Addressing national needs with a national resource

It is an era of chronically high unemployment in the United States of America.  A lack of promising employment and career growth affects all willing workers, but especially those who have been traditionally underrepresented in the Information Technology (IT) workforce:  women.  

The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) was founded on the premise that the increased participation by women in the computing workforce will promote technology, innovation, competitiveness and sustainable employment.

Employment data and trends researched and analyzed by NCWIT back its premise.  Labor trends indicate that 1.4 million computer-related jobs will be added in the U.S. by 2018, relative to 2008 levels, according to the U.S. Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These jobs represent good pay, stable demand for employment, and a challenging career broadly applicable over a variety of business and government sectors. Opportunities exist in all levels of government (local, county, state and federal government) and all business sectors (financial and business services, energy production, manufacturing, healthcare, food production and distribution, and transportation).

For persons prepared with the right knowledge and skill set, these jobs are attractive because they offer mobility and credible experience that is portable across government function and business sectors. However, despite the healthy trend in the growth in computer-related jobs and future job opportunities as well as their quality of work life advantages, the percentage of female students reporting computing experience or courseware has been in decline over the past 10 years, according to the NCWIT from a study of archived Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) data and reports.  In addition, among available advanced placement (AP) tests, computer science consistently draws the lowest female participation (18% or lower since 1999), according to an NCWIT study of College Board records.

Thus, while increased female participation is a partial solution to filling anticipated IT jobs, capable female students are not being exposed to the preparatory experiences that will qualify them for that type of work.  It is a missed opportunity for achieving equitable pay for female workers.

A comprehensive understanding of the trends in employment, the opportunities for IT education, the preferences of capable female students, and the career enhancement potential of IT jobs is essential to long-term planning to improve female participation in computer-related jobs. The NCWIT, as a coalition of more than 250 corporations, academic institutions, government agencies and non-profit organizations, is positioned to assemble, analyze and recommend responsive coordinated action to enhance female participation in the IT workforce. The vehicle for assembly, analysis, presentation and scholarly reference to authoritative information sources is the NCWIT Scorecard: a report on the status of women in information technology, most recently published in 2011. The NCWIT Scorecard is published to show trends in female participation in computer-related education and employment. Over time, it provides a benchmark measuring progress and identifying needed improvements. The NCWIT also identifies educational material and modules that are available to promote female participation in IT.

IT Work Opportunities Are Uniquely Suitable for Women

First, let’s examine the types of work opportunities that are available to qualified computer technology professionals, regardless of gender:

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Applications Analysts – Persons with this skill set produce answers to complex questions, produce solutions using existing processes with new data and devise new processes to enable the solution of existing problems by faster, cheaper or more efficient means. Examples include servicing requests to produce engineering calculations for new designs (the creation of new factories, new products, buildings, highways and bridges, marine vessels, aircraft structures) or the process operating data (payroll, financial analyses, production data, order taking, order fulfillment); the production of generic office software (such as Microsoft Office, WordPerfect, OpenOffice, and associated custom add-on applications).  Also included are customized software applications that are recognizable by anyone who has ever ordered products or services through Internet access or has filed information on the Internet.

Network Systems Analysts – Persons with this skill set design networks that enable systems of computers to communicate with each other from either consolidated or dispersed locations, or a mixture of both.  These analysts design their networks for speed of communication, ability to efficiently and reliably enter, locate and retrieve information, ability to protect the system and its information from natural and man-made threats, ability to enable compatible interactions of computers despite different designs (Apple, IBM-compatible), different operating systems (Apple, Windows XP, or Windows 7) and different vintage (single core, dual core, quad core).  The latest innovations of networks integrate operation of computers with other personal devices such as those with telephones, cameras and video reception functions.

Computer Software Engineers – Persons with this skill set design, produce, test, and correct software that executes the applications, operates and protects the computers, and enables the networks to pass information back and forth and add or remove computers, output printers and input imaging devices, and network storage devices

Network Administrators – Persons with this skill set work with system users to diagnose and solve problems, provide services to new users, provide new services to existing users, plan and deploy upgrades to the system, and tutor users.  They monitor user experience to determine network weaknesses and consult with Network Systems Analysts and Computer Software Engineers to provide expert feedback on the effectiveness of their efforts.  Aggregate user experience is analyzed to characterize network performance, weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

These IT jobs can be appealing to women (as well as to men) for several reasons:

• There is a great deal of variety of social interaction within each type of job – personnel will find employment opportunities to work individually on complete projects, in small team collaborations on complete projects, or in large teams with interrelated goals or specifications.  

• There is the career mobility to seek the type of social interaction most comfortable for a given personality.

• There is variety available in terms of the site of employment – people can find positions at concentrated sites (office buildings, factories, computing centers) or dispersed sites (dedicated telework sites, work-at-home, client site visits).

• There is variety available in terms of the work times within the workday and the workdays of the workweek.  Some positions need in-person collaboration.  Other positions perform effectively using teleconferencing collaboration, and still other positions produce work products usable by others, with no other personal contacts needed.

IT work offers women the opportunity for:

- Mental stimulation of the subject matter;
- Lateral mobility into similar or different businesses;
- Upward mobility based on merit;
- Day and time flexibility to balance professional work with a personal life; and
- Opportunities to engage with diverse personalities and cultures

Despite this promising growth in job opportunities, the numbers of college graduates with computing degrees has declined steadily since 2004, such that fewer than one-third of vacant computing jobs could be figaasttlled by U.S. graduates, according to the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

The remaining vacant jobs provide potentially high quality employment for those who can be persuaded to commit themselves to this profession and thus help reverse the decline in computing degree graduates.

Who Can Best Help Improve Women’s Participation in IT?

High school is where students think about their vocational choices including whether or not they want or need more schooling and what kind of further learning is needed.  They can be persuaded toward a profession by an influential role model, a particularly effective teacher, a direct personal experience such as employment, hobbies, clubs, mandatory courses or electives, or the unfortunate absence of any of these positive opportunities.

According to the NCWIT Scorecard, college-bound female high school students are significantly less exposed to computer programming (such as the use of computer languages like BASIC, UNIX, or Linux) than to computer literacy (such as with applications like Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, or Adobe Photoshop).  This imbalance means that high school students are being exposed to how to use software substantially more frequently than how to create software.  The solution at the high school level is to create more opportunities for software development so as to expose motivated students to seek out more such opportunities for experiences that would gratify them.  

At an educational policy level, public school systems can encourage female high school students to take more advanced placement (AP) exams in computer science, since this motivates attendance in preparatory computer science courses.  Further, school systems that make computing skills a graduation requirement (distinct from just familiarity with office software packages like Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint) encourage a higher number of students to enter computing fields and subsequently the IT profession.

At the post-secondary level, computing degrees have been in decline and the degrees of women have been a fraction of that of men over the 25-year period 1984 to 2009, according to the NCWIT Scorecard.  

Some post-secondary schools have employed successful practices for expanding interest in seeking and completing computer science degrees:

- Using feeder networks and outreach to recruit students;
- Offering multiple entry points to accommodate students with different levels of programming experience;
- Pairing students for lab work and mutual support;
- Using peer lab tutors; and
- Requiring an introductory computer science course for incoming freshmen to create interest in seeking further study.

Expanded participation by women in the workforce is sustained when top management supports diversity at the working level and in its promotion practices.  However, top management needs to recognize the beneficial results of a diverse workforce in terms of effectiveness.  According to NCWIT, research supports the conclusion that diversity of thought contributes to innovation.  They cite a study from the London Business School, Innovative potential:  Men and women in teams (2007) that documents a study of over 100 teams at 21 different companies and which showed that teams with a 50:50 gender membership were more experimental and more efficient.

When the right steps are taken the number of computing degrees awarded can be increased, women’s participation in IT can be expanded, and gender diversity can add value to organizations.

What, then, is an effective way to uncover, disseminate and encourage these best practices?

What led to the founding of NCWIT and how is it organized?

In 2004, the National Science Foundation (NSF) convened a meeting to discuss what could be done to increase women’s participation in computing, according to Lucy Sanders, the CEO of NCWIT and one of its co-founders.

“For the prior 20 years, women’s presence in the field had been declining,” Sanders said.  “So, the NSF was very concerned about that.  At this meeting the design of an approach that ultimately became NCWIT was formed, and we received our first funding from the NSF.”

According to NCWIT Scorecard, NCWIT is a coalition of over 250 organizations representing corporations, academia, government agencies, and non-profit entities, all working to strengthen the representation in computing of women and other under-represented groups. Sanders said that the focus of the coalition is to emphasize the creation of software rather than its utilization.

NSF continues to support NCWIT research into increasing participation of women in computing. Other organizations have also supported NCWIT.  For example, Microsoft Research has a mutually beneficial relationship with NCWIT whereby they fund and suggest projects of value to Microsoft as well as the industry as a whole. According to Jane Chu Prey, PhD, Senior Research Manager for Microsoft Research, “I think that NCWIT offers the computing community the ability to see, in a very broad way, the various things the sub-committees [of the coalition] are doing. What is academia doing?  What is industry doing?  What is K-12 doing?  It gives all of us a much better picture of the pipeline.”

NCWIT’s Vision For the Future

On its web site, www.ncwit.org, NCWIT has assembled an impressive number of resources to encourage and retain representation of women in computing.  These resources consist of workbooks containing research-based techniques, suggestions for and examples of presentations suitable for middle school students, and talking point lists for encouraging careers in IT.  Other resources focus on mentoring in the workplace and mentoring women faculty, and there are also resources that focus on supervision to hire and retain female employees.

For those who wish to enhance female participation in IT, NCWIT provides resources to encourage female students, working professionals, and entrepreneurs, and provides authoritative research results to help shape the opinions of policy makers who can nurture the growth of female participation in IT. Other resources focus on mentoring in the workplace and mentoring women faculty, and there are also resources that focus on supervision to hire and retain female employees.

For those who wish to enhance female participation in IT, NCWIT provides resources to encourage female students, working professionals, and entrepreneurs, and provides authoritative research results to help shape the opinions of policy makers who can nurture the growth of female participation in IT.

Among the free, downloadable, and printable resources that NCWIT offers are:

NCWIT promising practices for use in social science research as a foundation for advice, case studies, and activities that are proven to attract, retain, and advance girls and women in IT.  http://www.ncwit.org/resources.res.practices.php

NCWIT Talking Points are a series of easy-to-use conversation cards designed to promote the involvement of women in IT by helping people talk about the issues.

NCWIT Programs-in-a-Box offer turn-key solutions to pressing issues facing the IT community. Programs-in-a-Box provide all the components necessary for quick and strategic action, right out-of-the-box.

NCWIT workbooks and guides provide organizations with practical, hands-on steps for changing their recruitment and retention practices and implementing institutional reform.

Howard Feintuch is a contributing writer to INSIGHT Into Diversity.