IWD 2024: How sponsorship can help women in male dominated industries accelerate their career journeys

It's time we began advocating more actively for the talented, high-performing women in our networks write Access4's Anna Siassios and Ashe-Lee Jegathesan

Increasing the participation of women at all levels of the workforce…it's been a goal for the ICT sector at large since Bill Gates was a boy.

An almost exclusively male preserve through the nineties and noughties, it continues to be so, in some areas of operation. 

Swing by any software engineering or technical support department, for example, and you'll find women conspicuous by their absence. 

Our gender does rather better in functions such as finance, legal, account management, marketing and customer success, with the balance often tipping the other way. Female participation has been steadily increasing across these functions across the board here in Australia over the past two decades, including in the ICT sector, so much so that women now hold 29 per cent of all jobs in the industry, according to the Australian Computer Society's 2021 Digital Pulse report.

Climb the ladder a few rungs though and our numbers thin out again; just 18 and 22 per cent of CEO and board positions respectively are occupied by women.  

Opening up the boys' club

How this under-representation should be best addressed is an interesting question. These days, there's no shortage of programs, both formal and informal, aimed at making the ICT sector more inclusive of women and individuals from diverse backgrounds.

In 2024, organisations, including our own Access4, the SaaS voice and collaboration software platform vendor where we both hold senior leadership roles, are putting their money where their mouth is, when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion.

We've both been around long enough to remember when things were different. Wind the clock back 15 or even 10 years and there was little awareness of the barriers to inclusion minority groups could, and did, encounter in the high-tech 'boys' club', and no particular appetite to reduce or eliminate them.

In many ICT organisations, it was a case of 'sink or swim' and it's little surprise that many women either opted out gracefully after a short stint or gave the sector a wide swerve.

Creating opportunities for all

Against that backdrop, it's incredibly heartening to see the collective commitment that now exists, to creating environments in which individuals, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation or cultural background, can feel they belong and are respected, and that their contributions are valued.

But are we moving far enough and fast enough, or is there more we can do to open up opportunities for capable, ambitious women to progress up the ICT ranks?

In our opinion, the answer is yes. On top of supporting our employers' formal DE&I programs and throwing our support behind networking and mentoring initiatives for women, those of us in senior leadership positions can, and should, take active steps to sponsor those in our teams and circles.

By that, we mean providing proactive support in the form of introductions to decision-makers and opportunities to grow in knowledge and experience – think inviting sponsees to participate in stretch projects or act up in roles of greater responsibility and challenge. 

Men have always done this for one another in the world of work and done it very well.

Women? Not so much, in our experience. Whether it's because we're self-conscious or insecure about promoting our own interests and those of our associates, or because there haven't been enough of us to do so effectively, up to now we've been a little backwards in coming forward in this way.

Changing the game

But there's no reason why that can't change – and change it should. Resolving to become more visible, by speaking up for ourselves and the high-calibre women in our teams and networks, will help break down the gender barrier and make it easier for women to avail themselves fully of the boundless opportunities our industry has to offer.  And encouraging our male colleagues in senior roles to become allies and sponsors will only amplify the effect.

At the same time, we believe that government decision-makers have a critical role to play and encourage legislators to extend paternity to the statutory 16 weeks that women receive. When we start to see the change 'from the top' it will naturally start to become the norm.  

As we celebrate International Women's Day 2024, with its apposite theme of inspiring inclusion, it's a contribution that all levels of society in both business and government can make towards the creation of a truly inclusive environment in which worthy women can not only survive but thrive.