IT for men is yesterday’s story

IT for men is a yesterday story

On March 6, Tek Experts held the "Women in Technology Roundtable Session" to celebrate Vietnamese women in technology and understand the unique challenges they face, especially those working in IT.

The roundtable event attracted the participation of many women who are at high-ranking leaders in large IT organisations in Vietnam, such as Microsoft, Cisco, VNPT, VINASA, Tek Experts, and start-up companies such as GoEat Gmbh and Arrow Hitech.

This is an event from the Women in Technology initiative that Tek Experts is organising in five countries in the world, to develop the Global white paper on the role of women in technology. This paper final result will be released expected by May 2019.

From the outdated preconceptions on male entrepreneurship to work-life balance nowadays, Tek Experts has explored how the role of working women has changed in recent years, especially in the IT sector.

Recently, the number of women employees working at IT companies has been on the increase.

Nguyen Thi Thu Giang, general secretary and director of the business development services department under the Vietnam Software & IT Services Association (Vinasa) said at the session that in her association women even outnumber men. In recruitment, Vinasa pays attention to balancing the percentage of male and female workers, however, it seems like women occupy bigger part in this association.

At the roundtable session, Tek Experts talked about five topics, including education, industry, recruitment, opportunities, and leadership.

In the first session about education, guests invited to the session mostly agreed that schools should introduce IT programmes early on, maybe from secondary school onwards and especially for girls to understand the advantages and importance of IT in life, therefore changing the preconception that IT is a field only for men.

Duong Kim Anh, representative from Microsoft Vietnam, also shared that the company has an internship programme for students to practise at the company for three months. After that, students will return to school and can apply to work at Microsoft when they finish their education.

It seems like companies understand well the importance of human resources and make investments to seek for potential employees regardless of gender.

Women nowadays are becoming increasingly good at balancing work and family. They are beginning to take on important roles or even key positions in business.

All the guests joining Tek Experts' roundtable session agreed that companies should pay after performance, not gender.

Representatives from Tek Experts also shared that over the years, the company has been working with many schools and universities in Vietnam to prepare new graduates for a career in IT. They have given students the chance to visit their state-of-the-art offices, take part in workshops and held session to learn about their people so they can understand the skills they need to succeed and what a company looks for when recruiting IT experts.

They have also launched Tek Academy to give people the skills they need to be able to succeed.

There are ample opportunities waiting for those who have the ability, desire, and knowledge – regardless of gender. As more and more women appear on the firmament of successful IT companies and businesses, gender equality has created positive social changes.