Did you know that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there has been an overall decline in the percentage of information technology jobs held by women since that figure hit a peak in the early 90s? That peak of less than 40 percent was surely insufficient considering that women now comprise more than half of the American workforce.
If you are a woman who’s making good use of past software training courses, systems analyst certification, and the like, then congratulations! You’ve effectively beaten the odds created by today’s professional environment. At the same time, by simply performing your professional tasks well you’re helping to address a real social problem that has earned the dedicated attention of policymakers and non-profits.
The under representation of women in technology professions must certainly be addressed at a social level. But there’s also a personal dimension to it for any woman who has chosen or could choose to enter into that field and keep up with the online IT training courses or business analyst training and certifications that can help keep her at the head of the pack.
That issue of continual training is particularly important. Your entry into the IT profession was a step toward a better professional role for women everywhere. But it represents rather less progress if you eventually find that you’re among the roughly half of all women in that field who leave at the mid-level, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology.
To be fair, not all – and probably not even most – of those who leave do so because they didn’t have the right education or online IT training courses under their belts. Some take leave from the workforce altogether, for maternity or other reasons. Others continue to make use of their training, but do so in independent consulting ventures or as founding partners at start-up firms. But unfortunately it is no doubt the case that some of these mid-level departures are attributable to the unique difficulties of being a professional woman in what is still a very male-dominated field.
If you’re a woman in information technology, it may be worth remembering that your advancement beyond the mid-level of a large firm is not only an especially noteworthy personal accomplishment, it is an opportunity for you to carry the banner for female empowerment and to inspire young women to believe that they truly can reach the upper limits of the IT field.
We hope, therefore, that some female readers of this blog will take the current situation of women in technology fields as a challenge and an incentive to go the extra mile with their online IT training and software training courses, or to branch out into related disciplines like business analyst training, or particular methodologies like ITIL training or certified scrum mast training, which might well put you well ahead of your male colleagues as your roles change and new opportunities open for you and other women in IT.