Closed door, glass ceiling
By Paddy Kamen on January 09, 2007 - Comments (View)Red Canary asks six prominent business women why they think female Canadian startup execs are few and far between.
There’s a gender imbalance in the software industry, where the majority of employees at every level are male. This lopsided HR equation means many firms are losing out in a big way. Women bring diversity of thought into male dominated workplaces, the ability to multi-task and a listening style of leadership, say the female startup execs Red Canary spoke with. While only one reported encountering a significant barrier to personal advancement, all confirm that those barriers exist.
Women make up only 27.4 per cent of the total IT workforce and only 13 per cent of software engineers. Given the numbers entering the education system, overall female representation may not increase anytime soon. While female enrollment in mathematics, computer science and engineering rose 20 per cent from 1997-2000, more recent numbers are down.
In 2004, when Canadian universities recorded their strongest enrollment increase in 28 years, the number of women in IT-related programs dropped 6.1 per cent. |
| Cindy Gordon of Helix Commerce International |
Cindy Gordon is CEO and founder of
Helix Commerce International, a Toronto-based consulting boutique that helps clients accelerate growth. She is alarmed by the statistics.
“Women’s participation in the IT sector is decreasing,” she notes. “And in Canadian business overall, fewer than 30 per cent of companies have women directors on their boards and far fewer than 10 per cent have female CEOs. In addition, less than one per cent of venture capital goes to women.”
Gordon notes that CEOs invariably say that women work harder than men. “Why then are there so few companies founded by women that have achieved $500 million in revenue? I have to think hard to name even a couple of role models at that level.”
"Women still feel they are not being listened to. They put ideas out and they’re ignored until a male picks them up and then everyone’s onside. I see this happen all the time." – Cindy Gordon, CEO, Helix
A Venture Capitalist’s View
Jacqui Murphy agrees that women in start-ups are few and far between. The vice president of Tech Capital Partners, a venture capital firm in Waterloo, Jacqui has been a start-up executive and taught business to university undergrads.
“Women congregate in administration and marketing, with very few in engineering and management. But to some extent it also depends on the company’s size and orientation. Those with a more commercial focus, like RIM, employ more women, whereas businesses at the developmental stage employ fewer.” |
| Jacqui Murphy Tech Capital Partners |
Murphy says the start-up environment is difficult for women with young families.
“It’s very demanding from a time perspective and so are young children. Most of the people in start-ups are aged 25-40 and that’s when women have children, so they may not want such time-intensive jobs. Having said that, the women I’ve worked with have overcome these challenges and are phenomenal.”
A Corporate Ceiling
To what extent does corporate culture create roadblocks to women’s advancement? Cindy Gordon finds that if a company’s male senior executives have working wives there are fewer barriers. “But if you have an executive suite full of men whose wives are not working outside the home, they don’t push their female employees along the career path like they do with men.”
Sharon Barnes was a project manager in the software industry, working for a European-owned company for several years. Now the founder and CEO of
Rfind Systems, a company that provides radio frequency ID solutions for industrial clients, Barnes says women can have trouble advancing into upper management in European-owned firms.
“I’m not the type of person who will fight with an entrenched management team. I’ll simply leave and go somewhere more progressive. If an executive team isn’t willing to promote women, you can spend a lot of time and effort trying to change minds without advancing yourself, and that can harm your self-esteem.”
The Better Selling Sex?
Some people prefer to hire women. Christine Tutssel has sold software for 23 years. Now director of sales for Covarity Inc., Tutssel, “Will hire a woman over a man any day, and so will the men who have hired me in the past.”
“Women come with innate tools that are well suited to the sales role. You can teach an industry and process but you cannot teach people to be motivated or to multi-task. Even listening skills are very difficult to teach.”
In contrast to other areas of the industry, Tutssel says women are entering software sales in increased numbers.
Keeping talented women
Once hired, retaining good women can be a challenge, says Jacqui Murphy. “If women want children and their work environment makes that difficult, they may take less challenging jobs. A lot of my really talented female peers have left the workforce entirely for that reason.”
"I’ve never felt at a disadvantage to a man. Sales is all about results. Being able to juggle a number of things is a female trait and good sales people have to be able to do this to keep the pipeline full and bring results across the line." – Christine Tutssel, director of sales, Covarity Inc.
When Tech Capital offered Murphy her job, they knew she was six months’ pregnant. “Here I can work flex hours and telecommute,” she says.
“The people who support women in these professions reap the rewards because there is nothing like having an incredibly committed and efficient woman in the company.”
Looking for more? Read about the harsdhips and ultimate success of startup founder Sofia Passova here.
Comments
jun 17 2008 10:39
-8 Reputation Points
The Glass Ceiling is almost impenetrable in the world of computer software programming. At a recent Rails conference, only 1 out of more than a hundred speakers was a woman.
Edit (for another )jun 18 2008 23:16
10 Reputation Points
It’s a reality. The question is: What will YOU do to change things?
Edit (for another )