Future Female Friday!
I gave a presentation on what it means to work in the IT industry, with excellent support from IT talents Claudio Donoso and Viktor Johansson from Sogeti (thanks for the tip about them, which I received after previous blog posts!) As I usually do on occasions like this, I drummed in the breadth of IT professions, how varied, challenging and, not least, social they are. Something that should appeal to girls.
Unfortunately, the social nature of IT jobs is something that most women don't realize. The perennial image of the programmer without human contact remains, which complicates what has otherwise been much discussed on this International Women's Day, namely to address the unequal gender distribution in the IT industry. This is highlighted by Professor Jan Gulliksen in today's DN debate. The headline about sexism is exaggerated, but in the article he is essentially right. The IT industry is not as welcoming to girls as it should be.
However, as the Director of the IT&Telecom Association points out in his reply to Gulliksen, the industry can hardly be accused of not trying to equalize differences. However, it is very complicated, as "sexism" is rarely explicit, but rather a series of small, subtle exclusionary factors, which "sit in the walls" (not least within Gulliksen's regular workplace, KTH).
However, it is important to highlight and work consistently to address factors that hold women back. The most important initiatives in this area run by IT&Telecom companies are Womentor, an annual mentoring program for female managers in the IT industry, and VäljIT, an initiative to attract both more girls and boys to IT studies (it is under the flag of VäljIT that we operate at Future Friday). In addition to this, many of the individual companies in the industry have a number of networks and initiatives to promote women.
Of course, companies can do even more to make girls feel welcome. The vision should be that in all areas, including technology-heavy IT engineering programs, it should be as obvious for girls as for boys to feel included. I saw glimpses of this future today, when Catrin, Araxi, Madiha and Nadia from Ross Tensta Gymnasium (pictured) happily announced that they had already decided to apply to KTH!