Most women working in ICT (Information Communication Technology) will, if you ask them, tell you that at one time or another they have been passed over for a promotion or, on the flip side, have never considered a career in this sector at all. Simultaneously, the ICT industry is booming.In 2003 the sector experienced a skills shortage of 18.4%, and still the demand for labour in ICT is outstripping supply. So, what is wrong with this picture?

The European Commission released a report in January last year outlining the gross gender imbalance in ICT. Viviane Reding, from the EC’s Information Society and Media department, noted that, while there is no difference in interest or achievement in science and technology sectors between genders as children and teenagers, at University level men outnumber women six to one in this area – and by the time they enter the workforce women represent only 30% of European managers in ICT.

More than 100 years since the birth of feminism we still can’t seem to shake the misconception that science, maths and technology are somehow inherently male. Despite decades of women fighting for equal rights and pay, we seem unable to stop discriminating against women in the workplace or simply excluding them from it altogether.

The Association of Women Educators (AWE) in Australia have noted with concern that out of 355, 600 ICT professionals only 20% are women.

One explanation offered is that the success of capitalism seems too reliant on keeping women in the home to care for the next generation of workers, while providing free child care. Capitalism seems to have been built around this nuclear family model, and why would men want to alter a model that has served their needs for centuries?

Angela Tattersall, Claire Keogh and Dr Helen Richardson note in their study of the pay gap in ICT that “The family fulfils too precious a role to be left to free-market individualism”. What has changed in the last 30 years or so is the emphasis we place on new communications technology and their significance in our postmodern, knowledge-based economy. Knowledge has always been power, but never more so than in the age of the Internet and digital, networked technology. If information access and control is power, then ICTs lie at the heart of this economy; and women at the periphery.

What Viviane Reding has quite rightly identified, is the urgent need for women in communications technology, and there have been a number of initiatives to encourage women and girls to break down the barriers to participation.

IGNITE is a Seattle-based program helping young girls and women to enter high-tech careers in science, engineering and information technology. The acronym stands for “Inspiring Girls Now in Technology Evolution”, and provides scholarships and support for girls as a counter-offensive against the gendering of technology and science.

Women’s groups have been using the Internet, and other ICTs like home printing presses, for decades. www.feminist.com is one such forum that allows women to navigate around the ‘Old Boy’s Network’ that is the mass media to form groups and forums that women design, run and control themselves. Cybergrrl.com is working at ‘transforming women’s lives through technology’, while FLAME operates a network for African women to lobby, advocate and participate through the use of ICTs.

A huge number of initiatives are looking to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots through the introduction of computers in African schools, and the World Bank project helping African women gain qualifications through a ‘Virtual University ’. The latter though, ended in 1999 due to a lack of funding.

A study was also undertaken into how women in India circumvent the limitations and restrictions of a highly patriarchal Indian society, through Internet use. What is lacking in these sorts of programmes though, is any real progress towards placing women at the top of the communication food chain.

Women have fallen into the trap of relying solely on ICTs – like the Internet – that allow them to avoid the barriers of other communication technologies such as newspapers, television and radio, as well as the science and technology sectors at the heart of information generation and development. Instead of butting our heads against the glass ceiling, we have retreated back down the ladder and into the virtual world.

We can see this same mentality reflected in the assumption that introducing technology from the developed world into the developing world will somehow revolutionise the lives of women there. While all these endeavours serve an important function for women, they approach equality from the bottom up, which is an approach that fails to really draw on the knowledge society’s biggest untapped resource.

The Women’s Board of the Australian Computer Society (ACS), the body behind initiatives like the ‘Go Girl, Go for IT’ program, acknowledge that women represent a huge potential resource for the globalised information economy. ACS President, Philip Argy, said:

“Consider the fact that today’s CIOs are increasingly focused on recruiting people who can build relationships across multiple stakeholders, cultures and orientations. It is clear that opportunities for women are considerable.”

The fact is that women have a lot to offer this sector, and either discouraging their participation or failing to recognise the talents and potential of women already in ICT, is not only unfair to the individual but inimical to remaining competitive.

“The reality for the ICT sector is that we need the skills and capabilities that women naturally have as strengths, such as the ability to multi-task, understand complex business problems and work collaboratively to identify solutions that drive change and improve people’s lives”, Mr Argy stated.

In the U.S. men occupy 75% of positions of power in the mass media, while only 13% of e-commerce, telecommunications and media executives are women. In Britain the number of female newspaper editors has decreased. According to a recent BBC article, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) blamed Britain’s business model of long working days and inflexibility, for discouraging women who wish to balance work with having a family – something they are often forced to do.  Statistics, and the realities women face in the workplace every day, do not support the idea that ICTs will save us and that all new media technology is inherently neutral and value-free.

Laura Miller, Senior Editor at the Internet magazine Salon, says the business culture is unsuited to the demands many women have to meet both at home and at work; “If we assume that women are generally more invested in having balanced lives, and are often responsible for taking care of kids, then they may be unwilling to drop everything else for work….and don’t find high-tech careers tenable”.

Technology comes within a social and political context: Endeavours like those for African and Indian women reflect the idea that communications technology will save us from ourselves, when what we fail to realise is that these technologies will reflect the society that creates and uses them.

“This is important because we see that privileged groups acquire and use technology more effectively and because technology benefits them in an exponential way, so that they become more privileged”, said Sophia Huyer and Nancy Hafkin, in a paper prepared for the International Taskforce on Women and ICTs.

Communications technology will not automatically become the saviour of every underprivileged group in society. But it does tend to reinforce established power structures, unless we make concerted efforts to include these groups at all levels.

Most empowerment of women through ICTs focuses on access, especially the Internet, given that men own and run the majority of other ICTs (television, radio and print). What is being missed here is that, while empowering women at the ground level is important and worthwhile, it does not necessarily lead to lasting wider social change. We need to step back and look at the bigger picture: We need women in positions of power within media and ICTs, and we need to close the pay gap completely – to allow women equal control over information flows.

Initiatives like IGNITE and Feminism.com seem more and more like consolation prizes for missing out on the top jobs, and less and less like the solution to the inequality inherent within the real world. While they are important, by themselves they are not enough.

We seem almost reluctant to tackle the issue of gender discrimination in the vital ICT industry in any real or lasting way. As the European Commission paper brought to our attention, women are still not represented at the top level of our media companies, and they are not involved in creating the software and creative material that frames our information-centric economy. Everyone needs to see themselves represented in the media, and to have media technology and content that speaks to them. If men continue to shape ICTs and their content they will continue to not reflect the needs of women, nor reap the benefits of their contributions.