Outline of the gender factor

Just the other day I was chatting with an army officer who was complaining about the special privileges extended to lady officers in the forces. Needless to say, he was a male and his point of view was that women had no place in the army. They could not be sent into combat and that they got all the "cushy"? postings and deprived male officers of their rights.

Of course, the officer tended to ignore the fact that the non-combat, administrative posts which required logistics and supply chain management on a large scale were sectors where the lady officers were doing excellently. But the traditional gender bias that muscle and technology are a man's domain still prevails. The IT sector is a case in point.

Although the number of women joining the IT workforce in India is on the rise, (Currently, women account for close to 30 percent of the total workforce and this is pegged to increase to almost 50 percent by 2010.) Given the global IT crunch that is expected to only worsen as time goes by we do need to look around for a more stable solution to the talent crunch.

The IT industry offers a relatively safe working environment for women with a decent pay package. It offers an attractive career for a lot of women. However, it would be a mistake to say that IT is more women-friendly than any other industry. Women are in the industry not because of any special effort that the industry has made to accommodate them but in spite of the lack of such efforts.

I feel this way not because I am a dyed-in-the-wool feminist, but because recruiting and retaining women in the IT workforce should now be one of our top priorities -- they offer the only real time solution to the impending IT crunch. While the numbers have been rising consistently over the past few years, the IT industry can hardly claim credit for it.

Women make for ideal IT talent because they can multitask, and are excellent communicators, which is an essential in this industry. Also the flexi-hours that come with several IT jobs are a huge bonus when it comes to their juggling family and career. Men simply do not have to cope with these dual pressures the way women do. As Gloria Steinem rightly pointed out, "I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career."? Fortunately, the industry is waking up to the fact that it needs to hold on to this resource. NASSCOM, in particular, is taking a keen interest in developing gender sensitivity in the IT workplace, which you can read about here.

To sum up, we need to ensure that there are more women friendly policies at the workplace, flexi-timings, job profiles with low or no traveling options, fair promotion opportunities and lack of a gender bias. Women are not square pegs in the round holes of the IT workplace - they are the perfect fit.