South Africa is seeing a boom in the construction of multimillion-rand data centres as companies move their IT infrastructure into the cloud. But take a closer look at the sector and a nasty statistic rears its head.
“Women currently hold 19% of tech-related jobs relative to men,” Jan Mentz, academic dean of Belgium Campus iTversity, tells the FM. “This gap worsens in the data centre field, with less than 10% of the workforce in the data centre industry consisting of women.”
Worse, almost one in four data centre companies have no women in their system design or operations, he says, citing research from Uptime.
The problem in South Africa goes back even further. According to nonprofit the Motsepe Foundation, which focuses on the upliftment of women, youth and vulnerable people, only 20% of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are women.
Ironically, this is set against the almost continuous rollout of data centres in countries such as South Africa and Nigeria. In South Africa, for example, large IT groups such as Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon already have data centres either in the works or up and running.
And, Mentz adds, “there is a drive to construct more local data centres” — a response, in part, to the government’s demand that data, particularly sensitive consumer data, be hosted locally rather than in foreign territories.
Globally, the problem of women’s participation in the tech industry is just as acute. Skillsoft, a US-based skills consultancy, says in its 2023 report on women’s participation in the global tech industry that in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, 43% of surveyed women work in organisations where men outnumber them by at least four to one.
Skillsoft also found that 19% of women in the EMEA region who work in the IT industry are employed in human resources or learning and development divisions, and 18% work in sales and marketing. A mere 1% work in cloud computing, 3% in cybersecurity, and 4% in application and software development.
This is despite those women expressing their interest in working elsewhere in the field. While leadership and management and project management top the list, cybersecurity is the third-highest topic of interest. It’s followed by analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning (fourth) and cloud computing (sixth).
“In Africa, the IT industry is very male-orientated,” says Mentz. “Women’s participation is very low.”
Yet amid this dearth of women, especially in cybersecurity roles, the need for more professionals in the industry is staggering.
Global security company Fortinet says in its 2023 skills gap report that 56% of the 1,855 organisations it surveyed struggle to recruit, and 54% to retain, skilled employees. That’s despite 84% of these organisations reporting at least one cybersecurity breach last year, costing each in excess of $1m.
And US-based consultancy Cybersecurity Ventures reckons the number of vacant jobs in cybersecurity increased from 1-million in 2013 to its present 3.5-million vacancies.
Women currently hold 19% of tech-related jobs relative to men. This gap worsens in the data centre field, with less than 10% of the workforce in the data centre industry consisting of women
— Jan Mentz
So how do you bridge the gender gap?
The first step, says Mentz, is a change of focus. “We shouldn’t think of post-school. We need to start earlier.”
In particular, he believes the focus should be on digital literacy to “give girls exposure to computers at a much earlier age”.
Staff Sithole, too, believes the focus should shift to earlier education. She is the CEO of the NGO TechnoGirl Trust, a nonprofit that focuses on helping women and girls in poorer communities access opportunities in the STEM sector.
The trust offers job-shadowing opportunities for girls in grades 8-11, soft and life skills training for post-matric women and digital skills such as coding for women who want to enter the IT industry, among other sectors.
In her view, “if a girl wants to be successful in life, she needs to study in STEM”. The problem, however, is the patriarchal structure of society, which has created a tech industry dominated by men.
“Patriarchy shapes our minds and women are expected to do the [empathetic] and nursing jobs in society,” she tells the FM. “Even as parents we are encouraging our girls to not opt for the jobs that demand long hours so they can look after children.”
She believes this will only be overcome if society deals with patriarchal notions at a “very young” age.
“The LSM [living standards measure] we deal with includes unemployed parents, domestic workers and unskilled workers. They are so concerned about survival, and they think that it is the school’s responsibility to advise their children what to study,” she says.
“It is the responsibility of teachers, of corporate South Africa, to step in and ensure that we guide this generation [of girls into STEM careers] if we want to break the cycle of unemployment.”
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