37,000 women quit tech for family

Thousands of women are leaving the IT industry due to a lack of flexibility on the part of their employers.

That's the verdict from the British Computer Society (BCS) which has this week revealed that around 37,000 women computing professionals left the IT industry between 2001 and 2007.

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According to data from IT sector skills council e-skills, there were 229,440 women working in IT - 33 per cent of the UK's computing profession - in 2001. By 2007, that figure had fallen by six per cent to 192,580.

The fall came in spite of the number of UK tech professionals rising from 989,120 to more than one million over the same period.

Regaining the lost pool of female talent would go a long way to relieving the UK tech skills crisis, according to the BCS.

BCS Women's Forum manager Dr Jan Peters said the rise in women leaving IT is largely due to a lack of flexibility on the part of employers around career breaks to have children, care for relatives or travel.

The BCS said tech workers who are able to plan for a career break are more likely to make a successful return to work rather than leave the profession altogether.

In addition, having too few women in IT teams could affect the ability of companies to secure public sector contracts due to strict requirements around gender balance.