For those who’ve not seen this EU statement:
“On 3 March 2009 the European Commission received a signed Code for Best Practices for Women in ICT by some of the major actors in the ICT sector. The Code provides for practices which aim not only to attract women in ICT but also to keep them in the sector and help them reach their full potential.”
The signatories were Alcatel Lucent, imec, Motorola, Microsoft and Orange.
The Code was handed over at a one day conference on 3 March entitled Cyberellas are IT! (am I the only one who’s cringing slightly at the term “cyberella”?). The conference also presented the results of the EU’s 2008 shadowing initiative (see previous post) “to give young women a taste of what a job in ICT would be like. The idea has been to show them what a typical day would be like, by accompanying or “shadowing” a female role model for a day.”
In my view much of the Code is pretty bland and common sensical and embodies little more than would be required to comply with anti-gender discrimination laws anyway.
Like most “Codes of Practice” there’s nothing legally binding in there and the signatories don’t actually promise to follow all the “best practices” stated in the Code, they just (and I quote so you can see how hedged about it is):
“pledge their support for the overall goals of this Code and undertake to ensure that their company’s actions and practices are in line with the Code. The Code is intended as a guide to best practice. Not all signatories will pursue all the recommended practices. Indeed, many practices have similar or overlapping objectives. Also, in a few cases, best practice in one country may be illegal in another. All signatories will of course continue to act in full conformity with the laws that apply to them. Nor does signature of the Code create any legal obligation or liability”.
However there are a few positive concrete things in the Code.
Many will like the sound of the following recommendations, and it’ll be interesting to see which signatories do in fact implement them and to what extent (bearing in mind that “not all” will, and not all the recommendations will be legal throughout the EU!):
- Finance programmes targeting female graduates giving them the opportunity to pursue a PhD in ICT-related science and technology fields;
- Set up mentoring schemes with female engineers at all levels… Introduce female mentoring programmes, coaching aiming to familiarise and encourage women to acquire leadership skills and develop plans and mid-term to long-term career aspirations (one for Nicole, certainly!);
- Create and use female expert databases where CVs of women with the skills and competencies are collected and can be tapped when recruiting where consistent with the applicant law;
- Finance care expenses (e.g. childcare) when training outside usual working hours;
- Organise/provide child-care facilities for preschool, after school and holidays, creating where necessary in-house child-care service, where parents may also be “shareholders”;
- Ensure flexible work arrangements for mothers and fathers and flexibility at the work place (office, mobile, at home);
- Promote women entrepreneurship for example in public tenders where consistent with the applicable law
But I’m a bit puzzled by “Use performance management to evaluate and promote women”. What means do they use to evaluate and promote men, then: the old boys’ club? Sorry sorry sorry, the satirical cynic in me hasn’t been let out to play for far too long…
And they also left out, having more women speak at tech conferences.
Finally, one of my bugbears, being a potential career changer myself, is that the focus always seems to be just on encouraging and providing role models for girls or young female students, or on childcare / returning to work after having children, rather than on helping women (or indeed men) of shall we say more mature years who want to switch to an IT career.
If they really are so concerned that, as they put it:
- “An important skills gap is predicted in the sector and the shortage will affect all parts of the globe;
- A shortage of qualified staff in the ICT sector will seriously weaken the whole economy;
- Qualified ICT staff, whether working in the ICT sector or other sectors, often drift away from their areas of special expertise towards other activities.;”
- such that the EU and the Code signatories are keen to encourage more women “to enter and stay” in the technology sector, then why isn’t more being done to support career switchers?
More (probably much, much more!) from me on all that anon. Though not before May or June.
About Imp
Imp is one of our Girl Geek Dinners regulars and has a passion for mobile devices. When you see her just ask her how many phones she has with her this time!
More Posts (9)
