Contribution of Women Leaders in Indian
IT industry
Dr.Harry CD
Liberalization of the Indian
economy has created considerable employment opportunities for those, including
women, who have skills and capabilities to be part of a profitable business. In
the last decades, women in India
have not enjoyed a good status in workplace settings whether in managerial or
operative jobs. This long-established positioning of women has restricted the
intensity of their efforts towards becoming conscious of the benefits of the
globalization course. Nowadays, the growth of information technology sectors
has opened up employment options for women.
This paper focuses on the
Information Technology industry, which give some considerable opportunities to
Indian women to grow as leaders. First, by demonstrating the changes occurred
in this industry during the past 25 years, we will then, be able to analyze the
current place of women in this sector, and finally determined the barriers and
challenges they face in order to become prominent leaders in Indian IT
companies. For each part, the study will
be extended to a global analysis, and then focus on the Indian context.
Information Technology: global and Indian industries evolution.
Global
technology providers have been eyeing viable talents across all spectrums to
ensure talent pool in their organization in enviable. For 30 years, Information
Technology (IT) is changing inside its own industry and provoking changes for
the business world in many aspects. This is the result of the development of
global markets due to communication between continents being done thanks to
information technology.
The approach
that triumphed during the past 25 years suited more to some male attitudes and
values than to the female ones. Professionals were seen as some high educated
male, with technical skills and knowledge, inaccessible for the rest of the
organization. They were the only ones to have full control over the resources1. They were enclosed in the inscrutability
of their knowledge, which suited both the IT professionals and the rest of the
management team, mostly males too. In this time, IT was not accessible to
everyone, and professionals were seen as highly proficient in fields
impenetrable to the lay-people. It allowed professionals to retain power and
control over the resources and make IT an industry not expected to be accessed
by lay-persons. It was focused on the technological aspect, which means only
for experts. IT was synonym of instrumental information and advices. It was
helping management by saying what they could have, but not by asking what they
needed.
However, in the mid-80’s,
technological changes occurred, and computers and IT sciences became rapidly
accessible to lay-persons. Companies and individuals quickly adopted this technology as a main tool,
making a boom in the need to understand and to be formed in different
expertise.
The IT is now
very useful for its information
aspects, whereas it was focused in the technology
aspect before this current period. It now focuses on the communication more
than other technical sides. What's more, IT is becoming highly competitive and
more available than 25 years ago. In fact, it’s becoming less and less reserved
to only professional and experts, but now accessible to everybody and every
single company. Instead of few professionals workers involved in computer
software in the mid- 70’s, there is now 10 million people dealing everyday with
computer sciences all around the world. [1]
IT has grown to
be another service to be traded on the market. By becoming more competitive and more global, the IT industry is broadened to
everybody, including service sectors. In parallel, with the social environment,
people in the workforce faces high level of unemployment, and companies use
staff payment-by-performance. So, IT requires to its employees to work harder
and harder and with motivation. Its rapid
evolution leads to develop new markets faster than any other industries has
done in the past. It is now useful and sometimes necessary for marketing areas,
multimedia, banks, bio-technology, internet… It also gives opportunities for
full or part-time jobs, makes work more “moveable” (telecommuting), and can
also be a way of exporting jobs in some countries where salaries are lower.
(e.g.: Swissair and Lufthansa moved their entire reservation services in Bangalore ).1
During the same
period, between the 70’s and nowadays, many social changes occurred in the
world, leading to increase the number of highly educated women in the work
force. These women entered the professional world with the expectation to have
the same access and opportunities of evolution to the top of their
organization, as it was for their male colleagues. They found that technology
industry was certainly more accessible as it was a new industry, growing and
developing towards new perspectives. [2]
In fact the evolution underlined
in the last part, has its effect on the female involvement in the IT industry.
By reading different studies about this same topic, we realize that USA and
Europe perspectives show more distinctions than similarities in the evolution
of women in IT industry, than Asian countries such India. The effect of new IT
industry development towards communication and information has not the same
impact in the different part of the world.
So, we will
revise what is the current situation for female professional workers in the IT
industry all over the world and then, particularly what is happening for them
in India .
In order to understand deeply why and how women can make the difference by
integrating some traditional male culture organizations, we will focus on their
evolution in term of way to work, personalities and motivations while working
in Information technology.
We will base our
study in the following question: Is IT industry an occasion for women to have
the opportunity to obtain more highly skills posts, or is it a new menace of gender
exclusion?
1) Global analysis.
The main fact
about women involved in IT technology in the world is that only a few senior
professionals are women, and that those women are 5 to 12 years younger than their
male counterparts. 1 They have less experience as they only
beneficiate of an average of 7.7 fewer years of work experience. The second can
explain the first fact: being less experienced and younger participate to the
fact that women are less confident, make prove of less ability, and are less
likely to struggle for promotions and higher positions of responsibility in the
head of the organization. Besides, this lack of motivation could also arise
from the fact that some establishments are saving 25 to 30% by hiring a woman
executive manager, compared to hiring a man.[3] ,
hence the lower wages of women in the same professional position. . The
organizations seem to treat their female and male professional in different
ways.
Nevertheless,
female and male IT professionals have the same education background[4],
and the same opportunities to do some training programs and other activities to
develop their professional experience during studies. They also progress in
jobs towards the top of hierarchy in the same way than their male counterparts.
So, those contradictions were explained (by Yap )
by the fact that female professionals are more exposed to social and familial
pressure, and than they are held back by some factors as their own values and
priorities.
In United
States and generally in Europe ,
women still do not use computer as insistently as men.[5] So
women present a first handicap in IT area, as they are not ready to use theirs
tools and skills in the same way as men do. Furthermore, IT grow made available
new jobs, more suitable with woman skills and use of IT tools, in many other
industries, such as marketing. Field marketing is progressing very quickly,
replacing the traditional sellers, becoming more than an auxiliary for the
sales team, but an alternative. In Europe and USA , women account for around 80%
of the front line employees in field marketing. IT deskills the traditional
sales force, by implementing automatic orders and promotions, and female field
marketers are taking the opportunity to enter the IT world through this way. [6].
However, apart from this area, women are still marginalized and
under-represented in the giants groups of IT industry (IBM and Microsoft), as
well as in government agencies. They are involved in soft sectors of IT, such
as training and development departments, but rarely in IT architecture,
infrastructure or operating systems. This is why we can sometimes be afraid of
this new technology creation for the professional women, as it may be more a
new factor of exclusion than an opportunity to make a breakthrough in this new
changing industry. In Europe and USA , IT remains a predominant male
culture industry, synonym of power. It restricts the access to women as it is
developing in dominant male sectors like automobile industries. Even in the
insurance and banking sectors, which has been converted by office automation
and computers (40 % of staff use it), only 22% of women working with IT are
technicians, even if this sector is traditionally dominated by women.
In United States ,
few women are proving that they can effectively run the operations and finances
of the big IT companies. In Hewlett-Packard, Ann Livermore is vice president
and runs HP’s $33 billion tech solutions group. In Xerox (16$ billion of
capital), Anne Mulcahy is chairman and chief executive. In Lucent Technologies,
Patricia Russo signed earlier this year a deal to sell Lucent to Alcatel for
13.5$ billion. She will run the combined company as CEO. There are some other
good examples of American women in the head of big tech companies, such E.Bay
(tech commerce companies), or Telia Sonera (largest mobile operator in Sweden ). The
tech industry has shown that some bright women can succeed in, managing some
big operations for the biggest tech companies.
Those examples show that instead of the strongly gender-specific aspect
of technology, women have the sufficient skills to lead some IT companies. They
can overreach men with their own values and priorities, going pass from the
prejudices.
2) Indian perspectives for
women in IT industry.
As far as India is concerned, the IT has evolved in a
shorter period of time (as it was known later) than in United States and Europe ,
avoiding the first prejudices to take importance on the Indian minds. In fact,
on contrary from United States, India don’t have the first image of IT being a
male dominant sector, as IT is getting known since 25 years no more. So, it is
not comparable to United
States , where the military experience in IT
makes the sector becoming a firstly predominant male community in IT industry.
However, there are some other
barriers for women in IT in India ,
which are not from the traditional prejudices but more from the social place of
women in the general corporate world. As many examples gave us the
feeling that IT industry is an opportunity more than a threat for Indian women,
we decided to study this area more than other corporate industries. As shown in
the first part, IT is growing, offering more and more possibilities of becoming
a key worker in many sectors.
Besides, India is a technologic pole in Asia, and the
city of Bangalore , with its most large software
companies operating in modern facilities, is often compared to the
north-American Silicon Valley, thanks to its supremacy in computers and
operations systems industries in Asia and its
significant progression in the global market. [7]
The Government of Karnataka has also been particularly positive about the
software and services marketplace and has facilitated create the pertinent telecom and
guidelines infrastructure contributing to to the expansion of this sector. Today, India ’s strong base of skilled
software manpower is a bonfire for software customers. India had over
410,000 working software professionals. Out of a total of 122,000 engineers
trained each year, almost half is prepared to join the trade on the year.
Others travel overseas or join end-user businesses. Educational universities
(Indian Institutes of Technology…) and private sector industries (trained
thousands of other technical personnel) are the principal sources of
newly-qualified personnel. However, the IIT institutes have an adverse
male/female ratio. The male culture is still predominant.
However, India has the
world’s largest number of professionally qualified women. They are from middle
and upper classes. By becoming aware of their personals needs and selves, they
beneficiate of a better status and begin to enter the managerial cadre and to
get some opportunities of becoming entrepreneurs.
In addition, Indian government
intents empowering women in technology thanks to some Science and Technology
Ministry’s initiatives. As many as three systems aimed towards women, are
currently being implemented by the government, in March 2506. They include
'Science and Technology for Women' and 'Technology Development and Utilization
Programme for Women'. Another scheme is run by the Department of Biotechnology
for rural women. ''The broad objectives of these schemes are to promote
development and adaptation of appropriate technology, transfer proven
technologies through capacity building and skill development among women,''
said, according to Science and Technology Minister, Kapil Sibal. [8]
Instead of the little number of
“maverick” women involved in IT, technology companies are going out of their
way to retain the fair sex even as they think up new ways to deal with women
employees’ concerns about home and hearth. Some initiatives like work from home
and long sabbaticals become more normal rather than exception. IT companies are
sensitizing themselves to lend a hand to women employees achieve work-life balance.
For example, in Satyam, Computers service limited, “Almost 55-60% of all
engineers at Satyam are coming in straight from campuses of which women
represent about 21%.” says Satyam head (human resources) Hari T.. However, as
in many IT companies the same proportion is not reflected in the top positions
of the companies, as only an average of 8% is women. Those women are about 22
years old when they join the workforce, and then, this young age and the recent
boost of IT industry in India
can explain the small numbers of senior female managers in Indian IT Industry.
Women are more and more wanted in technology organizations, as they are more
imaginative, have good communication and team working skills. In fact, women
qualities will be required in a coming future, as information technology become
a communication instrument in many sectors.
The main advantage of the IT
industry in the life of professional women is that with its development, the
work could be made at home in computers terminal. Due to the high social
exigency towards women and family life, this advantage has to be
well-considerate. Besides, this way of working can be an opportunity for women
to create a new virtual melting pot for trained professional women all over the
world. In fact, they can communicate much more easily in the topic by the
information technology than 10 years ago.
Women are now allowed to think about themselves, doing a job which takes
into account their basic necessities to be at home, and being able to build
some enterprises. Indian women of 21st century are more open to a different
life, full of mutuality, respect and duality. Some women accept a life without
marriage and a parenting without father. [9]
However, in spite of this social
revolution, the liberalization of industries, the globalization, the higher
educational level of women, and their commitment to a greater fulfilled
professional life, women are facing several handicaps to enter into and manage
corporate businesses, due to the entrenched traditional way of thinking and
narrowed values of the Indian society.
3) Difficulties,
barriers and challenges faced by women in Indian IT industry.
Finally we will
see the challenges and barriers women have to face when they are working in IT
technology, in the particular case of India . Some concrete examples,
based on some interviews of women managers in India would help us later to be
conscious of their current situation, their motivations at work and
expectations for the future. For the moment, we make a resume of what we found
in scientific texts, and detach some of the major barriers encountered by women
in IT industry.
Role overload is one of the major feelings felt by women in IT
industry. It means that they feel that too much is expected from the role that
what they can cope with. This feeling can be explained by the rapid evolution
of technology complexity which requires professionals to change as much as
rapidly as IT is changing. These put pressure on the employees. [10]
Marital status could be one of the reasons for role overload
feeling in India .
The particularity of IT industry of develop itself rapidly makes more difficult
the task to get married women involved at 100% in their job. They don’t have
enough time to keep upgrading and broadening their skills set, as they struggle
between family and job. Satyam human resources manager
reports that his company hires 25-25% women from campuses, but "after
marriage 80-90 per cent of them leave." So does it prevent them from
hiring more women at entry level? "No, but of late, when we look at the
attrition figures, we're asking if we train women for 6-24 months, what is the
use if they leave?" The average tenure of women is 2 years; with that of
men being slightly higher, he adds.[11]
This example proves that marital status is still a barrier for woman to
continue their professional careers.
Personal inadequacy and lack of confidence are the result of the
nature of IT jobs. People in IT industry have to constantly upgrade their
knowledge to keep the required level for their job. The evolution in technology
is so rapid that it’s very complex to learn as much as quickly, hence the lack
of confidence often referenced by women. If the belief that IT occupation is
more suited to male than female, what is prevalent in India , so it’s natural for woman to
lack of confidence about their professionals abilities in IT. [12]
Women will logically avoid the assessments of their aptitudes if their tasks
are strongly more valued when a male do it. The negative effect of those
beliefs is that they can affect women who are not directly concerned by the
gender stereotype, because of the discriminatory practices unconsciously
employed in the heart of some organizations.
The lack of resources
or working capital is a huge barrier for women who want to start by their
own in IT, compare to men. In fact, women status in India is still quite restricting
their initiatives. Before getting married, they financially depend on the
father and after marriage, on their husband. They don’t have lot of access over
external resources. Banks or institutions loans are still not enough developed
to allow woman starting up.
Socio-cultural
obstacles, as the better importance given to male child than female one,
are very present in India .
This results to the lack of education for female. Fewer women have access to
education, and even less to training programs about IT. However, as we have seen before, woman students are more and
more involved in this new industry, seeing the opportunities of careers they
can get.
Those barriers will evolve with
the time, and we believe that women will soon be freer to discover themselves
and their passion at work. They have to gain some self-confidence and to
override the traditional narrow-minded male values of their society. As IT is
developing itself a lot, women have found a new unknown land which helps them
to take off in their professional careers. They are becoming mature, and by
gaining experience there are also gaining possibilities to attain the senior
manager’s position, up till very rare.
Note:
This previous analysis will serve as background for the rest
of the study.
In order to endorse
this topic and reflections we plan to make a concrete analysis of women
feelings in IT industry, by conducting surveys in Bangalore to the main female
managers’ in IT companies and close to
the young student or young new employees in this industry. These surveys will
help us making our own analysis and judgment over current female leadership in
IT.
Author:
Dr. Harry CD is a HR strategist with more than 25 years of experience in multinational corporations.
He is a Fellow from IIM-Ahmedabad and has a PhD from Gujarat State University, Dr. Harry is a corporate trainer, active researcher and writer.
You may like to read other publications and Blogs written by the author:
Publications:
Publications:
Blogs:
[1] Globalization
and information technology: vanishing social contracts, the “pink collar”
workforce and public policy challenges, by Alexander Kouzmin, Nada
Korac-Kakabadse and Andrew Korac-Kakabadse.
[2] Women,
leadership and information technology, by Jenni Colwill and Jill Towsend.
[3] Thompson-Stacy
and Pogue, 1996
[5] Currid,
1996
[6] Globalization
and information technology: vanishing social contracts, the “pink collar”
workforce and public policy challenges, by Alexander Kouzmin, Nada
Korac-Kakabadse and Andrew Korac-Kakabadse.
[7] http://www.businessweek.com
[8] http://news.webindia123.com/news/articles/India
[9] Women
in Management- A movement from fifties to next millennium. By Parikh Indira
& Engineer, Mahruk, IIM Ahmedabad, Dec 1999.
[10] Role
stress among women in the Indian information technology sector by Moshin
Aziz.
[11] Satyam scouting for women at senior levels ,
by Rasheeda Bhagat. Business line, Apr 11, 2506
[12] Barriers
women face in information technology careers, by Susan Michie and Debra L.
Nelson.
