Los cuatro principales temas de discusión

We start this section with a quote from a 40 year old returner from the WINIT questionnaire, who manages in a paragraph to sum up many of the issues we would like to highlight regarding family commitments and caring responsibilities. She says, It's the nature of the industry to be full on, committed and obsessive and to exhibit workaholic tendencies - drop everything at a moment's notice and go wherever you are needed for as long as it takes to fix whatever is wrong - great... who picks up the kids? makes tea? reads the bedtime story...(WINIT Questionnaire Respondent, Returner, 40 years old).

Here our questionnaire respondent describes an underlying tension within an industry that has the dubious honour of being renowned for its long hour and presenteeism cultures, with work that is often project and client led, and deadline driven. Flexibility in this context would seen to be more about the flexibility of workers to deliver on time, than related to the pursuit of a better work-life balance. The long hour culture in IT has been well documented (DTI 2005a, 2005b, Webster 2005:7- 8) so we will not expand on the literature here. However, we do feel it important to highlight that for the women in our interview sample (and indeed in our questionnaire sample), long hours and presenteeism (Simpson 1998) continue to be major issues (see also Faulkner 2002). For some women, at particular points of their career, long hours were seen as a necessity of the role, a way improving their career prospects, and even as a source of choice and enjoyment (de Hoog

2005)28_{. Cass, for example, recalls her time working in the London Stock Exchange with some fondness in her tone, saying,}

But I wasn’t married at that point so it was very easy, I worked literally 24 hours a day. Yes, literally I would go in night and day and that is expected in IT to a certain extent, you know there are expectations, not just if you’re thinking of new programmes, new projects, then there are times when you do work night and day. I think then it is very hard if you’re married. I found that after six months of that we moved here [to the Home Counties]. It was quite hard then” (Cass, 50- 55 years, retired IT Manager). For Belinda, who owned her own PC re-selling and distribution company, long hours were integral to the success of her business, with her work being a great source of pleasure and satisfaction to her. She says,

I usually get here for 8:30….but then I would go on to whenever, usually we are entertaining or going out for clients most days of the week and then on a weekend like this weekend I have to all sort of P60’s and things for all the staff. Just because we are so small, and we don’t have a finance director kind of everything falls on me and I can’t delegate. Because no body ever does it as well as I could do it so I end up, I love it as well and because …is all fresh and new the website and that I’ve just sat and done that (Belinda).

However, as with our other interviewees aged under 30 (e.g. Gaynor), Belinda foresees a point where she may experience conflict as a working parent, saying of her work, “I love it but that’s the hardest thing because I would love to have kids and then I think but I’d have to have a day off! And do I want all of that additional responsibility?”. For Gaynor, long hours are all part of the ethos of corporate IT environments. She says, “If you’re not prepared to work long hours, or be the one that stands out and use that to your advantage, then you don’t want to do this job. It suits some people but not others” (Gaynor, 25-30 years, IT Business Analyst). We also found, as Webster (2005a) highlights, that part-time working was not offered as an option to any of our interviewees wishing to change their working patterns.

28 _{Although the WINIT team would question the notion of choice and enjoyment as the primary factor in understanding why long hours are}

such an entrenched part of the IT workplace.

In this section (Moving Up) we have considered the issues highlighted by our interview data in relation to women’s experiences of IT workplaces. Some of the key issues our interviewees talked about were their relationships with their male colleagues (with some being welcoming, and others being sexist and patronising), the advantages and disadvantages of being doubly ‘visible’ (as a woman) and ‘invisible’ (as an IT professional) in an IT organisation.

The women we spoke to were frustrated with being stereotyped, with Lizzy for example talking about the ways in which it was assumed she would be unable to, or should not, carry out certain tasks purely on the basis of her gender status. We also highlighted the difficulties faced by women with children working in the IT sector, which, despite recent calls for ‘flexibility’ and better work-life balance (DTI 2005b:16-18), is yet to sufficiently tackle the need for a greater range of working time options, such as part-time and term-time working.

On a more positive note WINIT interviewees spoke about the elements of IT work they enjoyed, and many spoke about the satisfaction they gained from careers they perceived as successful. Others however expressed their frustration with the way in which their career was progressing, and were considering leaving. We deal with such future-orientated data in the following section.

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