Does the IT industry discriminate against women?

Does the IT industry discriminate against women? It depends on who you're asking. According to the exclusive 2008 silicon.com Skills Survey, male and female tech workers have very different views on the topic.

While the majority (44 per cent) of respondents to the survey disagree or strongly disagree with the statement 'the IT industry discriminates against women', a tale of two sexes emerges when the results are broken down by gender.

Close to half (46 per cent) of male survey respondents disagree or strongly disagree there is discrimination against women in IT, however almost the same percentage - 41 per cent - of female respondents have the opposite view, believing there is a culture of discrimination against them.

IT sector skills body e-skills UK says only around one in five of the IT workforce is female - and only a fifth of those undertaking IT-related degree courses are women, so there is a risk that gender balance could get worse unless action is taken to attract more women.

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Karen Price, CEO of e-skills UK, told silicon.com: "The gender imbalance is a significant and worsening issue in the technology sector, with our research revealing that just 18 per cent of the one million IT and telecoms professionals in the UK last year were women."

The problem is not confined to the UK either. The lack of women in IT has been troubling the European Commission for years. The EC runs an IT work-shadowing programme for girls and is hoping to establish a European code of best practice for women in IT to combat what information society and media commissioner, Viviane Reding, describes as the 'leaky pipeline' phenomenon - whereby girls steadily lose interest in working in technology as they progress through education and choose a career.

Earlier this year Reding talked about the need to overcome geeky stereotypes that she said are putting women off a tech career. And the majority (52 per cent) of respondents to this year's silicon.com Skills Survey agreed or strongly agreed the image of IT is off-putting to women. Female respondents were slightly more likely to agree than male respondents (58 per cent to 51 per cent).

The survey also reveals broad consensus that the lack of women in IT is bad for the industry - with more than half (54 per cent) of all respondents in agreement or strong agreement it has a negative impact. Unsurprisingly, however, women were considerably more likely to support this view than men: 70 per cent of female respondents, compared to just over half (52 per cent) of men.