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Women Cut Through IT's Glass Ceiling

Men still dominate IT, but women are increasingly finding opportunity in a field where skills matter more than gender
By Candee Wilde
Issue date: Jan. 20, 1997

The world of IT is still dominated by men, and the imbalance becomes more striking at the higher rungs of the corporate ladder. Female CIOs are rare at large companies. But women are banding together to shatter glass-ceiling barriers to executive positions, and corporations are lending their help.

Many companies, including technology vendors Hewlett- Packard and Sun Microsystems, run internal women's groups that help female employees communicate with one another--and with male executives who have the power to promote them. Organizations such as Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility , Women in Technology International , and Systers , an Internet-based organization for technical women, are uniting women throughout the industry against sexual discrimination.

"Part of what we try to do is get people to look at the computer culture and how it closes women off," says Karen Coyle, western regional director of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility in Palo Alto, Calif. "Building awareness and getting people to question the situation is a good beginning."

These efforts appear to be paying off. Many large companies, in both technology and other industries, are beginning to question their treatment of women. Some compan ies, such as Sybase and HP, are creating corporate cultures that are more conducive to promoting women to positions of authority. Also, women in IT seem to agree that there has never been a better time than now for women to succeed in the field. Amid a shortage of IT professionals, skills matter more than gender.

Few Senior Women
Despite these strides, work remains to be done before women in IT achieve parity with men, especially in senior-level positions. Some telling signs: According to last year's InformationWeek 500 list of leading IT users, women held the highest-ranking IT position at only about 7% of the 500 companies listed. Among them were DuPont CIO Cinda Hallman and Xerox CIO Patricia Wallington. Also, the Society for Information Management, an organization of senior IT executives, counts only 195 women among its 2,700 members.

According to ongoing research by Robert Zawacki, professor emeritus of management and international business at the University of Colorado and dist inguished scholar in residence at accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick in New York, just 20% of senior IT executives (CIOs and directors) are women, while nearly 40% of all IT employees are female. Zawacki's findings are based on his Job Diagnostic Survey of Information Technology, a study conducted every year for 20 years in IT departments at 200 companies in different industries. By comparison, 46% of the total U.S. workforce in 1995 was female, according to the federal government's Glass Ceiling Commission, whose mission is to identify barriers to the employment and advancement of women and minorities and encourage companies to build a diverse workforce. Fewer than 5% of those women are in senior-level positions, the commission reports.

When it comes to IT, many companies are working to recruit and advance women. Xerox, for example, has received several awards for its diversity programs, and about one-third of its IT department staff is composed of women. CIO Wallington says that 10 years ago, a woman i n the computer industry had to be "a harder worker, a smarter person, and more qualified" than her male peers to move beyond the ranks of programming into management.

Now that she has "arrived," Wallington says, being a woman often makes it easier for her to be heard than her male counterparts. "There aren't enough of us, so we stand out," she says. "I have actually found it to be a distinct advantage [to be a woman]."

Still, Wallington notes that outside the walls of Xerox, IT is like the rest of corporate America-- dominated by white males. "But hope can be taken from the fact that you can point to those exceptions [women who have reached senior management]," she adds. "Those exceptions weren't there 10 years ago, so clearly there has been progress."

Sun Shines
Sun Microsystems is another company sensitive to issues of women in IT. The company recently held a job fair called SunBoost to recruit women and minorities, and it is a strong supporter of Women in Technology Internat ional.

But while these efforts are lauded by Robin Jeffries, a senior staff engineer at Sun and moderator of the Sun Senior Technical Women's Forum, she's concerned that the culture at Sun may make it difficult for women to excel. "Sun is a place where everybody is very vocal," she says. "Put five people in a room, and you'll have seven opinions, and the loudest is the opinion that is heard. If you're the quiet one in the room, you might not be heard. Women are more likely to be the quiet ones in the room."

When asked if she has hit glass-ceiling barriers in her 20-year career in IT, Jeffries, who has held a variety of management and nonmanagement jobs at several high-tech companies, replies, "Maybe. But how will I tell if that's the reason I don't make it?"

Corporate culture indeed can have an effect on women's ability to advance in IT. At Sybase, IT executives are trying to create an environment that is conducive to promoting women, says CIO Bob Epstein. It seems to be working: 40% of the managers--directors or higher--who report to Epstein are women and minorities, he says. Sybase's human resources director Dave Levigney says that of the 31 people who were hired in IT since March, 65% are women and minorities.

Epstein acknowledges that quantifying the qualities that make up a progressive environment can be difficult. A critical step toward creating such an environment may be the simple acceptance of differences among people.

"There are a variety of management skills, and a willingness to accept a diversity of skills is the single factor in my mind that can promote women's success," Epstein says. "If you're not willing to do that, it tends to be a much more male-dominated culture."

HP's VP and CIO Robert Walker, who also co-chairs the company's Diversity Leadership Council, agrees that unless changes are made in the corporate environment, increasing the representation of women and minorities by filling quotas won't work for long. "You can go out to get a diverse population, b ut if you haven't created the right inclusive environment, you won't get the benefits of diversity," Walker says. "You won't keep diversity for long, because people won't be able to contribute and will look for environments where they can."

So how can IT departments learn more about how the organization feels to women? Mostly by talking to them, Walker says. Ideally, in an organization with a diverse workforce, "you have a set of people with different perspectives on problems," he says. "If you create an environment for sharing those ideas, you can get value out of diversity. Most companies are committed to that, and we're seeing changes that will let more women move up to senior ranks," he says.

Walker doesn't just talk the talk. HP has had a women's organization since the late 1980s. Last year, more than 2,700 people attended the company's annual conference for technical women.

Despite the challenges women in IT have faced--and will continue to face--many say that now is an excellent time for women to enter and succeed in the computer industry. "We're entering a really rich phase where the need for IT professionals is so great that the opportunity will be there for those who want to succeed, regardless of who they are," Xerox's Wallington says.

Women seem up for the opportunity. Some 1,200 job seekers, primarily women, and representatives from more than 150 high-tech companies interested in hiring women gathered in the Santa Clara Convention Center last June for a job fair and conference sponsored by Women in Technology International. The group's mission is to increase the number of women hired and promoted to management and executive-level positions in IT. Sponsors and exhibitors included AT&T, Dell, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Sun.

Ann Winblad, founder of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, a $95 million venture-capital fund in Emeryville, Calif., that finances software companies, says the software industry is a meritocracy. "Skills matter more than gender," she says. "It's an in dustry where the best intellectual capital wins."

For men and women, Winblad says, the keys to success are intellectual stamina and common sense. Winblad, who started her career as a systems analyst in 1973, encourages women to be themselves, and to not adjust their personalities to fit a man's world. "Having a personality that is the same whether it's with friends or business colleagues is the key to success--and to far less stress," she adds.

Great Need
Computer consultant and author Ellen Ullman recognizes the challenges for women who choose a career in IT, but she also encourages them to consider the field. "Sexism is everywhere," she says. "Technology is one place where for the first two-thirds of your career--if you're good at it--you'll be on equal footing with people around you. The need for people with talent is so great that I hope more women and minorities will be attracted to IT."

Other consultants agree. "IT is one of the best equal-opportunity areas in our society today," says Victor Janulaitis, president of Positive Support Review, an IT management and consulting firm in Santa Monica, Calif. "It doesn't care what race, color, creed, or sexual preference you are. If you as an individual can produce results, you'll be rewarded, and you'll proceed and progress."

Indeed, the opportunities appear to be plentiful. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, two of the top-four fastest-growing jobs between now and 2005 are in IT--computer scientists and systems analysts. And by 2005, the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts, the U.S. workforce will be split almost evenly between men and women--48% female, 52% male. Maybe by then, the same will be true of IT.

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