The Curious Case Of The Disappearing Women In Computing, And One Way They Could Be Found Again

In the past few years, women have achieved success in many male preserves, such as law, banking, accountancy and the Civil Service. They have not so far reached a half share of high earning positions, and yet enormous strides have been made. By contrast, in one major and growing sector, the trend appears to be heading into reverse. A specialist study some years ago showed that the proportion of ladies employed in thearea of Computing had fallen from a promising 40% 24 years ago to less than 1 in 3 in 1999, and the decline has continued since then. There are undoubtedly several different causes for this, but perhaps the growth of Internet business is creating a range of online jobs that might allow women to work from home, and this may be the key to changing this trend.

Many will say that it’s all a straightforward gender distinction. It’s similar with chess. This is a conceptual game that needs no physical prowess only possessed by men, and yet there are virtually no women to be seen at the chess clubs. Why? Well it’s an analytical type of game, played in a black-and-white, theoretical world, that fails to interest the female mind. Maybe Information Technology is in the same kind of category, a black and white universe of 0’s and 1’s, abstract arguments that jar with the more imaginative and linguistic aptitudes of women.

However, many may believe that these theories of inborn gender differences don’t hold water. Despite this, it is quite true that computer specialists are known for being ‘geeks’, socially inept, introverted men more driven by making computer bits in their backrooms than in football, socialising or the usual interests of their contemporaries. Such people are understandably unappealing to women.

And yet, things started promisingly enough for women in the world of computers, when a female US rear admiral called Grace Hopper helped develop some of the earliest computers in the 1950s and helped to invent Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL), which went on to be the most popular language for commercial programs for 40 years up to the beginning of Internet business in the 1990s.

So females clearly have the potential to do well in IT. There is perhaps a single major concern that may discourage them. The speed of change in the computer industry has always been fast, and with the expansion of Internet business and online jobs the pace is getting even faster. Ladies who want to take a break of a few years to bring up children, may find that when they start looking again for employment, their computing skillset has become outdated, and they will have to re-train completely. It is tough enough for guys, or for women who don’t take a career break, to keep up to date with all the latest skills.

That is where the opportunities afforded by online jobs may offer a solution. They enable women to work from home and combine an Internet business with raising children. They allow workers to choose what hours they work, so that it’s still possible to drop the kids off at school and pick them up again. And this chance to eliminate the gap in your working life also allows women to keep up with the newest technologies.

Of course, online jobs are not exclusively women; a lot of men have decided to work from home as well. And yet it is possible that, by means of Internet business opportunities as well as encouraging a more welcoming culture for females in Information Technology as a whole, the number of lady computer people will some day attain the ideal of 50%.