Chipworks' Julia Elvidge. (Photo by Etienne Ranger)

Path to the top of the tech world still a 'maze' for women, say execs

Julia Elvidge of Chipworks and Amika Mobile Corp.'s Suhayya Abu-Hakima say they have both become accustomed to the fact that they're members of a rare breed in the tech world.

"I started out in electrical engineering at school, and at that time I was one of maybe six women in a class size of 105 people. We were outnumbered right from the beginning, and I've gotten used to being outnumbered starting with that experience," says Ms. Elvidge, who serves as Chipworks' president. "I don't think about it too much, and in fact, I think about it more when it's a meeting with all women and I think about how unusual that feels."

Ms. Abu-Hakima, who is chief executive and co-founder of Amika Mobile, shares this opinion, noting that growth in the number of female executives in high tech has been medium to slow, with especially weak numbers for startups.

"I think I was a bit of a lone wolf when I started, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to do this and I just thought it was a natural progression for my career," says Ms. Abu-Hakima with a laugh as she talks about how she started up her first company, AmikaNow, in 1998 as a spinoff from the National Research Council. In 2004 she sold AmikaNow, then co-founded Amika Mobile.

There's evidence to suggest that Ms. Abu-Hakima is a rarity in her chosen field, and that although the high tech sector is slowly opening up to female employees, it's still less likely for women in technology to make it to the corner office than their male counterparts or women in other sectors.

A 2006 study by Industry Canada, entitled Small Business Financing Profiles: Women Entrepreneurs, notes that while approximately 17 per cent of all small- and medium-sized enterprises in 2004 were majority female-owned firms, only 13 per cent of knowledge-based enterprises in this category were mainly owned by women.

Similarly, only 28.1 per cent of workers in the IT sector are women, and very few of those female workers are employed as sector managers, engineers or technicians, despite women making up almost half of all Canadian workers, according to another 2005 report by the Software Human Resource Council.

"One of the things we saw in the sample for the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance Women in Technology (CATA WIT) was a perception that the professional occupations that women populate within the sector were not as honoured as that of the men," says University of Ottawa professor Barbara Orser.

This means female tech workers feel they aren't getting roles such as engineering or development which might lead to promotion into senior executive roles.

"Women continue to be ghettoized in tech, and even if they're there, they're very underrepresented, and the trend is not changing," she adds.

Part of the reason for this, says Ms. Elvidge, is that high-tech companies tend to place an emphasis on technical expertise when considering promotions to their senior ranks, a practice with which she doesn't quite agree.

"I think they really should be focusing on leadership skills that are a key to getting teams to work together towards an aligned goal," says Ms. Elvidge, who is herself trained as an engineer.

"In a senior management team, you want balance; you want people who speak their minds from their perspective, and you may want a few that almost talk before they think, and a few that think and then speak, and you want a few ... who are more empathetic. In addition, empathetic leaders are more sought out nowadays and generally I think women have a better chance in being successful in the empathetic leadership role."

It's doubly difficult to find women to promote, given this preference for executives with specific tech skills over those with soft skills, when there are so few graduating from tech-related programs as it is, says Ms. Abu-Hakima, although this trend seems to be showing some improvement.

"There are probably not the same numbers of women tech grads in computing or engineering as in law or even medicine; as the numbers increase, that should help, and we are seeing more women rising to those ranks," she says, adding, "The field may suffer from a potential 'geek factor;' not all women like to pick fields where they're considered to be nerdy.'"

A 2005 Canadian Engineers for Tomorrow report found that the number of female engineering students peaked at 20.6 per cent in 2001, an dwindled to 17.5 per cent by 2005.

Sometimes, however, women themselves can be the biggest barrier to female tech workers rising to the executive level, Ms. Abu-Hakima and Ms. Elvidge both agree.

"The whole executive scene is very competitive versus co-operative, and women tend to shy away a little bit from these competitive environments ... As women, we are all very hard on ourselves and believe we have to be 10 times as good as we are, but we have to learn to compete yet give ourselves a break," says Ms. Abu-Hakima.

"As well, you have to toughen your skin; it's very difficult for women not to take negative and competitive behaviour personally, you have to let some of that stuff wash off and know that it's not about you personally, but it's about the business and revenues and what makes the customers happy."

She says male executives do a very good job of compartmentalizing and separating personal emotions from work, whereas women may sometimes stop themselves from being too ambitious for fear of being criticized.

The situation is getting better though, and more tech companies are seeing the benefits of women in the board room, says Ms. Elvidge.

"These things take time, and I think it's a bit of a maze rather than a glass ceiling to get noticed," she says. "Women are too humble most of the time and are not self-promoting, they should really do more."

Ms. Abu-Hakima says the process is slow for tech startups, but the medium growth in the number of women in the board rooms of medium to large IT companies – where there's more support for female execs – is somewhat encouraging, at least.

"Ten years ago, there was maybe the odd one woman executive, and now maybe there's 20- to 25-per-cent (representation in the executive ranks) ... Women are realizing they need to assert themselves and stand and be counted."

She adds: "Keep charging, forge ahead and have a belief in what you're doing. You have to have that as an executive; you have to have passion and a good moral compass. You have to fight."