Women in IT: Why are we so few, and how did my colleague end up there?

Women in IT: Why are we so few, and how did my colleague end up there?

8M, International Women's Day, 2024, 21st century, and women still occupy only around 30% of the IT jobs according to Techopedia. If it has been more than proved that all genders are equally capable of learning and performing successfully in IT, how come only around 25% of women are choosing computer and mathematics studies, according to AAUW? I believe the reason is the lack of exposure to it, which derives in a lack of interest.

Yesterday I was talking with some colleagues about the following Girl's Day, which is a popular event in Germany in which Girls are invited to learn more about jobs that are more popular for men, like IT. The goal of this day is to trigger interest in these girls for roles popularly known as "male jobs". In the middle of the conversation, one of my colleagues, who happens to be a woman, shared with us her journey into IT, and I found it really insightful, so I'd like to share it with you all.

She prefers not to be identify with her name, but here's her story:


As an only child, I lived with my mum and grandma and there was never really a man in the household. However, my uncle often came around and did some electrical/computer stuff from time to time, which got me interested to the point that if something broke, I wanted to fix it, so I asked my uncle to explain to me how to do so.

Years later, I decided to do my A-levels with a technical focus. But I was the only girl on the course and the teacher dealt with me differently as a girl than with the boys. At the same time, I enjoyed looking after other people since primary school, like helping them with homework, showing new kids around the school, so I started to develop some interest in social working.

When I had to decide what to study, even though I preferred computer science, I didn't have the confidence to do it because I wanted to be as good as my uncle who studied computer science and was kind of a role model for me. I just didn't think I was good enough for it.

[...] even though I preferred computer science, I didn't have the confidence to do it [...]. I just didn't think I was good enough for it.

In the meantime, through the punk scene, I learnt a lot about other people's social problems, and social work studies presented itself as a way to help people in need. So that's what I did, even though I spent the whole day at university with my laptop teaching myself some low-level programming. At the 4th semester I realised that I never really wanted to work as a social worker, and that I was still fascinated by IT.

After finishing social work, I enrolled at the TU Berlin to study computer engineering. At the time, we were around 10 girls in computer engineering, so people would be surprised at us for being there.

Finally, I started working as a student trainee at university. This time we were more women than men, so it was normal for two girls to install a server, which showed everyone that just because servers are heavy to carry it doesn't mean that we need a guy to do it.

And then, I landed in SysEleven and joined the platform team when there were still two girls in the data centre. It's always funny to walk through the data centre as a woman and do things there; a lot of men still seem surprised.


My colleague's trajectory made me realise two things:

  1. The importance of being exposed to something in order to grow interest on it
  2. We need more women to join "male jobs" in order to show the world that they are just as capable as men to do it

Regarding the first insight, it was thanks to the uncle's interest in computer science that my colleague developed her interest in that topic. Unfortunately, with only 30% of women in IT, the chances of a girl in a household without any male figure in it -like my colleague's- developing interest in IT are lower, which continues to perpetuate the gender gap in technical jobs.

Like my colleague says: "In the classic nuclear family of "mother, father, child", the role models of the mother doing the housework and the father doing all the manual labour, are often still represented." And therefore, I would add, girls without male figures who can show them and teach them about little engineering tasks like fixing a computer or repairing a fridge, they will not generate any interest on those topics. And that's only because breaking the gender gap is a work in progress, and, unfortunately, most of the mothers and grandmothers are not familiar with engineering tasks in the house, not because women can't do it.

"In the classic nuclear family of "mother, father, child", the role models of the mother doing the housework and the father doing all the manual labour, are often still represented."

It is still very visible in families with two kids, a boy and a girl, that the girl is sent with grandma to learn how to cook, while the boy is sent with grandpa to learn how to build a treehouse. How should we expect that a girl will want to become an engineer if she isn't given the opportunity to learn the basics of screwing two woods together?

With dynamics like Girl's Day, in which we open a window for those girls to learn more about "male jobs" that they are probably not familiar with -again, because they're girls and society doesn't invite them to "male stuff"-, we will be able to, slowly, break the gender gap.

Like I say in the insight number 2, we need to have more women carrying heavy servers around and building treehouses in order to prove that we can do it just as much as they can, and that will increase representativity, and more girls will be able to picture themselves as engineers.

Sandra Gramatzki

SysEleven | K8s & Cloud Technology | Sovereign Cloud | Marketing Event Management | Social Media & Content Management

10mo

Thank you for sharing this with us Natalia!

Joe Bignell

Chief Nappy Changer & Co-Feeder | New Gig Starting Feb

10mo

I was super proud being an Arsenal fan this week when a news article mentioned how our women's team have a higher average attendance than 10 teams in the men's premier league. Representation matters! Kevin Clifford is attending an IWD event today, where he is possibly the only male attendee 😔

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