Country report: Spain

2.2.3 THE ENTRY INTO THE ICT SECTOR

How did you enter to the company you are currently working in?

Do you consider that companies prefer women for jobs in the ICT sector?

Did you find any obstacles in the development of our career in the ICT sector? If so, what sort of obstacle did you find?

If you did find obstacles, how did you manage to overcome them?

The answers to this block of questions can be split into those that have their own companies or are freelance professionals and those that have permanent jobs or fixed term contracts and work as managers or directors. Those who have their own companies or work as freelance professionals have mostly entered in the sector after some years working for others and only a few have directly started to work in the ICT sector as independent professionals. In the case of those who are in dependent employment, there is a variety of answers as to how they obtained their present position. This can be resumed into two main methods: through recommendations and through free market competition (including public administration entrance exams, school to work transitions through internships or final university projects). This is a most interesting finding since in Spain top level jobs are usually not obtained in this manner. This finding is not consistent with the answer to the second question.

Indeed, around half think that women are hired on the basis of their professional worth compared to men or that the industry does not prefer either one or the other. Another half thinks that women are definitely not preferred to men. Only in three cases the answers are positive but perhaps pointing to the future of the sector:

“I am not sure of that. They usually associate very technical knowledge with men, although “they say” that they prefer us because we are better at solving problems” (37 years old, Sales delegate)
“I totally believe that. The ICT sector encourages working in networks and if there is somebody enabled to work in networks, those are women” (44 years old, managing partner)

Finally, as to obstacles found and how these have been overcome, in general a little more than half of the respondents answered that they encountered either technical or social obstacles (i.e. discrimination).

“[Yes] mainly because I have come across many professionals who are engineers or economists who can not understand that a woman can contribute with a more practical vision of some aspects” (35 years old, Web developer/Analyst)
“It is difficult to remain updated in an environment that changes so much as this one does. Apart from this, a certain degree of specialisation is required in my case. I left the technology per se to become an advanced user, capable of selling and proposing technological solutions to my customers that would fulfil their needs.” (44 years old, CEO)

It is interesting to note that in at least 20% of the cases the answer to this question has been translated into a personal issue, in other words the obstacles are there for those who think there are obstacles. As one women put it:

“Until now not that many [obstacles], or perhaps I ignore them, I believe that I am also constructing them myself”(30 years old, Project Manager)

The rest (a little less than half) were very strong in their position, stating that they did not encounter obstacles and also referred to what they called more “personal” issues.

“No. Only that I had to lean to deal with more men than women. Though, in more recent years, there are more women entering programming jobs” (32 years old, Information Technologies Engineer)
“No, I do not believe that there are barriers, the only thing is that women have not dedicated themselves to these technologies. I believe that we ourselves put the barriers, but the bases [to enter] already exist”