Tech firms sign up to best practices for women

Mentoring programmes during maternity leave and home working options will help address the gender imbalance

This year's International Women's Day sparked a fresh wave of concern about the shortfall of female ICT professionals and the lack of women on the boards of big businesses. As a result, the European Commission (EC) has encouraged five major ICT companies to sign the Code of Best Practices for Women and ICT that will make technology jobs more attractive for women.

In 2007, the EC began encouraging telecoms and internet companies to attract more women in the sector. Signed by Alcatel-Lucent, Imec, Orange-France Telecom Group, Microsoft and Motorola, the new code is the first set of practical initiatives to enhance women's experience in ICT careers.

The EC stated concerns that by 2010, there is expected to be a shortage of 300,000 qualified engineers in the European Union but that still fewer than one in five computer scientists are women.

"The signing of this Code of Best Practices is a first step towards making high-tech jobs cool for girls and getting more women into the ICT sector. I congratulate those companies that today have the courage and conviction to commit to this code, that will enrich the ICT sector by making it more female-friendly," said Viviane Reding, European Union telecoms commissioner.

The initiatives the companies will employ include mentoring programmes during maternity leave that will help women keep up to date with the latest technology developments, practical help in balancing family and work-life including flexible working hours and home working, and ICT forums to offer women support on job searches.

The code will also set targets for the recruitment and promotion of female ICT professionals and aims to attract more girls at school and university into the high-tech sector.

The EC said it will closely monitor the implementation of the code and will assess it in a year's time.

"Such good practices need to be complemented by firm targets," said Reding.

"One practical way to do this is to boost the representation of women in the boards of ICT companies. Today only seven per cent of board members in the 116 major ICT companies are women. Therefore, let's set ourselves a target to double this by 2015."