of Information Technology had fallen from a promising 40% in the mid eighties to 29% by 2000, and the decline has continued since then. Perhaps there are various causes for the situation, but it is possible that the development of Internet business is creating the type of online jobs that might enable women to work from home, and this may be the key to changing this trend.

Some might argue that this is a straightforward gender contrast. There’s an analogy with chess. This is a board game requiring no muscle power only possessed by men, and yet there are virtually no women playing at club level, let alone grandmasters. Why? Well it’s an analytical kind of game, played in a black-and-white, theoretical battleground, that is basically uninteresting to the female mind. Maybe Information Technology is in a comparable area, a black and white world of 0’s and 1’s, abstract ideas that are unappealing to the more imaginative and intuitive aptitudes of women.

Of course, some may consider that such ideas of innate gender differences are mistaken. Despite this, it’s a fact that Information Technology specialists are known for being ‘nerds’, socially inept, withdrawn men more driven by making computer components in their basements than in sports, socialising or the usual interests of their counterparts. Such company is generally unappealing to the fair sex.

And yet, things started promisingly enough for women in computing, when a female American rear admiral called Grace Hopper pioneered the very first electronic computers in the fifties and helped to write one of the two first high level languages, COBOL, and this went on to be the most widely used language for commercial systems for 40 years up to the beginning of Internet business in the late twentieth century.

Therefore, females clearly have the capability to do well in Information Technology. But there’s one vital factor that may explain why they don’t. The pace of change in the computer industry is rapid, and with the growth of Internet business and online jobs it is accelerating. Ladies who want to take a break of up to eighteen years to have kids, may find that once they return to work, the skills they had when they left work have become out of date, and they might have to start again from scratch. It is tough enough for men, or for women who don’t have children, to maintain their knowledge of all the latest technologies.

That is why the new field of online jobs can help with this problem. They enable women to work from home while combining an Internet business with bringing up kids. Such jobs enable people to select what hours they work, ensuring that it’s still possible to take the children to school and collect them later. And this opportunity to reduce the break in your working life also allows women to study all the latest technologies.

Naturally, online jobs are not only suitable for women; countless men have taken the decision to work from home also. And yet it is possible that, by means of Internet business opportunities in addition to fostering a less ‘nerdy’ environment for females in IT overall, the number of women computer workers will consequently reach the ideal of 50%.