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IT gender imbalance persists, report says

New research that demonstrates the imbalance between male and female IT professionals is used to create qualifications and pay-related scorecard.

By Miya Knights, 25 Mar 2009 at 10:06

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Despite women making up 45 per cent of the UK working population, they only represent 19 per cent of the IT professional workforce, according to a report.

By comparison, that's just two-thirds of the number of women working in IT in Italy or Ireland.

Despite the IT skills crisis looming large on the horizon, the report also said gender imbalance remains a significant and worsening issue for the IT sector.

Furthermore, the proportion of women in the IT industry fell by four percentage points since 2001 to just 21 per cent. While the number of female IT professionals has fallen by 12 per cent since 2001, representing a loss of 28,000 workers, the number of male IT professionals increased by 10 per cent over the same period.

At the same time, the report found similar disparities when it came to the numbers of young women taking up IT at GCSE, further or higher education levels, as well as the numbers of women going onto take up senior IT management or academic roles.

Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting and author of the interim Digital Britain report, Lord Carter stated: “22 million UK employees use IT every day and we need a skilled and diverse IT workforce to support them.”

And in terms of salary, across all IT occupations, females received £85 per week less than their male counterparts, according to government data on gross weekly earnings in the second quarter of 2008.

Karen Price, e-Skills UK chief executive added: “The gender imbalance in IT is a deep and persistent issue that cannot be put right by one organisation alone. We must work together; employers, government and education all have an important role to play.”

The report is designed to provide a definitive, up-to-date evidence base for data and commentary on women in IT employment and education. The ‘Women in IT Scorecard’ was based on analysis from the British Computer Society (BCS), e-Skills UK, Intellect and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) and other public sector data.