Stopping the Clock!!

'when you find yourself banging your head against a brick wall it is okay to stop” because it hadn’t occurred to me that it was ok to stop until that point…from then I started thinking that actually I don’t have to do this job’.

(Geraldine an ex Vice President of North America Office, 50-55 years old).

Throughout the autobiographical interviews that we conducted with the 'disappearing women' they recalled their life histories, interweaving domestic and workplace events as they remembered them, using changes in jobs, relocations, childbirth, sometimes illness and even deaths as timestamps in their lives. Each 'disappearing woman' talked of highlights in their careers but there have also been periods of despair which has for whatever reason led them to leave the ICT sector. Workplace hostilities factored highly in making the decision to leave the sector these included, though not exclusively, redundancy (some women experiencing this two or three times in their career) deliberate acts of ageism and caring responsibilities against burgeoning workload. But each woman could name the one significant event or the straw that broke the camels back, the bolt of the lightening which made her walk away from her career. Significant events were, instances of being so alone and and far away from home meant having to celebrate a birthday with a stranger; not wanting to be ‘a cog in somebody’s wheel’; being ‘blasted’ by management because of on-line distribution problems of a High Street store when customers did not receive their 'toasters' before Christmas, and being ordered to train colleagues in your area of expertise so that they can replace you and finally spending two weeks in bed after a car accident allowed time out for a period of reflection. Reported periods of reflection, ‘pressing the pause button’ on their lives, inadvertently allowed time outside hectic schedules to consider what they were doing and did they want to continue to carry on at such a pace, in such conditions??? The women we spoke to thought not.

Have you had a similar experience or know of someone that has been pushed or pulled away from ICT?

Please comment or email Marie on m.griffiths@salford.ac.uk

STORIES FROM THE ICT WORKPLACE!!!

Over the next couple of weeks we aim to encourage debate and consider the phenomena of Disappearing Women from ICT workplaces. We will be publishing personal stories from both current and ex female ICT professionals (we have their permission to publish) regarding their experiences, significant episodes and emotional incidents from their time working at various roles in ICT. We hope that you will find these stories thought provoking enough to join our debate!!

Best wishes

Marie

Funding is DISAPPEARING but the RESEARCH is carrying on

The Bad News: The Disappearing Women: North West ICT funding will be coming to an end in December.
The GOOD News: The research will be continuing, these women have a crucial insight into why female professionals leave. Our findings are still coming together but some of the women who participated have faced extreme hostile working conditions, and it generally is not the type of work that they leave it is places, people and situations.

We intend to carry on this reseach under the GRIS institute at the University of Salford!!

Best wishes

Marie

Disappearing Women: North-West ICT

We welcome these comments from Lesley George - Chairman of the Chester, Ellesmere Port & Neston Business Forum (thank-you Lesley!).

Please feel free to post any feedback on Lesley's comments.

Lesley says...

I've had some pretty interesting feed-back from your lines of enquiry, and thought I'd give you an overview of some of the answers.

> 1. Issues are likely to be the difficulty in maintaining skills if out of the ICT sector for a short time, eg career break, bringing up family etc..as it's a fast moving environment in terms of 'product development' but (and few women realise this) excellent in terms of flexibility - contractual work- if willing to retrain on new packages.

> 2. Families and rearing children seem to be the big one.........eg they see computers as a disruption to family values and feel the amount of time taken up with using ICT would be impossible for women......consequently they feel it would be a struggle to keep up with the men.

> 3. Another view was: women are far more 'touchy feely' than guys who seem to be happier to spend all day looking at a computer screen...probably badly put.....but I think you get the gist.

> 4. I wonder if it's the fear of 'catching up' with technology after you've had a break?

> 5. Most of the women I know have gone from ICT to train in holistic treatments, aromatherapy, reiki or similar.

Anyway, hope you find this useful.......I'd be interested to find out the outcome of the survey, if you have an outcome?

Disappearing Women: North-West ICT

We welcome these comments from Lesley George - Chairman of the Chester, Ellesmere Port & Neston Business Forum (thank-you Lesley!).

Please feel free to post any feedback on Lesley's comments.

Lesley says...

I've had some pretty interesting feed-back from your lines of enquiry, and thought I'd give you an overview of some of the answers.

> 1. Issues are likely to be the difficulty in maintaining skills if out of the ICT sector for a short time, eg career break, bringing up family etc..as it's a fast moving environment in terms of 'product development' but (and few women realise this) excellent in terms of flexibility - contractual work- if willing to retrain on new packages.

> 2. Families and rearing children seem to be the big one.........eg they see computers as a disruption to family values and feel the amount of time taken up with using ICT would be impossible for women......consequently they feel it would be a struggle to keep up with the men.

> 3. Another view was: women are far more 'touchy feely' than guys who seem to be happier to spend all day looking at a computer screen...probably badly put.....but I think you get the gist.

> 4. I wonder if it's the fear of 'catching up' with technology after you've had a break?

> 5. Most of the women I know have gone from ICT to train in holistic treatments, aromatherapy, reiki or similar.

Anyway, hope you find this useful.......I'd be interested to find out the outcome of the survey, if you have an outcome?

The Manchester Business Network

The Manchester Business Network

Tomorrow Karenza and I will be attending a network lunch hosted by the Manchester Business Network (North) Group at the Renaissance Manchester Hotel. There will also be a pre-lunch seminar ' Visibility means Business'. As there will be around 100 business women attending we will be conducting a networking session of our own and passing around our flyers and business cards!!!! Don't worry we have been invite to attend by the organsiors and have no plans to infiltrate the session :o)

Hopefully we may meet a women who has prevously working in ICT sector, if not we will have a pleasant lunch whilst promoting the project.

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Flyers for DW project

Hey all

We now have some fab flyers to publicise the project. It's like club promotion! Marie and I have realised that disappearing women are extremely difficult to find so we are pursuing a number of different routes to push out the project.

As I said we have some flyers now, so if you can think of any places/people we may be able to send them to, please e-mail us. We are exploring advertising in local newspapers, perhaps using the flyers as inserts. We have posted on a number of women's forums which should hopefully bring some possible participants.

Otherwise we are continuing to work on a book proposal for the Idea Group, on Women's experiences of the ICT workplace, drawn from the papers given at the Women in iT (WINIT) conference in March 2006 (it seems a long time ago now!). If you are interested in contributing a chapter to the book, again please e-mail us.

Best wishes, Karenza

Disappearing Women: North-West ICT

North-West Development Agency (NWDA) meeting (5th June 2006)

Marie and I have just returned from a meeting with one of our DW project Steering Committee members; Yvonne Sampson, the NWDA's Regional Women's Enterprise Development Officer. Yvonne's primarily strategic work relates to the North-West's Regional Economic Strategy (RES) which includes encouraging an increase in women-owned business (in all sectors) to at least the national average of 15%.

Yvonne was extremely helpful and gave us a number of contacts in the North-West who may be able to help the DW project find female ICT 'leavers' (women who have left the ICT industry, and are unlikely to return).

One topic of conversation was about women leaving the ICT industry to set up their own businesses, either in ICT or in another sector. This led us to think about women-owned businesses and and problems faced by female entrepreneurs, issues we had come across during our previous Women in IT (WINIT) project (March 2004-March 2006). It will be interesting to 'find' some disappearing women who left the ICT sector to set up their own businesses, to see what kinds of barriers they may have faced, and whether they feel their time in ICT helped or hindered their entreprise activities.

Please find below a few key facts about women-owned businesses:

Women are half as likely to be involved in start-up activity as men. Independent start-up activity amongst women is 3.1% of the female adult population but is 6% amongst men, while the equivalent figures for job related start-ups are 1.3% and 2.6%. (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, GEM, Jan 2004)

12 – 14% of businesses are majority owned by women (A Strategic Framework for Women’s Enterprise, Small Business Service, 2003)

If women started businesses at the same rate as men, we would have 150,000 extra start-ups each year. (Rt Hon Jacqui Smith, Minister for Women and Equality speaking at 2nd Prowess conference)

54% of women start a business so they can choose what hours they work, compared to only 35% of men. (Women & Men Business Owners in the United Kingdom)

21% of women state family commitments as a reason for becoming self-employed compared to only 2% of men (A Strategic Framework for Women’s Enterprise, Small Business Service, 2003)

Female entrepreneurs are more likely to a product of service unfamiliar to the market, to have fewer competitors, and they are more likely to be using technology in their products or services than their male counterparts. In addition they are more likely than male businesses to be offering a product or service to the market that has been developed in the last year. (Achieving the Vision, Female Entrepreneurship British Chambers of Commerce, July 2004)

Majority female-owned businesses pay significantly higher margins on term loans than male-owned businesses (2.9 versus 1.9 percentage points over Base). (Dr Stuart Fraser, Finance for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, 2005)

(Taken from Prowess, a UK organisation which supports women-owned business http://www.prowess.org.uk/facts.htm)

You can find out more about the North-West Development Agency's work by visiting http://www.nwda.co.uk/

Welcome

Welcome to the Disappearing Women: North-West ICT blog.

We hope that this blog will be a space in which anyone who is interested in the issue of why women leave the ICT sector can air their views.

You may be a woman who has left the ICT sector, and has a story to tell. You may be a woman who undertook ICT training, but decided not to pursue it as a career. You may be an academic who is researching women in ICT. Or you may be a man who would like to comment on these issues.

All comments are welcome. This blog is one way to get involved in the DW-NW-ICT project. However, if you would like to contribute further, perhaps by having a chat with Marie and myself (Karenza) in the form of an interview, please do not hesitate to contact us (see below).

Karenza Moore: k.moore@salford.ac.uk
Marie Griffiths: m.griffiths@salford.ac.uk

Our web address is as follows: www.winit-salford.com/disappearingwomen