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Telcos lack female employees

Paula Gilbert
By Paula Gilbert, ITWeb telecoms editor.
Johannesburg, 28 Apr 2016
Women feature minimally in executive and top management roles at SA's telecoms operators.
Women feature minimally in executive and top management roles at SA's telecoms operators.

Men still dominate employee numbers at the majority of SA's major telecoms operators.

When comparing the gender split, Cell C leads the pack, with CEO Jose Dos Santos claiming it is made up of 60% female employees. Rivals Vodacom, MTN and Cell C all have less than 45% female employees overall.

Vodacom's most recent integrated report for the year ended 31 March 2015 shows 44% of the telco's staff are women. Statistics from MTN for the year ended 31 December 2015 show that as a group, only 37% of MTN's staff are female.

Telkom comes in with the worst stats, with only 31% female employees, according to its integrated report for the year ended 31 March 2015.

Cell C could not give ITWeb exact statistics by the time of publication, but Dos Santos recently told Internet radio station CliffCentral's Leadership Platform segment that when he joined Cell C, about 42% of staff were women but now around 60% are female. Dos Santos was later forced to apologise after sexist comments made during the interview caused a public backlash and social media riot.

ICT industry veteran Adrian Schofield says globally, membership of professional bodies in the ICT arena reflects a ratio of 80/20 male/female, so the percentages reflected in the South African telcos are significantly "better" than that.

"In spite of the intentions of South Africans in general to redress the inequalities of the past, we are still tied to the patriarchal legacies of the past, where the preconceived notions of men and women about appropriate job roles still limit the opportunities for women to be treated as equals in the workplace.

"Of course, there are many notable exceptions, but they should not be exceptions, they should be the norm," adds Schofield.

"There is a pathology in this sector particularly, but obviously reflecting wider social inequalities, of appointing men over clearly competent and sometimes obviously superior women candidates to senior positions in both the public and private sector," according to Alison Gillwald, executive director at Research ICT Africa.

"For functional institutions you clearly want meritocratic appointments; there are clearly large numbers of women to take up these positions on these terms, and yet there is a reluctance to appoint them."

Gender split:

Total employees
Cell C: Around 60% female and 40% male
Vodacom: 44% female and 56% male
MTN: 37% female and 63% male
Telkom: 31% female and 69% male

Top jobs
Vodacom: (Executive committee) 17% female and 83% male
MTN: (Management) 27% female and 73% male
Telkom: (Top management) 17% female and 83% male
Cell C: Statistics not available

Senior management
Vodacom: 32% female and 68% male
Telkom: 24% female and 76% male
MTN: Statistics not available
Cell C: Statistics not available

IDC research manager for IT services Africa, Jon Tullett, says the situation is not limited to the telecoms sector.

"Globally, women have experienced a glass ceiling forever, and that is particularly acute in ICT (and a number of related fields - STEM, engineering, and so on). This fuels a vicious cycle - the perception of a lack of opportunities for women in a field naturally discourages women from entering the field in the first place. The situation today is markedly better than a few years ago, but there is still a great deal more work to be done," adds Tullett.

Female managers

"I think overall ratios of women to men are useful, but the real measure of power relations is the management and ownership," according to Gillwald.

She says these "not bad figures of 35% to 45% by global standards" drop off much more when you look at top management - something clearly reflected when comparing statistics for SA's telcos.

Telkom's detailed breakdown of its gender split at all management levels shows approximately 30% of junior management is female but the numbers fall as the roles elevate. Middle management is 27% female, senior management is 24% female, and at top management, only 17% of positions are filled by women.

At the end of December 2015, only 27% of MTN managers were female, with the majority of leadership roles still filled by men.

MTN says it is focusing on improving its gender diversity in important leadership positions. During 2015, MTN employed two women in high-level posts, with Jyoti Desai being made group chief operating officer and Philisiwe Sibiya appointed as CEO of MTN Cameroon.

Vodacom says it has "worked hard to build diversity in our teams and also to reflect national demographics in the countries we operate in".

"The representation of women remains a challenge for our business and for the broader telecommunications industry. Less than 50% of our employees are women, and this difference becomes more pronounced at higher management levels," Vodacom admits.

Senior management at Vodacom is made up of 32% female managers, but there is only 17% female representation on the executive committee.

Vodacom says it is committed to increasing the representation of women at all levels in its business, and several senior-level appointments in the 2015 financial year contributed to addressing this challenge. Yolanda Cuba moved from the Vodacom board to its executive team as chief officer of strategy and development. Murielle Lorilloux was appointed as the first woman MD of the Vodacom DRC operation, and Lilian Barnard was appointed as chief sales officer for the enterprise business unit in SA.

Dos Santos was vague on how Cell C fares at senior management and executive level, saying only "at senior executive level we have quite a few women, at middle management we have a lot of women".

"Transformation of a workforce requires a sustained application of appropriate policies and processes in the management of the enterprise talent pool," says Schofield.

Jumping hurdles

None of the telecoms operators have female CEOs, although Dos Santos told CliffCentral he hopes his successor will be a woman.

"There are no female CEOs in the telcos but they have been able to appoint senior women in regulatory and legal executive management positions from the public sector, who have been far more proactive and equitable in their appointments, specifically councillors, when their terms in office end. But even in the public sector, the top leadership positions on councils, task teams and boards are generally reserved for men," says Gillwald.

Schofield says there are two major hurdles: "One is the small pool of women who are entering the sector, gaining experience and rising through the ranks. The other is the mind-set of the men who should be mentoring and coaching women to take over their seats."

Tullett believes the biggest hurdles are often cultural. "Creating opportunities in an org chart is one thing, but if the business culture is hostile to the change, it won't stick."

Gillwald agrees that even when women are appointed in top-level roles, it remains difficult for individuals to transform the patriarchal patterns of decision-making and influence within organisations, which she says "are reinforced as much by women as by men".

"So gender equity really needs to be part of wider organisational ethos that is quite foreign to an industry in which senior management has been populated by professions traditionally reserved for men and which, despite some rhetorical commitment to gender transformation, has not made great strides," she adds.

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