Did you know that in Malaysia, the computer science stream is deemed well-suited for women? This is because the job and work take place almost exclusively in offices. These are thought to be woman-friendly and safe spaces as compared to going to construction sites.
Owing to such cultural understanding of tech professions in an Asian country like Malaysia, 57 per cent of women with science degrees precisely matches their share of all college and university graduates.
Societal factors influencing careers
In our day-to-day lives, we are usually drawn to people who we think are most like ourselves. These experiences may influence our decisions. The kind of role models we have seen through our childhood subconsciously steer us towards choosing a career. A career that fits the “right” ideology in the larger society we grew up in.
In order to be objective in our decision-making process, it is extremely important to be less reliant. For example, on deeply ingrained stereotypes about race, ethnicity, gender and other personal demographics that influence our thought patterns.
UNESCO, in a 2017 report, mentioned that India has observed a substantial increase in women undergraduates in engineering. This indicates a change in the ‘masculine’ perception of engineering in the country. This change can be attributed to other cultural differences as well.
Parents now want their daughters to have a job after graduation, improving their marriage prospects.
This has led to an increase in the number of women’s engineering colleges over the last two decades. This may have led to increased representation of women engineers in the past few years.
Domino effect
These statistics show how a profession is framed and presented to the larger society. And how this impacts whether women will first choose it as a subject during their education. Thereby, entering the pipeline of talented candidates, companies can choose their workforce from.
As mentioned earlier, role models and mentors are helpful, depending on other cultural factors. In America, girls with role models or mentors were more likely to pursue or remain in an IT career.
Thankfully, for the IT industry in India, the picture is not so bleak. The growth of this industry serves as a benchmark for other industries. For example, contributing to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 1.2% in Financial Year 1998 to 9.5% in Financial Year 2015 (India Brand Equity Foundation, 2016).
Large Tech giants like TCS and Infosys exemplify how they are working to drive India Inc. closer to equal representation of women in IT.
Tata Consultancy Services
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is known as an ‘equal employer’ with an inclusive work culture at all levels. TCS employs over 100,000 women globally, one-third of its total workforce. They have been able to achieve it through identifying issues women face in employment in the IT sector. This included taking measures to rectify and attract more women into their organisation.
Saudi law forbids women from travelling, conducting official business, or even undergoing surgery without the consent of their male guardians. Husbands, brothers or fathers. To expand its women workforce in the Gulf areas, TCS came up with a strategy.
This was after carefully understanding cultural factors in that country.
During interviews, they invited potential hires but asked them to bring along their male guardians as well to make them feel comfortable with the workplace, giving them a tour of the campus and demonstrating a commitment to keep the centre an all-women workplace.
This gained the family’s consent to send women to work.
Other initiatives
The organisation’s ability to offer diverse roles and its sensitive and empowering approach to the challenges that the women workforce face have definitely won many hearts. Another major program TCS follows includes:
- One-to-one coaching when they take up senior roles
- Rising Stars Program for women with three to five years of experience
- Pathways to Success workshop, a leadership programme for women with five to eight years’ experience.
- ‘Diversity & Inclusion’ corporate function designed to provide strategic
To know more about inclusion and statistics associated with the IT industry IT please read our paper on Inclusion in IT*
Reach out to us at hello@serein.inc to know more about evidence-based practices that will help your company build empathetic practices that will grow the talent pool.
About the Author and Serein
Nikita Agnihotri is Industrial/Organizational Psychologist with two Masters’ degrees specializing in Psychology from India and New York. She is a researcher with almost 3 and half years of experience in both academic and applied research settings. Reading about why some people feel they are not valued, or that they do not belong in their own organization, paved her way in the field of diversity and inclusion. She successfully defended her thesis on how organization-based self-esteem impacts voice behavior amongst employees at corporate workplaces. She has been involved in a variety of projects in applied psychometry area, from conducting criterion validation analyses for competency scales, using classical test theory for item analyses to developing items, writing white papers, creating marketing factsheets and assessing psychometric properties of a diagnostic tool for inclusion at workplaces. Working as a Research Fellow at Catalyst Inc., New York, she contributed in the development of an online inclusion survey for corporates. She is a self-aware individual who has the potential to adapt to change, embrace it and work effectively in a team with culturally distinct individuals. She is passionate about applying her knowledge in improving selection systems by broadening the criteria used for selection decisions and following an evidence-based approach.
At Serein we believe that diversity and inclusion are the pillars of a good society. Issues of inclusion, diversity, unconscious bias and mental health can affect home and the workplace in many ways.
Having worked on gender and with many other forms of diversity we have come to realise that an empathetic approach to all builds inclusion. It also builds a trusting environment in society as well as the workplace. If you would like to learn more about diversity and inclusion, inclusive leadership or how to speak about empathy, emotional/mental health issues or conduct gender, diversity and inclusion, unconscious bias, mental wellbeing trainings in the workplace, do drop us a line at hello@serein.in