As women restrict men in IT market in Russia and the world
Gender balance of the organizations – guarantee of its productivity and creativity. Are guided by this thesis increasing number of global corporations which undergo difficult process of transformation today. Being built in new digital reality, they change approaches not only to technologies, but also to corporate culture. The new HR policy consulting and IT grandees sets a task to align the number of men and women in commands – at the expense of the special encouraging programs. The Russian business only begins to look for approach to gender issues. However, sensitively reacting to the world agenda, women more active come to the domestic IT industry.
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All talk on female equality and ravnoprisutstviye in economy, especially, in the hi-tech sector, it makes sense of a message that still in statistic reports about the number of pupils at schools or the universities of the different countries of the world, there is a separate column where the share of girls from a total quantity is specified. This share varies depending on the region – it will be higher in Europe and is lower in the Middle East, but the fact of need to separately take out this indicator for annual observations is rather eloquent. According to the report of the World Economic Forum (2015), for last decade the gap in an economic situation of men and women was reduced only by 3%. When preserving such rates it will be possible to liquidate it not earlier, than in 118 years.
Analytical and technical aptitudes of women – the fact of their existence and also their level of development which is not conceding men's – confirm researches of psychologists. The number of the researches setting lack of direct link between a floor and intelligence annually increases. On this background the share of women among graduates of technical colleges and universities grows. However even in the American market of the woman make only 20% of graduates on the specialties connected with computer technologies and 30% - of all workers of IT of the industry (NY Times, 2013). While 74% of schoolgirls of high school in the USA are interested in information science, mathematics and related subjects, only 13% gain the bachelor's degree in the field of computer technologies (Tech Republic, 2015).
The USA – the most developed and attractive IT market. In Silicon Valley women are engaged at one of six technical positions (Statista, 2014). Data of poll of Deloitte find out that they even in this region of 27% of women face an uncomfortable working situation or the indirect discrimination in "brotherhood of programmers" (bro-grammer culture).
On project data of Girls Who Code in 2014 three girls are the share of 25 engineers. The number of graduates on specialization "computer sciences" in 2014 was three times less, than 20 years ago. Though the IT is considered one of the most progressive industries providing equal opportunities for all.
Why more women are necessary?
In the global IT industry the share of women averages 15% (data of Statista). A share of developer female — 5.8 (Stackoverflow, 2015). On managing positions in IT of women less than 10%. According to Fenwick & West, in 100 leading companies of the USA the ratio of men and female directors makes about six by one (2013). The share of women on positions of CIO in the companies made of Fortune500 list in 2015 about 18%. In particular, it were Chief information officers of Walmart, AT&T, Ford.
Why it suddenly was a problem and why it needs urgently to be solved? The principle of diversity extends not only to labor migrants. Women were the underestimated resource in a situation of a staff shortage which developed economies face first of all. Exactly here for the first time started talking about a gender imbalance – in 2005. Exactly here the researches showing are conducted that heterosexual commands are more productive, creative, innovation. And among startups where women hold the leading posts are more profitable and steady in growth. However only 7% of a venture capital to the USA go for business development, belonging to women (Forbes, 2013).
Agents of influence
The majority large (first of all American) the IT companies is carried out by special programs for increase in a share of women among the employees and fix it annually in reports. Similar initiatives implement the large consulting companies (for example, big4 and top3).
So, within the Girls Who Code Project with assistance of IBM by 2020 want to train in programming more than one million girls worldwide. Target audience of this organization – girls of 13-17 years (including – and from needy families). The purpose of IBM - to promote appearance of new generation of female programmers in the field of cloud computing. The similar project – Women Who Code – support Facebook and Twitter.
IBM, Cisco, HP, Intel, Yelp and Texas Instruments perform sponsorship, mentoringovy and kouchingovy programs for women. In Yahoo! there is a Women in Tech group which helps to develop the skills, necessary for work. LinkedIn holds an annual women's hackathon. In Salesforce there is a program of support Women Surge. Palantir annually hands a grant to girls developers. Google started a series of actions Women Techmakers and the campaign Made With Code.
As a result of similar initiatives, for example, the quantity of the vacancies occupied by women grows in Microsoft, Ebay or Google for 200% (and more) quicker, than similar men's positions. An important influencing factor and attraction in the industry – successful examples, stories of other women which could achieve impressive results in IT. Forbes was called in 2016 by the most influential women in global by a high tech of the industry of heads of IBM (Ginny Rometti), HP (Mag Uitmen), Yahoo (Marissa Mayer) and Youtube (Susan Voyzhitski). The small problem is that they practically and limit the list of female directors of the IT companies of such level.
Russian "silicon"
Still several times it is less graduates of technical colleges in Russia, than graduates. For example, at faculty of calculus mathematics and cybernetics in MSU – about 25%, in MSTU of Bauman — 20%, and in MIPT — only 12%.
 | The imbalance exists and begins with a university bench, - Ekaterina Sannikova, the head of the Technology Center of Deutsche Bank in Russia says TAdviser. - At faculties of the exact sciences we still observe numerical advantage of young men though the share of girls grows from year to year. Here we deal with historically established practices and also stereotypes and prejudices which appeared in a profession due to various reasons. These reasons are not connected with capabilities, potential or level of professionalism of women in any way. Our practicians in the field of attraction and employee development confirm it. |  |
Sannikov's
| | The IT is a technical industry, it is more connected with "machines", than with "dolls", - Natalya Kasperskaya, the president of InfoWatch group adds in a conversation with TAdviser. - Information technologies assume existence of engineering thinking, aspiration to study different devices. Women usually are interested in the equipment less. Therefore among engineers more men, of course, are traditional. Information security in itself – a boring subject. Something is interesting to girls another. It not because they it is worse or better, just at them is other interests. Therefore yes, there is a distortion here. Nobody humiliates women and tries to let to work in IT. They seldom go there to work. | |
According to poll of IRI, at the end of 2016 more than a third of respondents confirmed that women make 30-50% of the total number of staff of their companies. At the same time at more than 60% of respondents the share of women among employees grows. Mainly women take positions of project managers (27%) or sales managers (21%).
Kaspersky
On top positions in the Russian IT of women it is less in comparison with the 90th, the founder of Cognitive Technologies Olga Uskova considers: "Abroad the share of women in IT always was less, but in the Soviet Union the balance was aligned. This Soviet model still some time existed in the 90th, but then we passed to the all-European model".
For example, in the first in number of the staff of the Russian company "Sberbank-tekhnologii" the number of women changes slightly and since 2015 remains at the level of 26-28% (in this case employees of Operations department - finance, accounting, HR and so forth are not considered). In 2017 this indicator is 26% against 28% in 2016, reported TAdviser in the company. At the same time the number of staff of SberTech grew from 4835 employees in 2015 to 9407 employees in 2017. Thus, in absolute values the number of women in the company increased for this period since 1305 in till 2445.
In the Technology Center of Deutsche Bank in Moscow 20% of employees - women who work in the most different areas: development, testing and quality control, business and functional analysis, project management. Women manage large domains, well and, at last, the CEO of the Technology Center of Deutsche Bank – the woman. Among new employees the proportion remains – a share of women at the level of 20%.
Uskov's
Cognitive Technologies notes lately that the share of women in programming increased. On difficult projects which are kept by the company - even with high-level programming and serious mathematical loadings the share of women increased to 35%.
| | Gender approach is not reasonable, reasonable only professional approach, - Olga Uskova considers. – We need the professional, and all the same who is he are a boy, the girl or the transgender. | |
In Technoserv Consulting today distribution of men and women approximately identical. It is connected with the fact that the company is engaged not so much in classical programming, how many in implementation of the big systems where profound knowledge of business, processes, approach to the analysis are required. But, say, 13 years ago women were only in accounting and marketing, but not in production.
In InfoWatch the ratio of men and women in IT specialties approximately looks so: developers 95:5, analysts 30:70, testers 60:40, technical writers 50:50, engineers of configuration management 95:5, project managers 80:20, usability designers 50:50, linguists 70:30. This situation since 2014-2015 practically does not change.
| | Gender distinctions go to specializations. Let's tell, in analytics at us – entirely girls, and programmers – entirely boys, - Natalya Kasperskaya tells. - In programming there is more logic and at all there is no emotional component, the woman more empatichna. Programmers in the majority introverts. It can be one of the reasons why seldom become the woman's programmers. The more successfully the person communicates with machine – the more difficult to him to communicate with people. Women inherently social beings. With people it is more interesting to them, than with machine therefore they go rather to those professions where communication, even in IT is necessary. Let's tell, the IT analyst is a person who goes and collects information, communicates with clients, with programmers, with sellers, with different sources, then aggregates this information and writes analytical material. | |
Work of the analyst – technical and difficult, is not simpler than work of the programmer, but she at the same time demands interaction with people, unlike work of the programmer, Kasperskaya explains.
| | We observe a situation when girls actively come to this sphere and perform large volume of works, often directly not connected with software development, - Olga Rubtsova, the deputy CEO adds Technoserv Consulting. - For example, they perfectly cope with tasks which lie in data slicing pane, analysts, consultations, customer service, sales. With arrival of women the industry only wins. They more laborious and more deeply studies tasks which solution, as a result, becomes one of main "counters" of the project. | |
Rubtsov's
Also, adds Rubtsov, it is important to understand that now it is not necessary for the companies just automation for the sake of automation any more. It is necessary that everything was beautiful, quickly, conveniently, and in it women do not have equal, she is sure.
| | In recent years zhenshchin-Itshnikov there was really more, it is explained most likely by commitment of systems to entropy, - Elena Boyko, the director of IT Department of the Russian Ministry of Health jokes. | |
The question nobody a gender imbalance in the industry, according to her, is rather far-fetched:
| | IT get into our life more and more, the industry grows, is provided in all spheres and therefore the number of people who are connected with IT will increase only. When choosing specialists always on the first place professional qualities, but not other parameters. I do not understand for what artificially to align percentage on gender sign. Let everyone be engaged in by what it is interesting and will be happy. | |
| | In IT complex and big collectives, set of communications, creation of new production processes. To cope with such tasks it is necessary to connect the male sequence and female empathy, - Darya Ruslanova, the director of instruments of support of sales and development of customer relations of the Information technologies Block of Alfa-Bank notes. - The further we go, the more we hold focus for team work where the broad spectrum of competences and result are necessary does not depend only on correctness of creation of the code any more. work with end customers, study of the ideas where understanding and communications play a key role, and here growth of women of employees is more pronounced. Also girls come to us to us organizational positions, team building, training, employee development. The share directly of female developers with 0 grew to a significant share in the general collective. The amount of requests for tasks of IT grows in the companies, and young specialists are not enough for everything. | |
Ruslanov's
In the managing list of IT of the block of Alfa-Bank the number of women for the last 2-3 years grew on average by 20%.
More than a third of the polled IRI of women consider that in IT there are no specific difficulties. However about a half note lack of career development and lower salary, than at male colleagues.
| | The most important complexity is that not all women are ready to be perceived as specialists. If we speak about tasks in the field of sales, customer service, business consultation – in such professions of specifics does not arise between the man and the woman. But if it is about a deep technology task, then there most often the woman needs much more time and forces on gaining trust. To men by default credibility is more, - Olga Rubtsova comments. | |
| | Women have no difficulties in the IT industry, it is rather on the contrary: The IT industry is perfectly adapted for work of women, - Ekaterina Sannikova notes. - Unlike many other spheres it allows to combine work and the house: have the flexible working schedule, an opportunity for work from the house. Women, if they already got to the industry, perfectly cope with tasks, and in some areas - such as quality control, requirement analysis, project management – often exceed male colleagues. Unfortunately, there was a stereotype that it is the nonfeminine sphere, and it quite strong sat down at the heads of many girls and girls who, having great analytical skills, interest in mathematics and logic, ignore the IT field when choosing future profession. | |
The problem of the IT industry, according to Sannikova, consists in promoting of computer technologies among the girls going to high school of schools in dethronement of prejudices that it is a nonfeminine profession, and attraction of bigger number of graduates on IT faculties of universities.
The technical center of Deutsche Bank works on a number of the initiatives designed to support today's students in the choice of IT as future profession today.
Special programs for attraction in IT of women in the Russian market are not enough. So, 35% of the polled IRI of the companies reported that they have no they and special initiatives for development of professional potential of women are not planned. For example, in InfoWatch consider such programs irrelevant for the business – here motivational programs are aimed at creation of comfortable conditions for all employees, despite of a floor.
The most part of the initiatives which are specifically focused on women is provided at offices of the global corporations broadcasting foreign standards in Russia. For example, Microsoft will organize Love 2 Code rate together with IIDF: Programming for girls. Such "Yandex" begins to maintain the encouraging activities (in particular as the organizer of the event of Women Who Code Moscow).
On the other hand, the women who are successfully developing career in IT often do not consider such programs significant as do not find a sharp perspective in a gender subject. Some of them, on the contrary, speak against the "segregating" training programs, referring to the fact that the fact of their emergence indicates rather allegedly inability of women to perceive a standard training material in standard conditions of teaching.
| | Women to whom IT are really interesting are in a privileged position. Because they are not enough in this industry – pay to them attention more, they it is more very famous, - Natalya Kasperskaya considers. | |
| | According to world statistics, commands where the leader is the woman much more solid. If to integrate the man and the woman and to form a team in which will be counterbalanced male and female power then such companies are always much more successful, - Olga Rubtsova summarizes. | |
TAdviser fixes some examples of successful women in the Russian industry of IT – both on the party of suppliers, and on the party of customers.
Despite difficulties which are associated with IT market as the place for creation of female career this industry saves the greatest reserve of freedoms and breadth of views on the world. Women who, despite of stereotypes, select IT specialty, as a rule, try to obtain in it not smaller progress, than on traditionally "female" positions – in the presence of energy, initiative and professionalism. These qualities help them to ignore still voiced scepticism concerning their knowledge of mathematics or programming, ability to think logically and to manage competently – how to ignore permanent comparison with male colleagues. A game as equals means an exception of indulgences or discounts for "weaker sex", and in such conditions especially the result is valuable and impressive. Long time was very lucky violently growing Russian IT with women.
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