All right, I’m a man writing about employment in information technology as well as employment in the marketing and creative fields. But I am aware that whatever I read about, learn about, or experience in the world of job hunting, proves to be tougher for women. It’s more difficult for women to find work and when they do, they still earn less than men doing the same job.
Laura DiDio of E-Commerce Times advises women in her article “Breaking Out of the Pink Ghetto” to “get serious about networking.” She says the objective for women should be to “make networking an integral part of their daily routines, formalize their efforts and set specific goals.”
That’s pretty much what most of us, men and women, understand about networking. But women need to understand that networking the same way men network may not be good enough.
The Pink Ghetto is a largely invisible, often unmentioned and unacknowledged place littered with impediments to womens’ upward mobility in the workplace. Women in the Pink Ghetto do not get equal pay for equal work, are not offered the same opportunities as their male coworkers, are not promoted as quickly as men—or promoted at all.
Pink Ghetto? Let’s review a few statistics before considering what DiDio recommends:
- Women still earn about 75% as much as men do for the same work but do slightly better in technology fields.
- In high tech, computer, science and engineering women are dropping out twice as fast as men.
- Women CEOs are disappearing lately and hold the top positions at only 12 Fortune 500 companies.
- More women have become the sole breadwinners in many households, because men dominate the fields that have been hardest hit by recession job losses.
If women continue to network the way men do, these kinds of statistics will continue. As you might know by now, men tend to favor men the way any group favors its own. Opposites may attract but “my kind” trumps “your kind.” I’m talking about the Good Old Boys. They are the group largely still in control and the results we see from them should continue to remain the same.
The strategy for women, then, says DiDio, should be not to rely on the GOB but to rely more heavily on the GOG—the Good Old Girls.
DiDio introduces two organizations that can help. The first, the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology sports the slogan “Connecting Women and Technology.” Read their missions statement:
We are women technologists. We use technology to connect our communities. We create technology because it is who we are—intelligent, creative and driven. We lead with compassion and a belief in inclusion. We develop competitive products and find solutions to problems that impact our lives, our nation, our world. Together, through the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI), we are inventing a better future. Working with men that believe in our mission, we are changing the world for women and technology.
The organization with the more aggressive name, Women Are Getting Even (WAGE) addresses a broader audience and states a more general yet more ambitions purpose, “to end discrimination against women in the American workplace in the near future.”
WAGE is led by former Massachusetts Lt. Governor Evelyn F. Murphy and Annie Houle, National Director of Campus and Community Initiatives. It seems to have grown out of Murphy’s book Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men—And What to Do About It
If you’re a woman working in or looking for a job in information technology, the book and these organizations may be worth looking into if you want to break out of the pink ghetto.
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