Three Reasons the Technology Field is Great for Women

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

This week, The Glass Hammer is celebrating women in technology with a series of articles profiling women who’ve broken the glass ceiling in senior technical roles. The tech field hasn’t always been seen as women-friendly. For instance, as noted in the Anita Borg Institute‘s report Senior Technical Women: A Profile of Success, the field’s culture promotes a hero-mentality, wherein the people given top jobs, promotions, and kudos are those who swoop in at the last minute when a project needs to be completed, spend long days and late nights fixing problems to meet a deadline, and save the day.

The hero culture doesn’t work well for women, though. As the study explains, most senior women in tech are primary caregivers who often aren’t able to spend those late nights in the office – and so they get passed over for promotions or interesting assignments, even if they’re highly capable.

Another study published in the December Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that geeky stereotypes may be keeping women out of computer-science related fields.

According to a Wired magazine article on the study:

Cheryan and colleagues tested this idea by alternately decorating a computer science classroom with objects that earlier surveys pegged as stereotypically geeky—Star Trek posters, videogames and comic books — or with objects that the surveys found to be neutral— coffee mugs, plants and art posters. Thirty-nine college students spent a few minutes in the room, then filled out a questionnaire on their attitudes toward computer science.

Women who spent time in the geeky room reported less interest in computer science than women who saw the neutral room. For male students, however, the room’s décor made no difference.

In follow-up tests, a total of 215 students were asked to imagine they were joining either a geekily decorated or a neutrally decorated company after graduation. For every possible scenario, women preferred the non-geeky space.

The culture of tech may be unappealing to women for many reasons – but that’s no reason to avoid the field! There are plenty of reasons technical roles are great for women. Here are our top three.

Diversity, Innovation, and Change

First of all, studies have shown that diversity in leadership is a great way to spur on innovation. “You need diversity to have innovation,” said Dr. Caroline Simard of the Anita Borg Institute.

And if the tech field’s innovation is fed by diversity, it needs women. And that level of innovation can be very appealing. If you’re interested in working in a constantly changing field driven by innovation, you can’t do much better than technology. As Judy Priest, Distinguished Engineer and Manager in the Gigabit Systems Group, Cisco Systems, Inc. explained in a recent Anita Borg article:

I had the natural inclination and nurturing for science and math, but what keeps me here decades later is my personal passion for continuous learning. Technology evolves at an extraordinary rate and it’s a constant race to keep up. People generally find its dynamic nature either exhilarating or exhausting. For me it’s the former; it is very exciting to be in a field where I can learn something new every day.

Dynamic Flexibility

The tech industry itself is in constant flux. If you’re easily bored, or to put it more positively, if you constantly crave change, technology is a great place to be. In a recent Wired article, Paul Boutin explained that the field is driven high turnover – if you don’t like your company or project, you can move on to a new one. He writes, “Worker mobility gives the tech industry fluidity, velocity, and energy. It creates a culture in which people routinely jump from one job to another, looking to get in on the next must-have product or service.”

This dynamic flexibility is great for women, whose work/life needs change frequently throughout their career paths. And because technical roles are often project-focused, women are able to plan their schedules to better fit their lives. For example, as Isabelle Jenkins, Partner, Financial Services Consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers, explained to The Glass Hammer, when she came back from maternity leave, the company worked with her to make her schedule work for her.

Initially she came back to three days a week, and then took this to four days a week, with a final view to moving back to full time working in due course.

However, her manager told her that he had informed HR she was on four days a week permanently. “He wanted it to be a conscious decision to change to full time working, not something I had to do because time was up,” Jenkins says, and she has found a work life balance that doesn’t require her to do a full working week – and she has still been promoted to Partner since then.

On top of the cultural flexibility of the field, it also helps that many tech companies are the ones building flex-work solutions. For example, if your company builds teleconferencing equipment, it’s likely that you’ll be encouraged to take advantage of it.

Young Field, Fewer Stereotypes?

Some of the women I’ve interviewed for this week’s profile series indicated that they felt the field of technology was more welcoming to women than other specialties because it tends to be younger.

Entrenched negative attitudes toward women workers aren’t as prevalent, they explained, either because technical leadership tends to be younger and more progressive toward gender equality, or because the male workers within the field tend to be part of dual-career households, and are more understanding of the challenges women face in the workplace.

This may be true. But at the same time, there are several studies, like the Anita Borg study, outlining the challenges women face in the industry – such as a masculine geek culture and tough last-minute project challenges.

The Glass Hammer invites you to discuss these advantages and challenges, as well as your strategies for success in the comment section below, or on our social network. I look forward to reading your comments and stories this week as we celebrate senior women in technical roles.

Also, don’t miss our upcoming event for women in technical roles – Women in IT: Staying Technical and Getting to the Top. Register now to ensure you’ll get a spot – hope to see you there!