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Enterprising women in the West Midlands business support and online learning site
marieg | weblog | Mon Nov 19
Enterprising women in the West Midlands can get all the business advice and training support they need at the touch of a button thanks to a new website (Part funded by the Regional Development Agency Advantage West Midlands and the European Social Fund as part of the Regional Women’s Enterprise Unit pilot programme). An informative site, www.westmidlandswoman.co.uk, is now online thanks to the Women’s Business Development Agency (WBDA) – and it promises to be the most comprehensive women’s business support and online learning site in the UK. As well as virtual networking opportunities and a one-to-one online mentor, it includes more than 60 hours of business training, fact sheets, tips, templates, and a glossary of 125 business and financial terms. Feel free to check out the website www.westmidlandswoman.co.uk, take a look at the learning modules & comment in the forums – let us know what you think – and register for our Newsletter so you can keep up to date with our specialist women’s enterprise support activities.
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File Uploaded: West Midlands Woman.doc
marieg | file | Mon Nov 19
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MyStory: Anne's story
marieg | weblog | Wed Oct 24
Anne’s name is a pseudonym but she gave us permission to use this story. Here is Anne’s Story: MyStory
I manage a Helpdesk team of 6 and a team of 2 ICT purchasing officers. Out of those 8 only 2 are women (and one of those is on maternity leave). Those numbers have fallen from a point about 4 years ago where we had an all women section. The purchasing officers have always been women until this year when even those posts have now been taken by men. I have nothing against men but I think it is important to have a mixed workforce! We have a mix of ages - I have staff from 23 to 61 - and I would really like to have a mix of genders as well. We have just advertised for a new staff member (to cover maternity leave) and because on the previous
3 occasions we have only had men apply I asked HR to re-write the advert to actively encourage women to apply. We have had some success - a third of those who applied were women and half of those short-listed for interview are as well.
Our department as a whole is definitely below average! - Only 12% of the staff are women. None of the senior management are women. 2 out of 7 team managers are women - but one (myself) is paid less than the rest.
Do you have any more info on this subject? Have you come up with any strategy for encouraging women to apply and then retaining them? I would be grateful for any
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MyStory: women’s stories from ICT workplaces
marieg | weblog | Wed Oct 24
The Gender Research Team (GRIS) at the University of Salford have been fortunate enough to have talked to many women over the past 4 years with 6 gender projects taking place, we have conducted 64 in-depth life history interviews and over 900 women have completed a number of our questionnaires. Our research is fed back into governmental agencies such as the DTI and the UK Resource Centre for Women in SET and our research has been disseminated at an international level.
Sadly while the projects have taken place women are still leaving the ICT industry and there are still major concerns regarding gender diversity given that the percentage of women has gone from around 27% in 1997, 21% in 2004, to about 16% in 2006 (from e-skills 2006). Worst still is that of this 16% of women, 61% are performing database administration roles clustered at the lower end of the salary scale with limited promotion opportunities.
The women we have spoken to throughout the project have had come from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, we have interviewed Directors of IT from FTSE 100 companies, Managing Directors from global organisations, to a woman who could not get back in to an IT role after being made redundant because she was too old at 51. We have heard happy and sad stories and bad with ones women reporting that the new recruit that was employed to cover her maternity leave was paid £10, 000 more (apparently he came from outside so had more experience). The shocking part of that story was that he left when she came back to work because he did not want to be managed by a woman. Another woman reported being asked to go to Singapore for two weeks on the week she returned from maternity leave and another being asked to return to the office on the day of her father-in-laws funeral as she recently returned back to work after a car accident and was deemed to have taken too much time off work (she recalled that she was called by her workplace constantly throughout her sick-leave).
Barriers to retain women in ICT that have been identified are that many women are still deterred by the long hour culture and the lack of flexibility in working hours, which, has implications for women’s work life-balance. Other barriers to entry into the industry for women is the perceived male-dominated culture, the closed ‘old-boys networks’, the low number of women in management role models (currently women account for only one in ten of UK ICT bosses) and the general lack of awareness of opportunities the profession may offer career-focused women. One IT publication reported that ‘Women are not just leaving when they have children – they are leaving even earlier in their twenties. Perhaps even more concerning, is highly skilled women are leaving ICT in their late 40s and early 50s, so we are losing highly skilled staff and senior female role models and mentors’ (Williams 2007).
The KAN team hope to collect stories from the ICT workplace, with an emphasis on networking and how women from SME’s/micro organisations, entrepreneurs, self-employed or those working in a rural setting actually embark on networking. How do women in ICT negotiate networking, either face to face at organised events or via the now many social networking sites? Has the lack of networking opportunities impacted upon their progression?
Are you a woman in ICT with a story to tell? Have you a networking story to tell or a story on any other topic?
Once you has registered please post the story in your blog and tag it mystory this will mean it will automatically be grouped with other stories from the ICT workplace. (Don’t forget to set which access you prefer, public for all to read or just for the logged on KAN user).
Thanks for contributing to this research
The KAN Team
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Comment on "Take action on Women's No Pay Day"
marieg | weblog comment | Fri Oct 12
Thanks for this - hadn't seen it anywhere else! Have signed the petition (but haven't had any email confirmation yet - does it usually take a while to come through?)
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Comment on "Take action on Women's No Pay Day"
marieg | weblog comment | Thu Oct 11
Oops, hadn't noticed that you had already posted this ;-)
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mystory public
marieg | weblog | Wed Oct 10
test
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mystory public
marieg | weblog | Wed Oct 10
test
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Take action on Women's No Pay Day
marieg | weblog | Wed Oct 10
The issues Take action on Women's No Pay Day .GIF) We've declared October 30th Women's No Pay Day because the pay gap is the equivalent of men being paid all year and women working for free from October 30th. Click on the links below to find out the reasons behind our campaign and how you can get involved. Two-minute actionsGot 120 seconds spare? Use it to add your voice to the Women's No Pay Day campaign. Half an hour actionTake 30 minutes to write a letter to your local media in support of our Women's No Pay Day campaign. One-day actionJoin one of the regional action events to support our Women's No Pay Day campaign - and find out how to organise one yourself! The solutionWhat the Government could do to close the pay gap. |
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Comment on "Battle to beat fake Ebay e-mails"
marieg | weblog comment | Fri Oct 05
This is a worrying aspect. Over the past 2 weeks I have received 3 'spoof' emails allegedly from ebay. You can report these emails to ebay by forwarding them to spoof@ebay.com and they will check it out and send you confirmation that the email is not genuine - they then have the senders details and this will help them to crack down on spoof emails. I have also received one recently allegedly from Egg from nobody@linux.serverace.com which is also a spoof email - see below... Egg Bank has been receiving complaints from her numerous customers concerning unauthorized use of their Egg Bank Online accounts. As a result of this, we are making an extra security check on all our customer's account in order to protect your account and confidential information from theft and fraud. To follow the security steps, click on Egg Online Banking to continue.
This instruction is to be followed by all Egg Bank online banking users. Egg Bank does
apologize for any inconveniences caused to you and is very thankful for you Help.
Please Note : If we do not receive your account verification within 24hrs, we will be left with
no option than to Lock down your account for security reasons, until we are able to contact you
by phone or mail.
Thank you.
Security Advisor
Egg Bank Internet Banking
Citigroup Centre
Canada Square
London
E14 5LB
© Egg Banking plc and Egg Financial Intermediation Limited are part of the Citigroup Inc. Again you can forward the email to Egg to check it out: spoof@egg.com...So just be vigilant...
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