SA Women’s Month – Is It A Celebration For The ICT Sector?

By Sonwabise Mzinyathi

August is Women’s Month in South Africa. The country celebrates August as a tribute to the more than 20 000 women who marched to the Presidential Headquarters of South Africa, the Union Buildings, on the 9th of August 1956 in protest against the extension of Pass Laws to women. Pass Laws was a system designed by the apartherid government to curtail the movement of black South Africans. The significance of this march has been the pillar of women’s empowerment in South Africa.

But when it comes to women’s empowerment, in the ICT Sector specifically, do we have reason to celebrate?

In this week’s article, I will be unpacking Syson Kunda’s Leaky Pipeline report. The report expands on the low retention rate of women in the IT industry in South Africa. For those of you who think in numbers, in the 1980s there were more than 40% women professionals in ICT and currently, varying studies show that by 2018 there were only 21% and currently just under 23%. This despite women being the highest users of technology globally.

Women are still the minority in fields like engineering, energy, transportation and information technology (IT) which are vital sectors to enable transformation for sustainable development. The report shows that both women entrepreneurs and professionals in the IT Industry face various challenges that lead to the leaky pipeline mid-way in their careers. The author of the report interviewed professionals and entrepreneurs in the IT industry in South Africa to find out just what challenges women face.

The report first unpacks challenges for women related to work-life balance due to family responsibilities versus work pressure. COVID19 has however shown us that it is not about a work-life balance but rather an integration of your life because a work-life balance assumes the absence of conflict between the two and that there must be a trade off. A more realistic approach would be to incorporate your work with the rest of your life.

The second challenge the report unpacks is a lack of representation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Frontier Education attributes this to three school subjects that are significantly represented as masculine in the manner they are taught at school; namely; maths, chemistry and physics. This, in turn, influences young women’s and men’s aspirations to enroll in a STEM major at university by showing that a less pronounced masculine image of science has the potential to increase the likelihood of STEM career aspirations; if the woman is even in a position to go to university.

Toxic company culture is another reason why women do not stay in the ICT Industry. The report concluded that women in ICT feel undermined in the workplace to the extent that the men in the sector repeatedly assumed they were there to serve and not to make meaningful contributions. Some indicated that their proposals and suggestions are not implemented or followed through until a man backs them up. This is something that has been raised repeatedly by the McKinsey Women Matters report. In addition, only 33% of Forbes Women felt that their employer was making an effort to improve workplace conditions for women.

Other findings from the report that drive leakage of the female pipeline in the industry are the gender pay gap was still an issue women grapple with, regardless of how much more work they put in. They found that the saying still remains true that men are promoted on potential, while women are promoted on their achievements. A  lack of exposure at an early age, a lack of recognition and a lack of female role models and mentors at senior level were also reasons women leave the ICT sector.

According to the report, 33.33% of the women interviewed considered leaving the IT industry between 30 and 39 years. 24.24% of the women interviewed considered leaving the IT industry between 22 and 29 years of age.

Charmaine Houvet Chair of the South African Communications Forum quotes The Harvard Business Review in terms of the reason why this is problematic. According to Charmaine, gender parity is a business challenge for more than 75% of corporate CEOs, globally who place it in their top 10 agenda issues. In addition, Charmaine is of the view that gender balance happens in companies only if it is personally and forcefully led by the CEO. There must be visible commitment from the top to full spectrum diversity and pay parity with sustained action throughout the organisation. A fact based transformation strategy is required with strong CEO, EXCO and Board support that steers clear of emotive and anecdotal reasoning.

According to Charmaine, “we spend a significant amount of time, effort and costs to attract talent to the workplace but once there, we do little..sometimes nothing at all to motivate, grow, nurture or retain this talent. Bold collaborative efforts will reduce the shocking timeline predicted by the ITU to achieve gender parity to ensure that girls and women are not left behind at a time where ICT is forecast to re-imagine the future.”

For Marilyn Radebe, Vice President of the Black IT Forum of South Africa, xx