Feature#1 Build a community
Build a supportive community that includes many different people, but features four key roles:
- Coach: To help group members develop specific skills or competencies, such as reading data or presenting information.
- Mentor: To help navigate career options and decisions. Consider tapping mentors from outside the organisation.
- Ally: To provide support in challenging situations. For example, in a hiring situation it might be someone who says, I have noticed we do not have any female candidates. Is that something we can look into?
- Sponsor: To advocate for others — expending their own political capital to further the careers of others.
#2 Manage your personal brand
If you are still thinking about your career as a ladder and you are trying to figure out how to climb to the next rung, it is time to change mindsets. Consider your career in terms of purpose. Your purpose is a combination of what you love to do, what you are good at and what you are paid well to do.
Women comprise just 28% of people who work in IT
Identify where you enjoy spending time and where you have been praised for good work. This can be a specific task like fundraising for a specific cause or the way in which you work, such as your approach to analysing data. The key is to use purpose as a basis for your brand and to choose your career path accordingly.
#3 Fix pay inequity
Consider these three ways to further pay equity:
Educate on negotiations
Sixty percent of women have never negotiated their pay. If you’re in a position to coach other women on this skill, do so.
Pay equitably for like roles
If you are in control of pay, be clear and open about paying equitably.
Resolve data, method and technology
Leaders are often frustrated by the lack of data on pay. IT leaders are in a position to partner with other business leads and provide better data — for example, in a salary audit.
Women of colour account for only 2%
#4 Confront marginalising behaviour
Behaviours that marginalise women can include anything from ageism to pet names to over-explaining and gender-biased language. These may not rise to the level of being reported to HR, but they are relentless behaviours that add up throughout a job or career. Call out these behaviours if and when you see them in meetings or in the workplace.
Gartner recommends four strategies for women committed to developing their own IT careers, as well as pathways for anyone under-represented in IT.
