There are more women leaders in the IT field in Russia. What contributes to the movement towards gender balance?

According to the observations of all TAdviser leaders surveyed, recently there are more women in leadership positions in the IT field. For example, Liana Yermishina, Vice President for IT at MMC Norilsk Nickel, speaks about this. She notes that the increase in the share of women in leadership positions is a global trend, and the Russian market is no exception.

Women are changing the face of entire industries. The IT industry, as the most dynamic and breakthrough, was one of the first to displace gender stereotypes. As for industrial companies in general, they are gradually moving towards gender balance. Including due to digitalization and intellectualization of production processes. Historically, work in such industries has been associated with complex physical labor, special conditions and associated with men. Technologies significantly affect the transformation of Russian industry, and the share of women in this industry will grow. In Russian industrial companies, the share of women in the positions of the middle and top level is 30%, - said Lian Yermishin.

source = Nornickel

The process of increasing the number of women in the IT industry as a whole is currently facilitated by the course towards import substitution, the growth of the Russian IT market and an increase in demand for qualified personnel. Any prejudice gives way to assessing the professional competencies of a candidate, regardless of his gender. For women themselves, IT opens up more opportunities through flexible hours and a remote work format, allowing you to save the same work-life balance. If we talk about MMC Norilsk Nickel, today there is 1 woman per 4 men in IT.

Vice President for Digitalization and Information Technologies Atomstroyexport"" (part Rosatom Olga Tolstunova of the GC "") also notes that as society develops, there are more women in leadership positions.

Moreover, I would note that the most productive are precisely mixed teams, where you can see the gender and daily proportions, and not one man and a group of women supporting level 1, as an example. Over time, the number of management teams, where the share of women is balanced - that is, about half of women, is growing, which means that we, having thrown back the prejudices and stereotypes inspired by centuries, are moving along a qualitatively new round of civilization, using only the potential of a person, no matter men or women, - notes Olga Tolstunova.

The proportion between men and women in the IT industry as a whole has been leveling off in recent years, says Olga Tolstunova: "We now have an almost ideal 40/60, including in leadership positions."

TAdviser

The IT sphere is a fairly broad concept. It has roles, including at the leadership level, which are predominantly occupied by women. This, for example, the heads of HR departments or marketing, shared with TAdviser Marina Alekseeva, director of human resources at Kaspersky Lab. If we are talking about R&D, then here the company sees a gradual increase in interest from women in leadership positions. It is also worth noting that some large information security companies are headed by women.

The chief executive of the data ON protection developer "Cyberprotect" Elena Bocherova "Russoft" told TAdviser at a press conference in March that their company even has a dedicated metric that reflects the percentage of female employees, including those in top management. At the level of top management in Cyberprotect, men and women are already represented in almost equal shares, while the share of girls is increasing among developers.

And on average, the presence of women in IT companies is estimated by the executive director of Cyberprotect at about 25%. And this is a good indicator, because before it was about 10%, but still insufficient, Elena Bocherova believes.

Traditionally, IT was not a women's story, but it is an opinion, rather from the outside, from people far from the industry. In practice, the last decade IT certainly ceases to be same-sex and diversifies as much as possible, says Anna Komsha, head of NGFW practice at Positive Technologies. This is primarily due to the growing popularity of the industry, as well as the development of information technology, where there is more and more space for creativity and, oddly enough, love for products and their users.

For example, we create PT NGFW with an incredible love of networking and high-end products. We have super professional guys and girls in the development team. Sometimes we have a different look at some features of the implementation, but it is the opportunity to look at the product from different points of view that gives the result in the end: we get not only high speeds, but also a pleasant, convenient and beautiful system control interface, "says Anna Komsha.

Positive Technologies

Today, the boundaries between "male" and "female" professions are being blurred, so a girl can build a career and become top leaders even in the field that was previously traditionally referred to as male specialties, said Oksana Vorobyova, general director of MTS Digital.

And although now the dynamics of growth in the share of women in top positions is now growing slowly - literally by single digits annually, I am sure that demographic, social and economic trends in society will strengthen this trend. Already today, the shortage of high-quality IT personnel raises the question edge often in favor of strong managers of women - the employer is more important than the professional qualities of the candidate, she notes.

One of the questions that may arise when discussing the situation with women in top management is whether it is more difficult for them to lead IT employees than for a man. Elena Bocherova believes that this is possible. Employees, especially at first, may have some mistrust about whether a female manager will have enough technical knowledge, for example. And until now, there are stereotypes in society about whether this is a female business - to take leadership positions.

Irina Nesterova, director of the Solar Integration Center, whose team includes about a third of the woman's employees, has a similar opinion.

At the first acquaintance, the distrust sometimes leaps through the leaders of men that a woman can run a business and deeply understand technical details. But compared to the time when I started my career, of course, great progress, and I no longer notice stereotypes that interfere with work, "she says.

The main barriers that arise among women on the career path in the IT industry are low self-esteem, self-doubt and gender stereotypes, notes Oksana Vorobyova from MTS Digital. According to the Women In ^[1] ://ru.ehu.lt/novosti/proekt-women-in-tech-obnarodoval-islamovanie-o-barerah-v-zhenskoy-karere/study, 75% ^[2] women are convinced that stereotypes prevent women from becoming programmers, and 45% of women said that self-doubt prevents them from going to study in the IT specialty. In addition, there is a salary dumping on the part of job seekers in the IT sphere: women tend to assess their salary expectations below men. These barriers often create difficulties for female leaders.

Liana Yermishina from MMC Norilsk Nickel notes that the task of the head is to sometimes unite different people into a single coordinated mechanism that will work for the result. To do this, regardless of gender, he needs to have professional competencies: competently manage resources, make the right decisions at the moment, motivate employees.

However, there are certain gender characteristics that allow women to more successfully cope with management tasks. Women have more developed intuition. Nikola Tesla said that intuition is what is ahead of accurate knowledge. In turbulent periods, it becomes an additional advantage of the fair sex. Intuition and the scale of thinking help a female leader make informed decisions and work perfectly with team engagement. In addition, the woman is inherently focused on solving numerous and different problems, - says the vice president for IT at MMC Norilsk Nickel.

source = "Solar"

Irina Nesterova also speaks about the winning features of women. Perhaps men are less emotional, sustained and systemic, and this is very valuable in a crisis situation. And women have multitasking at the gene level.

From experience, I know that this skill develops even more when a child appears: you need to keep track of him, cook lunch and complete another thousand tasks in daylight hours. This ability to do several things at the same time helps a lot in work. Another useful feature of mine is female curiosity, which at a professional level manifests itself as an interest in everything, a desire to figure it out, - said the director of the integration center at Solar.

Olga Tolstunova from Atomstroyexport believes that the female leadership style is different from the male, but she does not think that it is more difficult for a woman. It all depends on the culture of the organization: the more effective the corporate culture, the fewer problems.

Naturally, I am sure there are organizations where it is more difficult for women to fulfill their role as a leader, but according to the laws of evolution, such companies will disappear, "said Atomstroyexport, vice president for digitalization and information technology.

source = Kaspersky Lab

According to Marina Alekseeva from Kaspersky Lab, it all depends on the person. It should be understood that a specialist (it doesn't matter if a man or woman) should have a predisposition to a leadership role - to work in such a position, you need a special character warehouse, a set of skills. But it is very important that a person is comfortable in his place:

It is not necessary to strive exclusively for vertical development in a career, it is possible to develop quite successfully and horizontally, to pump expertise in a specific area.

Observations of women leaders surveyed by TAdviser regarding the trend towards gender diversification confirm various studies. Thus, according to Avito Rabota, there is an increase in women's interest in working in IT: in 2023, compared to 2022, the share of women's resumes on the platform in the IT segment increased by more than 11% - from 22.9% to 34%. The increasing interest of women in IT is also confirmed by analytics. In HeadHunter the first half of 2023, according to the platform, 143 thousand women and 294 thousand men were looking for work in the IT sector on average per month. That is, the gender ratio of IT applicants was approximately 70/30 in favor of men (67.3% of men and 32.7% of women).

The free programming school of Sberbank "School 21" at the end of February 2024 cited data that 30% of their students are now girls. This is slightly higher than the average for the IT industry, said Natalya Smelkova, director of the Moscow campus of School 21, at a meeting with the press.

TAdviser

But why is the gender gap across the industry as a whole still wide? The prevailing social stereotypes that technical specialties are not for girls contribute to the fact that girls are less likely to choose them. Parental attitudes also influence, says Elena Bocherova from Cyberprotect. So, according to one of the studies of the NAFI Analytical Center, parents are three times less likely to recommend the IT sphere for education and further building a career for their daughters than for their sons^[3].

The popularization of women in IT is really important, because there are not enough personnel, and the girls are very smart, diligent, they will give odds to the guys. The question is positioning: it seems to me that the brand of "women in IT" has not yet fallen into place, but we are working on this, "says Elena Bocherova.

If you look at the gender distribution in technical universities or specialized classes, there are initially fewer girls who think about a career in IT. Sometimes this may be due to insufficient awareness of the diversity of opportunities in the technological sphere.

Therefore, in our opinion, it is important to conduct educational activities and talk about various roles and directions in IT since school. Such projects already exist, including at the country level, and many of them are implemented with the assistance of practicing market players, - notes Marina Alekseeva. - We also participate, for example, in the federal project "Lesson in Numbers," organized our own summer practice for schoolchildren "Valley of Technology," and for more than 8 years we have been successfully recruiting students for internships as part of our SafeBoard project.

source = MTC

An integrated approach is needed to attract women to the IT industry. In MTS Digital, these goals are to some extent solved by the educational center "MTS Teta," which provides IT courses for everyone for free without division by gender, cultural, social, age qualities.

Our approach is not to divide employees by gender, but to create a strong inclusive culture within the company, a culture of equal opportunity. We focus on creating comfortable conditions for the synergy of diverse teams. And this approach works: 67% of MTS employees believe that an inclusive culture affects the attraction and retention of young talents, gaining an external reputation of the company, on the growth of attractiveness for customers and candidates, says Oksana Vorobyova.

Due to the increasing need for IT personnel and the willingness of IT industry players to increasingly engage women in IT in various positions, we can expect that the trend towards an increase in the share of women in this area will continue in the future.

See also

Women in IT

Notes