Women changing the world
ACT Women in Communications: WIC
National Press Club
Canberra
1 September 2003
Information and Communication Technology is still changing our world.
Information and communication technology is becoming more pervasive. Convergence between computing, telephony and digital content is really happening. It is no longer a spectre of things to come.
But technological change in society can be daunting. Many people are fearful of change. Government has a responsibility to ensure that changes are managed so as to maximise the benefit to society. Socially, culturally and economically, technological progress creates opportunities.
We are in the midst of social transformation following a period of dramatic technological transformation. How this transformation is managed will determine Australia’s capacity to serve its citizens in the 21st century and beyond and provide inspiration and leadership around the world.
Women have played a remarkable role in this transformation across society. In particular, women working in information and communication technology have shaped the way technology is applied. Women are leaders, trailblazers, entrepreneurs and role models.
I would like to begin by paying tribute to two of my heroes. Both of these Australian women represent courage and vision: true entrepreneurial spirit. They interpreted how the world would change through the use of the internet. Their respective businesses were managed with impeccable timing and are still achieving phenomenal success.
They pursued a vision that was so new, no-one could give them advice. They used their intuition, skill, determination and grasp of technology to create companies that changed the world.
Tracey Ellery: Looksmart
Tracey is the daughter of working class parents in rural Victoria. She attended public schools before attending Deakin University in Geelong. She met her husband Evan Thornley through student politics and after working as a student services manager she and Evan left their jobs to begin Looksmart in 1995.
The vision behind this internet search engine was to create a family friendly place on the internet. The Looksmart search engine is a huge ‘white list’, with each entry assessed by Looksmart before adding it to their search directly. More than once they were within a hair’s breadth of meeting payroll obligation during the early days of the company. Looksmart shares equity with their employees and has created 18 millionaires among them.
Looksmart as a company has weathered the tech-crash well and Tracey and Evan have recently moved back to Australia from San Francisco. Their three children are testimony to Tracey and Evan’s ability to get the balance right between family and work.
Kelli Fox: Astrology.com
Kelli Fox began Astrology.com in the spare room of their house. She built the web site at night and on weekends. Her commitment to her profession of Astrology drove her vision to provide more personalised services to customers. Her understanding of both computing and effective communication gave her the insight as to how this could be achieved through the internet.
Astrology.com was then purchased by i-village, a New York based company well before the peak of the dot-com bubble. Kelli and her husband David stayed on to independently manage astrology.com from San Francisco and have only recently moved on to other challenges. Astrology.com continues to drive a phenomenal amount of traffic on the i-village site and Kelli’s concept has inspired many other services companies on the ‘net.
Kelli and David also manage to balance the demands of being parents with their challenging vocation. They too are spending more time Australia now.
These two women are great role models– and there are many more. They have taken on the unknown, often at great personal risk. They have seen the internet and made something useful out of it. This is the strength of women in IT generally – adapting the abstract to the practical. In ICT, this is incredibly important and women are particularly good at it.
So why is it that the number of women choosing to study IT seems to be shrinking? Anecdotal evidence at least shows that the number of women enrolling in IT and computing courses is declining. With 55% of people enrolling in university women, only about 10 to 20% of IT and computing course enrolees are women.
I think this problem relates to both the supply and demand end of the problem. So we need to ask these two questions: ‘How do we get young women interested?’ And ‘How do we get employers and workplace culture to encourage women?’
On the first question, one factor in the reducing appeal is the instability in the ICT labour market. The ICT industry has see-sawed from a perceived skills shortage in the late 1990s to substantial unemployment in a number of areas over the last twenty-four months. It is very difficult to accurate and current data about the state of employment in the sector, which does not make predicting work force needs any easier for careers advisors.
There is the age-old ‘geek’ factor. With the help of women in ICT role models and mentoring programs by organisations such as WIC here in the ACT and WIT in Queensland, this perception is being broken down slowly.
Scholarship programs turn this encouragement into tangible support. WIT awards annual scholarships in categories which include High School students, Post Graduates, Innovators and Community Development organisations. Since its foundation in 1997, the scholarships prizes have grown in value to over $100,000 through the support of industry sponsors.
The scholarship program takes on several challenges: encourage girls to pursue a career in IT, encouraging women re-entering the workforce to consider IT and also to broaden the perception of what a career in IT means.
Many Universities and TAFEs have specific programs that seek out interested young women in years 11 and 12 to actively promote an ICT career. I am aware of programs in the following universities: Australian national University; University of Technology, Sydney; Southern Cross University, University of Central Queensland with their Women in computing web site; and RMIT in Melbourne has a Women at the Cutting Edge initiative.
Turning now to the second question ‘How do we get employers and workplace culture to encourage women?’ it is worth having a look at the environment women find themselves in IT careers:
The Australian Computer Society Remuneration Survey Report 2001 found that apart from the entry level, female computer operators were, on average, reported to be earning less than male computer professionals at each level of responsibility.
The Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers (APESMA) observed in their report: Women in the Professions – Survey Report 2002, that this gender gap has grown since the downturn in ICT started. APESMA offers the explanation for this change as being that women have borne the brunt of the financial constraints brought on by a decline in the sector.
There has been a significant decrease in the percentage of women in computing technical support. However, the percentage of female Information Technology Managers doubled since 1996, from around 15% to 30%. This is an important trend to recognise as women have demonstrated a great capacity to lead and manage. This trend hints at cracks in the glass ceiling that has characterised upper management in the Computing and IT professions in the past.
Growing awareness about family friendly workplaces means that this is increasingly becoming a factor in career choice. However, with only 6.3% of women in computing working part time compares poorly with the ABS reported average that across all wage and salary earners, about a third work part time.
The average hours worked in IT is also rising, will the APESMA survey reporting average hours now exceeds 44 per week. 55% percent of respondents said they received no compensation for this. These facts and figures point to the need for a concerted effort by employers in the sector to explore the potential benefits of making their work-places more family-friendly for the benefit of all employees, but specifically to encourage more women into the ICT related professions.
I would now like to move to the policy issues in IT that see as the most important.
Government providing leadership in the use of the Internet to empower citizens and achieve greater social equity in society.
I said earlier that technological change in society can be daunting. Many people are fearful of change and for them technological change represents the loss of a job, or an undesirable change in lifestyle. Government has a responsibility to ensure that changes are managed so as to maximise the benefit to society. Socially, culturally and economically, technological progress creates opportunities.
Perhaps most of all it is about empowering people. Communications and access to information are critical aspects of fairness and opportunity and therefore government has a responsibility to facilitate both. The internet represents the convergent medium through which this can be achieved.
The nature of the social transformation following a period of dramatic technological transformation will determine whether or not societies of the future are cohesive or divided. I believe Australia, through a future Labor government, can rebuild the capacity, values and vision necessary to serve its citizens in the 21st century and beyond and importantly, provide inspiration and leadership around the world.
Closing the digital divide
The digital divide is actually getting wider and deeper. This is despite the numbers of people being almost equal now on either side of the divide, with nearly 50% of Australia online in some way. The reason for this is that with more and more services now online, including many essential and government services, those without online access are at an even greater disadvantage.
This can be illustrated through two examples. Fist, the traditional over the counter services are more expensive, for example, many banking and financial services now charge higher fees for people who use counter services or even ATM services rather than online banking services. Unfortunately, the digital divide is still characterised first and foremost by socio-economic status – the richer you are the more likely you are to have internet access – and this financially penalises those lest able to pay.
The second example is that as large corporations downsize their physical services by shutting down regional branches, it the people in rural and regional areas who inevitably pay more for their internet connection and get a poorer service. And yet they are even more reliant on the internet to even get access to the services!
Universal, affordable broadband
The digital divide used to be characterised by ‘an internet connection’. However, if government is approaching this issue with any sense of its central importance in empowering society to move ahead in social, cultural or economic grounds, then the standard must become an ‘affordable broadband internet connection’.
The broadband divide is manifesting itself in Australia at the individual level as failure in competition policy stifles the roll out of new services and makes it less affordable. But it is also manifesting itself at global level as these failures result in Australia sliding down the OECD scale of international broadband penetration at a rate knots. This reflects badly on our future prospects in a global economy.
Growing our own ICT sector, including smart purchasing by Government
Finally, Australia needs to continue to be leader in ICT innovation if we are to attract the respect necessary to provide global leadership. Strategies to grow our own capability in ICT is an essential component in Australia’s self-determination in a globalised world. Australia’s strength as an early adopter and great user of new technology is just that: a strength. It is not a strategy in itself as the Coalition government insists. We need an industry policy that drives this growth in the local sector.
To this end, how government purchases its IT is crucial. The Coalition Government have shown themselves how dumb government can be in making purchasing decisions. The alternative is to leverage the expenditure of taxpayers money on ICT products and services to maximise the overall benefit to economic and social outcomes for Australia. This by definition includes local industry growth.
Government at all levels needs to be a smart, strategic buyer, which engages in market development and drives innovation across the vat range of ICT sectors. I believe we can recover from the current situation and be the best in the world in government service provision through technology.
In conclusion, I would like to acknowledge another hero of ICT in Australia. Every year, the Trevor Pearcey Foundation recognises a person for their lifetime contribution to IT in Australia. Trevor Pearcey built SCIRAC, Australia’s first and the world’s fourth computer.
The Pearcey Awards have been going for about 5 years and this year the Pearcey Medal was awarded to a woman for the first time ever.
Lyndsay Cattermole, founder of Aspect Computing, one Australia’s largest and and most successful software and services companies. Lyndsay started computer programming and systems analysis in the early 70’s. She founded Aspect in 1974 and when it was sold to Kaz Computing in 2002, it had 1300 employees. Lyndsay’s leadership qualities have been recognised over the years through here appointment to many community boards and councils.
Lyndsay Cattermole is another great role model n ICT in Australia and I congratulate her on her achievements. She joins the ranks of inspiring individuals.
