The Puzzling Conundrum Of The Disappearing Females In Information Technology, And One Way They Might Be Found Again

Over the past few years, women have gained significant representation in formerly male preserves, such as financial and legal services and company directorships. They haven’t so far reached equal representation in leading posts, but progress is encouraging. By contrast, in one major and expanding industry, things seem to be going backwards. A specialist study six years ago showed that the proportion of women employed in thearea of Computing had dropped from a promising 40% in the mid eighties to less than 1 in 3 by the turn of the century, and the trend has continued to be downwards. There are undoubtedly various reasons for the situation, but it is possible that the appearance of Internet business will generate the type of online jobs that could allow women to work from home, and perhaps this is the key to reversing this trend.

Some might put this down to being a simple gender difference. There’s an analogy with chess. That game requires no muscle power that only men can achieve, and yet there are few if any women involved in the game. It’s an analytical type of pursuit, played in a black-and-white, theoretical sphere, that does not seem to appeal to the female outlook. Perhaps Information Technology is in the same kind of area, a binary universe of 0’s and 1’s, abstract arguments that jar with the more visionary and human-focussed aptitudes of women.

On the other hand, many may deem that these theories of inborn gender differences are outdated. Even so, it’s a fact that computer people are known for being ‘nerds’, socially dysfunctional, obsessive men more interested in making computer bits in their basements than in physical recreation, socialising or the normal interests of their counterparts. It is a world that is understandably unappealing to women.

However, things started promisingly enough for women in Information Technology, when a female American computer specialist called Grace Hopper constructed some of the first electronic computers in the fifties and helped to create one of the two first high level languages, COBOL, and this became the most popular language for commercial programs for 40 years up to the first days of Internet business in the nineties.

This proves that females do possess the ability to pursue a successful career in computing. But there’s one major stumbling block that may explain why they don’t. The pace of progress in the computing field has always been breathtaking, and with the expansion of Internet business and online jobs it is accelerating. Ladies who want to stop working for up to eighteen years to look after a family, will then find that once they are again available for employment, the skills they had when they left work have become obsolete, and they will have to get training in new skills. It is hard enough for men, or for women who don’t have children, to keep up to date with all the latest technologies.

This is where the opportunities afforded by online jobs can offer a solution. They enable women to work from home and combine an Internet business with raising a family. Such jobs allow workers to select their own working hours, so that women can still drop the kids off at school and pick them up at 4pm. And this chance to reduce the gap in a working life also allows women to study all the most recent technologies.

Of course, online jobs are not exclusively women; countless men have opted to work from home also. However it is possible that, by means of Internet business ideas as well as developing a more welcoming environment for females in the computer industry generally, the proportion of female computer workers may eventually reach the target of 50%.