ICT Trends – The Gender QuotientFinding ways to encourage girls and women to participate in one of the fastest growing industries, both here in NZ and abroad is challenging governments and ICT industries to create initiatives and programmes that will help address the gender imbalance.

ICT Industry Diversity (or a lack thereof)

A headline in an IDG Connect article, published last month, reads “Women engineers are still a rarity”. Tech companies in the USA have recently released workforce information indicating that the average male to female ratio at the likes of Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest is approximately 2:1. However, a further breakdown of actual tech roles within each company discloses much lower female participation rates of somewhere between 10 percent (Twitter) and 20 percent (Pinterest).

Government and the ICT industry in NZ have recently released plans to help address the issue of gender imbalance in STEM-related industries.

Industry Initiative

The NZ Technology Industry Association is supporting the "Shadow IT" programme , a Manukau Institute of Technology ( MIT ) initiative to attract more school leavers into the sector. The programme has been designed to inspire young female students by presenting career avenues in the IT field. High school female students are provided with an opportunity to literally shadow IT professionals to get a better understanding of the workplace and career choices available to them.

In building community partnerships between schools and businesses the programme aims to encourage more females to consider the IT field as a career choice.

Government Initiative

A Nation of Curious Minds – He Whenua Hihiri i te Mahara is a national strategic plan for science in society. The plan recognises the importance of scientific knowledge and innovation in creating and defining New Zealand’s future, economically, socially and environmentally. One of its main goals is to encourage more students to become science and technology competent learners, and to choose science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-related career pathways.

MYOB NZ Director and Product Development Manager, Trevor Leybourne, has welcomed the initiative as a great step towards tackling the ICT skills shortage in NZ. The plan to review the role of Digital Technologies in the school curriculum, as well as the steps to encourage more girls into science and technology careers, will (potentially) help to address the ongoing skills shortage in NZ’s ICT industry.

ICT Tertiary Enrolments

Figures 1 and 2 illustrate the current participation rates, based on gender, in ICT tertiary diploma and degree programmes. The low ratio of female to male in equivalent full time study (EFTS) for Levels 5 to 7 ICT programmes highlights the gender imbalance issue.

Fig 1 IT/ICT Diploma EFTS Enrolments – Male/Female Ratio, 2013

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Fig 2 IT/ICT Degree EFTS Enrolments – Male/Female Ratio, 2013

Youth Unemployment

The NEET rate for youth (15 to 24 years) for all regions in the year to the December 2013 quarter was 11.9 percent. An IITP TechBlog Article announcement that the 2020 Trust has received a $1.4 million lottery grant boost to provide basic computer skills to unemployed Kiwis is welcome news. Any opportunity to address this vexing issue of youth unemployment, a worldwide problem, is to be applauded.

Job Adverts

The Seek ICT Job advert increase of 3.5 percent on the July statistic (Fig.3) supports the current positive employment outlook posted in the DoL Quarterly Labour Market Scorecard for August 2014.

The August figure of 2643 is 7 percent up on the same period in 2013 when ICT job ads were starting their typical downward trend.

Fig.3 Seek ICT Job Adverts Monthly Trends 2010 –2014 (August)

The Trademe IT job adverts increased 2 percent on last month’s figure of 1,254 (Fig.4), with a significant increase on August 2013 of 19 percent.

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Fig.4 Seek ICT & Trademe IT Job Advert Trends to July 2014

Figure 5 illustrates a further increase in Seek ICT job adverts for this month with Auckland once again leading the growth for the three main regions, up 5.5 percent. The 1602 adverts for Auckland represent an increase of 9.6 percent on August 2013.

Fig.5 Seek ICT Job Advert Trends - Monthly Change for August 2014

Figure 6 provides a detailed record of the Seek ICT job advert trends by region for the year to August 2014. Overall, the total number of jobs has increased by 62 per cent since the beginning of the year.

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Fig.6 Seek ICT Job Advert Monthly Trends to August 2014

Conclusion

Government and industry initiatives to encourage female participation in STEM–related careers and, in particular ICT, are to be commended. The results of past efforts to increase female tertiary enrolments into ICT-related programmes appears to have made little difference so far, with the female-to-male ratio intractably stuck at 20:80.

ICT industry and businesses leaders are very concerned about the continuing skill shortages and are now making a concerted effort to work with schools and other government and professional agencies to help address the problem. Let’s hope that the combined efforts bear fruit. Watch this space!

News Bytes: A to Z Africa - AllAfrica Kenya: Microsoft's Myskills4afrika Initiative Seeks to Spur Africa's IT Skills DevelopmentThe programme aims to train 200,000 Africans by 2016, with 100,000 coming from the existing workforce, largely made up of Microsoft's partner community, while the remaining 100,000 will consist of recent graduates.Africa – BizTechAfrica: Lagos: Oracle partnership addresses skills shortageThe Lagos State government has partnered with technology giant Oracle Corporation to address the dearth of the requisite ICT skills thus assuring fast employment for its youth.Australia – ZDNet: Australian IT industry faces impending skills shortage: GreythornA new survey by IT recruitment firm, Greythorn, of almost 3,000 IT professionals suggests that the Australian information technology sector is heading towards a "huge" skills shortage within the next five years.NZ – Technology Industry Association: Shadow IT: Tech leaders mentoring young women for a dayShadow IT has been designed as an opportunity for high school female students to literally shadow IT professionals to get a better understanding of the workplace and career choices available to them.

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NZ – Voxy.co.nz: MYOB welcomes initiative to boost ICT in schoolsReviewing role of Digital Technologies in school curriculum is a great step towards tackling ICT skills shortage in NZUK – BusinessTechnology: Britain faces increasing digital skills shortage, says taskforce reportThe Digital Skills for Tomorrow’s World report said that according to estimates around 745,000 additional workers with digital skills will be needed to meet the rising demands between 2013 and 2017, yet in March 2014 there were still 975,000 young people in the UK not in education, employment or training.UK – Computerworld: UK must better harness home grown talent to tackle digital skills crisis, says TaskforceA Taskforce report says the need for digital skills is only going to grow, with the Science Council estimating that the ICT workforce alone will grow by 39 percent by 2030.UK – Telegraph: Britain faces 'growing shortage' of digital skillsThe report warns that teachers will need "considerable help" to prepare and retrain with the introduction of the new computing curriculum set to be introduced into schools in September 2014.USA – Computerworld: For half, STEM degrees lead to other jobsThe Census Bureau reports that only 26% of people with any type of four-year STEM degree are working in a STEM field. For those with a degree specifically in computer science, math or statistics, the figure is 49%, nearly the same for engineering degrees.

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