An informative site, http://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 http://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.

Here is Brenda’s Story:

I came across your site after searching Google for 'women in IT'.  I had heard of your organisation somewhere before.  I'm writing to you with my views as I am at a breaking point in my IT career.  Just to give you a short background, I am 47, have 3 grown up children and a BSc Hons in Information Systems & Technologies (2.1) as a mature student.

I was very pleased to be offered a position at the College where I studied my degree and became Management Information Systems Officer, a newly created post to set up the new student registration system.  The project was really successful and assisted the College enourmously in turning electronic in the way things were done. After just over 2 years an opportunity came up to work locally for an oil company (a decision I deeply regret) with a much bigger salary, so I took the post as a contractor.  I remained in that post for 4 years but it was the biggest mistake ever.  After 4 years they ended my contract and am now in a very poorly paid post for the local council as a 'trainee' IT trainer!! - confidence at an all time low.
My experiences at the oil company were not good.  As you can imagine, it is a male domain.  In the IT group there were approx 20 of us working in Infrastructure, Applications and Telecoms.  Of the 20, 2 of us were women and both working in applications support and development (both of us have since left) and the IT manager was female (not IT trained). My female collegue and I were expected to do the 'female' things like organising nights out, getting the cakes, acting as PA's to visitors, re-organising office space, doing the admin and generally keeping the men happy.  As a contractor, there was no opportunity for training or working on the projects within the refinery so many of my skills were not being utilised. I stayed on because of the salary and the poor labour market in my area.  Some of the men were definetely not prepared to work with intelligent women and tried at every opportunity to degrade their female counterparts. After leaving the oil refinery, it was something of a relief but it has definetely damaged my IT career and confidence.
I have been out of what I call proper IT work now for a year and a half but have recently signed up for a Masters module and am applying for a Masters degree followed by a PHD in Information Systems. I am also currently doing some CBT's so am slowly getting back my confidence and starting to re-plan my future in IT.

I hope my email doesn't sound too downtrodden but felt that my experiences may be of some help in your project.

Here is Anne’s Story:

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 about 4 years ago where we had an all women section.  The purchasing officers have always been women until this year now even those posts have 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 advice!