What would you tell young women thinking about an ICT career?

Information Technology is one of the fastest growing industries in World today, yet only about 20% of the people who work in the ICT industries are women.

What would you tell young women thinking about an ICT career?

"I don't think girls should be afraid of the industry, or of the image that I think some parts of the industry have. In a lot of ways communications, computer communications and telephone communications are all represented as being really difficult and really complicated; things that only really serious boys can do, and it's just complete garbage because I think girls really are good at this type of thing." – Narelle Clark

"One of the main reasons I think ICT is such a great industry for young girls is because there is not a big lead time in establishing yourself in the position. You can do either a degree or a diploma and within a very short space of time you can be qualified, get out into the industry, start earning some money and start working in your career, start working towards establishing yourself, so its really good in that respect." – Tania Edwards

"I would say go for it, you have nothing to lose because the industry is taking over everywhere, there are so many different aspects of the industry, you can change pathways with your career throughout, constantly learning, I think it’s a really exciting industry to get involved with." – Louise Meers.

"Yea do it go into the ICT Industry, its one of the fastest growing industries at the moment or it is the fastest growing industry at the moment there are a lot of career opportunities out there, I think there is a general theory that you can only become a programmer but there are so many other industries so many things that you can do in ICT it is not limited with the one diploma or certificate you can go into so many different fields and different areas of the industry which is absolutely wonderful and if you were looking at it in terms of pay its generally higher paid compared to other industries." – Natalie Obeid

"Oh do it definitely there are not enough girls in computers and its fantastic to come across another woman in the computer field and we tend to have a better mind set for computers, women can be very logical where as men always seem to find a difficult way around to fixing a problem whereas women a more logical, there is not enough women in computers, yea its great and moneys fantastic yea computers are fantastic you are doing something different all the time and you are not getting bored." – Kristin McIntyre

"I just want to say that for you young women out there if you are going to join the ICT Industry be brave and be audacious go for it and get the best career you want out of it but also remember this is a whole new industry with great opportunities to push boundaries for women as a whole I think that if we continue making software making internet as it is it is going to go on a very male yank oriented way we have a great opportunity to pull in new directions that men and women all over the world have never seen before and I think that young women especially have something special to give so be difficult be daring and have lots and lots of fun. Don’t worry about wearing suits and just fitting into this pigeonhole because there are no rules being written because we are the ones that are going to write the rules and until now I’ve been doing it and I have reaped lots and lots of rewards."

– Juliana Ngiam

Myths about women in ICT

Have you been influenced by the myths?
Have you, as a woman, considered a career in Information Technology?
Here are a collection of commonly held myths about ICT and what female ICT professionals have to say about them.

Myth One – "It would be a boring job"
"I find it interesting because one you get to think a lot and everyday always presents you with challenges, because you work with such a large client base or user base there is always something new happening. The other thing a lot of people assume with technical jobs that you don’t get to deal with people, that’s a misconception, every day I am constantly interfacing with people, either solving problems for them, or discussing new designs with them or how they should do this or how they should do that."
- Tania Edwards, Database Administrator

Myth Two – "ICT attracts Nerds"
"A lot of people thinks ICT and computer people are boring and nerds but they are not all like that at all. For example the ICT people can go into any industry because they are the back end of the support of whatever company that they are working for and a good example is the ABC. Now in the ABC who are a communications giant so to speak and the ABC ICT people are working in a creative environment and they are the support, the back end of the ABC and if it was not for them we wouldn’t have radio system and the internet system and the structure that the ABC stands on is there because of the ICT department."
– Karen Cook, Website Developer

Myth Three – "You have to be good at Maths"
"In most cases a lot of maths isn't really needed, I've recently done a lot more maths with the work that I'm doing now, but in the past I've rarely ever used a lot of maths. You might need a bit of maths like ok I've got a length of cable that's this long, how much cable do I need to get from here to the other end of the building - 60 metres maybe. Estimations, stuff like that. It just depends on which area you are in. You don't really need it and most of the training courses do teach you what you need to know."
– Narelle Clark, Network Engineer

Myth Four – "It’s too technical"
"I didn’t know how to turn a computer on before I started my course and I learnt everything and you have just got to pace yourself to how you learn and its what you apply yourself to and you don’t need any specific skills."
– Louise Meers, Systems and Support Officer