Fire men first – they are 23% more expensive!
Press response:
- IT Companies Should Look At Who Costs The Most Before Making Redundancies -
Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom – 9 March 2009, Kate-Craig-Wood, MD of Web & IT hosting company, Memset and recent NatWest Everywoman of the Year winner is calling on technology companies to look at who costs the most before making redundancies.
Kate Craig-Wood is reacting to Friday’s report from the International Labour Organisation, which warns that the recession world-wide could increase the number of unemployed women by 22 million in 2009.
“In the IT industry women earn a massive 23% less than male counterparts, despite being equally capable.” says Craig-Wood, “Before making redundancies IT companies should conduct a quick pay audit, then let go those who are on higher wages for the same job.”
“Such actions will also serve to counter-act the danger of the boy’s club mentality within the sector resulting in women being preferentially targeted for redundancy,” Craig-Wood claims.
Craig-Wood, 32 and a member of the Women in IT committee at the IT industry’s trade body Intellect, argues that sacking the ‘more expensive’ first would also help to redress the serious imbalance in an industry massively dominated by males. The number of women has plummeted from 21 per cent to 16 per cent in the last five years.
Memset itself, which is a Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 company, is in the fortunate position of not needing to make redundancies as it is growing fast, thanks to the current wave of cost-driven IT outsourcing. Regardless, Memset remunerates staff in line with merit, not gender, unlike many IT companies.
For further views and coverage of Kate’s advocacy around women in IT, please see:
kate.craig-wood.com/news#women
I found your post very interesting, and would like to ask a few questions. These questions may sound provocative, but they honestly aren’t intended to be – I’m just curious to know your view.
Obviously I agree that checking the salaries of two people doing the same job to the same level is important for any business – aside from anything else, why pay more for the same work? I can’t see why anybody would think of that as a bad thing.
When people comment on the relative frequency of one gender in a particular industry, I find myself wondering how many avoided the industry *because* of the imbalance. I don’t know how many, but it’s something that I wonder. That anybody might feel the need to do that is horrifying and an issue that certainly needs addressing.
What would you suggest an IT company does to make itself more attractive to female applicants? Positive discrimination is obviously not possible, so what can companies do when they receive far more (in some cases only) applications from men?
I’m a bit surprised at the comments being made in this article. I am by no means a sexist and am all for womens rights but this article takes the p*ss! Honestly, you think that men should be fired first because they earn more than women in IT??
In our society, boys and men are expected to learn about machines, tools and how things work. In addition, they absorb, ideally, a “technological world view” that grew up along with industrial society. Such a world view emphasizes objectivity, rationality and control. That’s not to say women can’t work with machinery as effectively but we are bound to take more of an interest by nature and therefore be viewed as more valuable in the industry since we’re more likely to spend more of our time in front of a machine. You should know this, because facing facts you are biologically a man.
I’m happy to work alongside women and in all honesty I would like to see more of a female presence in our offices and at conferences etc. but let’s not be silly about it, eh?
Its an interesting concept but is on the whole fundamentally flawed on many levels.
1: Pay levels, these may well be higher thanks to longer service and consequently the cost of redundancy could be significantly greater, looking at the people I work with there are six of us who have been involved since 2000 with the rest joining much later.
2: Women are far better protected than men by employment law and also receive far greater benefits as a result of those laws, whilst headline salaries may be lower, the cost of employing females versus males is actually much higher, given that redundancy costs would be lower and on costs would also be lower surely it makes better long term sense to remove the women first if we are to take your purely fiscal logic to its conclusion?
3: Generally speaking an employer should be paying a staff member what they are worth regardless of gender and to purely look at wage cost as a method of deciding on redundancy risks leaving a company without many of its key people. This complete lack of foresight may well leave that company in an extremely weak position when times improve and there is a need for growth as the key people who cost more have been cut.
In summary, cutting people purely on cost is likely to be a recipe for long term disaster regardless of gender.
Re. Patsy: There is absolutely an avoidance of the industry by women because of the imbalance, or to be more specific we are losing women due to it – a positive feedback loop! A classic case is where there is a balanced intake of graduates to an IT firm, and then after 3 years the proportion of women has plummeted. Once you get a gender group below about 30% it becomes unpleasant for them, essentially.
Re. Stephen: Of course I do not genuinely believe that men should be preferentially selected over women for redundancy based on their gender – that would be blatantly sexist. I admit, however, using a somewhat provocative title – and it has certainly provoked a reaction!!
As for guys being better at tech, I believe that is due to socialisation, and I am the case in point. Transexuality means you’re born with brain one gender and body the other (see gires.org.uk)- I have always had a female brain, and am good at tech because I was socilased to be. I believe that we are still bringing up girls and boys very differently and discouraging girls away from science & technology, perpetuating the stereotypes.
Re. Nathan: I am not advocating simply cutting people based on what they cost, but rather their cost-merit ratio. There is plenty of solid evidence that men tend to get paid more than women even when comparing like with like (in terms of merit / ability). Therefore, before making redundancies, measure performance, compare it with cost, and separate the wheat from the chaff – it is just likely that there will be many more men among the chaff!
A selection of the lovely comments from The Register when they ran the article – a sample of the views that some of the men in the IT industry see fit to make public when they can hide behind anonymity:
Sorry ladies, you cant have your babies and eat them too. If you want to get paid more, get a sex change
No sexism in the IT industry? Right.
Wonderful! So stereotypical.
Why do men assume that all females watch soaps (I don’t have a TV), spend copious amounts of time doing their make-up (I have never worn make-up), take time off work due to period problems and pregnancy (I would love to have a normal period and be able to even be pregnant, but it’s not possible) and live longer (my father’s mother died at 33, my mother’s mother at 59 – in each case they were outlived by their husbands)?
Good grief. I’ve just realised I’m different. Help!
I’ve not met many men who hold the opinions you refer to, but those that do have always been more vocal. I sincerely hope that the men you refer to are a vocal minority.
I was under the impression that there was a lot of empirical evidence for women living longer than men (when averaged over a sufficiently large sample set).
With respect to general attitudes, I take heart from the impression I get that younger people’s opinions seem less biased by gender.
As someone who used to be a member of the “boys’ club”, Patsy, I can assure you that many men do indeed hold the view that women are not good at technology, in the same way as women are perceived as not good at, say, reverse parking.
Additionally, I have spent the last three years becoming an increasingly attractive woman. During that time it has become increasingly hard for me to establish credibility with male IT-folks who do not know me on technical subjects (going blonde greatly exacerbated the effect!).
As an aside, the reverse-parking thing actually has some merit since guys do tend to have better visuospatial awareness thanks to being evolutionarily-designed to be good at hunting. Conversely, women are designed to be good conveyors of information and community builders.
This is a subject that is close to my heart so I just had to have my say.
To quote Stephen “In our society, boys and men are expected to learn about machines, tools and how things work. In addition, they absorb, ideally, a “technological world view” that grew up along with industrial society.”
Coming from a girl who was so inquisitive and so obsessed with how things work that she sent herself flying at the age of 10 after giving herself an electric shock fixing the cooker…I believe this is just an assumption, and that it is totally dependent on the child/person and the willingness of the family to let the child (no matter what gender) explore anything they feel they may be interested.
My sister and I were both brought up in the same environment, where my father (an instruments engineer) worked away most of the time. Whenever my father was away, I adopted the ‘man of the house’ role and began to fix any broken appliances and the car when they failed. My sister on the other hand…without the male influence, took it upon herself to become the girliest girly girl there has ever been and there was a time where all she was interested in was shopping, make-up and other girly bits n bobs.
Now my point… its personality, not gender. Certain environments or expectations can develop reactions in people in totally different ways to either rebel or conform. I’m now a Scrum Master/Software developer and one of about 5 women in the company and was one of 5 women on my Computer Information Systems degree out of 100 or so people. I’m a mix of what people expect I would be, I’m dispelling the stereo typical view of women in technology (geeky/manly) and that of beauty queens as I am also a finalist in Miss Universe GB. You can’t expect that because I’m a tall, blonde, pink wearing girl that I’m only going to be interested in courses like psychology/sociology (as has happened in the past) or that because I’m interested in technology that I’m not girly, or share overly female traits.
Overall I think my gender has nothing at all to do with my ability to form a “technological world view”, and don’t think that by nature men should take an interest. Although in my last role I met a lot of men who even shared the opinion that they preferred to hire women as they have worked best in the past, there were still the odd few that had their blatantly sexist views to add to the discussion, this I don’t think will change in the short term as its still seems to be semi-acceptable.
With regards to transgenderism being linked into this conversation, or any other related to this, I know that I have connected with Kate as a person better than most. I feel I am talking to a like-minded, strong willed businesswoman, what is exterior to the mind holds absolutely no bearing on this topic.
Anyway , I will close with a question…
Why in a year of over 100 men in Computer Science, did I (a girl) come top, when men are ‘supposed’ to have been encouraged and surrounded by the technology since childhood? If that is the case…does it really make a difference?
I notice that in Kate’s own company, Memset dedicated hosting, that 75% of the core management team are men.
@Grant: Indeed, which means we have more than twice the industry average of women at management level. See http://www.katescomment.com/women-in-it-scorecard/ for details – female IT professionals account for only 11% within the IT industry.
I don’t understand the roadblock for women in the IT industry. In Canada women now account for 45% of the PhD students up from 25% in 1976. In medicine, a historically male bastion, women now account for over 50% of the graduates. I have been a pilot for over 20 years and share the sky with an increasing number of women each year. If women can make noticeable and substantial inroads into these industries, why not IT? Maybe it is because they don’t want to.