A Case for Women Geeks
Nigeria’s budding technology sector is growing fast. But growth can be accelerated if it integrates more women into its fold, writes Solomon Elusoji
Ommo Clark never wanted to go into Information Technology (IT). She read Business Administration in her undergraduate days at London Guildhall University in the United Kingdom. But for her final year thesis, a friend suggested doing something within technology. She followed the trail and never looked back, going on to acquire an MSc in Information Systems from Brunel University.
Today, Ommo is a distinguished IT consultant with over 15 years worth of experience, working with computers. She has worked with Lehman Brothers in the UK, and a host of other well-known investment banks and software companies both in Nigeria and overseas.
But, in an IT universe populated by men, women like Ommo are starting to become rare species. In the United States, women made up only 26 per cent of the computing workforce in 2012, while only 18 per cent of computer science majors were women. Additionally, women hold only 11 per cent of executive technical roles at privately held, venture-backed companies, while only 7 per cent of venture capital goes to women-owned businesses; and of those venture capitalists investing in start-ups, only 4.2 per cent are women.
If the statistics from America, arguably, the most technologically advanced country in the world can be so depressing, one can only wonder what the situation would look like in Nigeria, where over half of the population of secondary school children do not have access to personal computers in their homes.
The Chief Executive Officer of Patriach Partners, an American holding company managing companies with more than $8 billion in revenue, Lynn Tilton, captured the essence of the issue when she said: “Our journeys, as women of industry, technology, or service – are lonely and fraught with obstacles unknown to men. We face a choice and consequent juggling act indigenous to our sex – the election whether or not to bear children and, if so selected, the split-of-self required to rear our young without losing the propensity of trajectory to our career paths.
“This unrivalled quest to ‘have it all’, to ‘excel at both’, or the unbearable compromise to ‘sacrifice one for the other’ should bind us and unite us in the awe and appreciation of modern womanhood. But instead, few of us find the support system, the sponsors, or the advocates to drive us forward when the darkness envelops us and the battle overwhelms us.”
“Back in the 80s it was equal, but today, the statistics continue to rise in favour of the men,” the Director of Profession Development at Andela, Judith Okonkwo said during an interactive session at the recently concluded Social Media Week in Lagos.
The interactive session was tagged ‘Where