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Gudbjörg Sigurdardóttir
Chair, Information Society Taskforce

Conference about Women and the Information Society in Reykjavik, Iceland on April 14th, 2000

Slide 1:
Women in the Icelandic Information Society
Gudbjörg Sigurdardóttir
Chair, Information Society Taskforce

Computers are found in more than 70% of Icelandic households. Around half the population have home access to the Internet. And 70% of the population have access to the Internet at home, work or school. No other nation can match these figures – Iceland is in the forefront of technology use.

Slide 2
Technology has a major impact
Jobs change

Society is continuously changing as a result of advances in IT and telecommunications. Technology has an impact everywhere – it has already changed the way we work and has a growing influence on our leisure time and daily family life.

Now we face yet another new era in which our refrigerator will automatically order the food for us, for example, when there is less than a litre of milk left or the cheese is finished. We envisage cars that find their own way around the city and telephones that instantaneously translate from different languages for us. In other words, many things are going to change, and in a fairly short time too.

In many sectors there will be fewer jobs, and in others certain jobs will simply disappear. Many of these jobs are traditionally done by women. But new jobs will be created instead, in technology and services.

Huge growth is taking place in the information industry, which will attract people to work there in the years to come. At present there is a great shortage of people with good education in IT and telecom technology, so good salaries and increasingly flexible conditions are being offered to people with such skills and knowhow. In all sectors of the economy, such knowhow thus creates attractive job opportunities.

People can choose a career in the health service, fisheries, software industry or publishing the need for this knowhow is everywhere.

People with technological skills who design the software or hardware that we use, and people who create and select the material that goes into cyberspace play an important role in shaping its future. The same applies to many managers of companies and institutions now developing new services which will be offered on the Internet.

And let us face up to the fact that in this group of pace-setters, women probably constitute close to 20% at best, and men 80%. This is not a localized problem in Iceland, but a global problem.

Slide 3
The formative process needs to start early

This fact is reflected, for example, in computer games. They are designed by young, imaginative men and most of them therefore appeal to boys, because their themes tend to be action or sports. I am not saying this to denigrate such games, but merely to point out that if women designed computer games to the extent that men do, and if the management of companies that produce these games realized that girls are also a viable buyer group then there would be more computer games that would appeal to girls.

You surely find it strange for me to make particular mention of computer games. The reason is that I think computer games are often what attracts young boys to computers and leads them to take the next steps, e.g. searching for information about other games on the Internet, downloading freeware games and doing all kinds of things which gradually build up their basic skills and confidence in dealing with computers. One thing leads to another and boys have more tendency to ask for computer accessories for their birthdays or Christmas, all in order to pursue their hobbies which perhaps are essentially sports or action games.

It is the content or the game which is the driving force. We need to think about this when we wonder why many girls are not interested in computers.

In my opinion they do not find enough exciting material, neither games nor anything else, which appeals to them. Computers are not as attractive to them as they are for boys.

So we are in some sort of vicious circle:

We need more women to design software and content with more feminine appeal so that more women will later study and work in technology and then take part in shaping society on a par with men.

Slide 4 Women use technology
but will they shape the new society to the same extent as men?

I should add here that I am certain women will be in the minority of IT users in the future. For example, they will undoubtedly be major Internet shoppers. They will use this technology to save themselves effort and make various routine tasks easier. But we need more women in jobs which shape the future course of events.

Such formative work includes development of software or hardware and production or presentation of website material. But I would also like to point out more aspects of shaping society. For example, I think women ought to voice their opinions more about the formal or informal codes of ethics which will be shaped concerning Internet use. I wouldn’t be surprised if many women have a different set of values or viewpoints from men in this respect.

Now I think it is well overdue for us to bring the facts out into the open and present just a fraction of the statistics that were gathered for this conference. Stefanía Traustadóttir compiled most of these statistics. I shall start with the good news and what I think is some of the most information to present:

Slide 5
Computer scientists
Salary differential by gender (%)
Total salary
Basic salary

Gender-based wage differentials in the IT sector are negligible according to the findings of wage surveys conducted by the Association of Computer Scientists over the past five years. These reveal that women have had around 80% of the total salaries earned by men. Looking at these figures more closely, we should bear in mind that women work much less overtime than men, which presumably explains the difference to a large extent.

It is also revealed that female computer scientists have earned around 90% of the basic salaries of men. Here we should bear in mind that in many cases, basic salaries include a fixed amount of overtime, so it is difficult to draw direct conclusions. The organizers of the survey, however, agree that the differential between the sexes is negligible.

Above all, these figures ought to encourage women to jump onto the information highway to obtain education, work and equal pay there.

Slide 6
Internet use in hours per week

The Information Society Taskforce’s regular surveys of computer ownership and Internet access have not revealed any significant difference between men and women except in terms of time spent on the Internet. It turns out that women who use the Internet anyway do so for an average of 5 hours a week, while the corresponding figure for men is 6.4 hour a week. This gap was more pronounced in earlier surveys. However, this is not a great difference and I do not see any grounds for concern about it.

In the following statistics, the ratios between genders are all very similar:

Slide 7
Membership of the Society for Information Processing

The Icelandic Society for Information Processing has 771 members in all, of whom 18% are female. In 1993 women accounted for 14%, so that their share is growing, although much too slowly.

Slide 8
Membership of the Association of Computer Scientists

Total registered membership of the Association of Computer Scientists is 426, comprising 345 men and 81 women, or 19%.

Slide 9
Reykjavík Technical College
Computing Department

From 1989 until the present day, 37 females and 116 males have completed Computer Studies at Reykjavík Technical College. Females therefore account for around 25% of the total.

Slide 10
Computer Science Department
Reykjavík University 1999-2000

In autumn 1999 150 students enrolled at the Reykjavík University Computing Department, and females accounted for 28%. Some 30% of second-year students are females, and 10% of third-year students. Thus the proportion of women ranges from 10-30%, depending upon the stage of the course. A large increase is revealed between the final and second years, from 10% to 30%, then the figure drops again by 2% for the first year.

Slide 11
Computing Science at the University of Iceland

Some 427 students have graduated from the University of Iceland with a BSc in Computer Science since it introduced this course. Females account for only 18.5% of graduates. Today there are a total of 239 students in the Computer Science Department: 192 males and 47 females, or 24%. A slight increase has taken place, but unfortunately this can hardly be called a positive trend in the long term.

Slide 12
Total graduates
Currently enrolled

The new College of Computing and Business Studies offers eight full-time classes in programming and systems analysis. Of a total of 102 students there are only 8 females, or just under 8%.

After a quick survey of these figures I can conclude that females probably account for close to 20% of the total number of people with IT backgrounds, and far too little movement can be seen towards redressing the balance.

Slide 13
New College of Computing and Business Studies
Full-time students

How can more females be induced to study and work in IT?

I want to begin by mentioning the issues that involve parents, teachers and even career advisors. I think it is important for us to look at what is happening in people’s homes and ask questions such as:

• Do girls and boys have equal access to the home computer?
• Where is the home computer located - is it perhaps in the boy’s room, not the girl’s?
• Do boys tend to be given presents of computer equipment more than girls?
• Are indirect messages perhaps being sent to girls by their parents that computers and technology are more a men’s world than a women’s world?
• In our everyday conversations, what messages are we sending girls about the relevance of technology to women?

And what is the situation in schools?

• Do boys enter school with more skills and manage to push the girls aside?
• Do girls feel an inferiority complex towards boys because of this?
• Do teachers manage to give girls enough encouragement to succeed in the computer world?

And then:

• How do career advisors assess and present jobs in the IT Industry?
• Do they realize the enormous diversity of jobs open to people with IT expertise?

In any case, I urge us to try to find answers to these questions in our own local contexts.

The companies which now or in the future need to attract people with IT skills ought to shape and present an attractive working environment. A company which takes the needs of the family into account by offering flexible working hours, the option of doing some of the work on a computer at home and a flexible attitude towards the need to look after sick children will be well placed in competition for talented people who want to reconcile family life with their work. Companies’ family policies are therefore a vital part in attracting and maintaining the loyalty of women with technical knowhow. Awareness of such a working environment for women in technology and the positive options for harmonizing family life and careers ought to encourage young women to enter these fields of study.

I therefore strongly urge companies which are highly dependent on technologically trained staff to shape and promote this kind of family policy.

Change the image of the jobs - learn from the experience of others (http://www.simnet.is/konur/)

I would lie to encourage dialogue and ongoing publicity about the jobs available to people with technological education. The organizers of this conference consider this to be a top-priority issue. Helga Waage will give a talk on this topic at the conference and we will also meet two young women who work in cyberspace. To create a general foundation for this dialogue, 30 women studying or working in IT have given accounts of their experience, these can be seen on the conference website designed by Salvör Gissurardóttir.

I strongly urge parents, teachers and career advisors to make use of these real-life accounts.

Various action is already under way; I would particularly like to point out:

• An initiative to increase the number of females studying technological and scientific disciplines at university level and action to increase the share of women in leadership positions, which will be outlined here today; and
• The SÍVIT development project on women and IT which will also be presented here afterwards.