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Overcoming gender stereotypes is key to inclusivity


Johannesburg, 15 Jul 2019
Julie Noizeux, Partner Success Manager for South Africa, Veritas.
Julie Noizeux, Partner Success Manager for South Africa, Veritas.

The IT industry remains one that is largely dominated by men, despite a growing clamour for more inclusivity and greater levels of gender parity. There are, of course, numerous reasons why women face so many challenges in breaking into this industry.

According to Julie Noizeux, Veritas Partner Success Manager for South Africa, often it begins at a very young age, with children being groomed to fit the traditional gender stereotypes. She points out that historically, men have been viewed as the ones who are technically proficient. For her, these gender roles were so accepted, that even though there were several male members of her family in IT, it never occurred to her to consider a career in the field until she was in her 20s.

“For me, the key to success is to personally take charge of your own development. For example, I taught myself about the technical aspects of my job, through nothing more than effort and hard work. Moreover, placing a focus on constant learning is critical today, because much like carpenters need to regularly sharpen their tools, you need to constantly update your technology skills if you want to keep up with the current speed of change,” she says.

“My goal was always to stay a step ahead of my contemporaries and one way of doing this for me was to grasp whichever opportunity came along – even if it wasn’t necessarily in the exact field I was interested in – and then put extra effort into learning both this field’s subject matter and that of the area I was interested in. This meant that when an opportunity arose in the field I was keen on, I was better positioned than most to take it.”

She admits the pressure on women is different to that which men endure, particularly when first breaking into a field, because in the beginning, women often have to work harder in order to be as accepted. “Fortunately,” she adds, “at Veritas, promotions are purely merit-based and the company has a very diverse team that collaborates well.

“If we want to achieve true gender parity in this and other, similar industries, we need a much stronger emphasis on encouraging more children to focus on science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) fields. While industry must sponsor more technology rooms at schools, holistically speaking, it must also encompass parents driving the STEM message at home.

“Then, from the education perspective, we need to avoid pigeon-holing people based on their gender and ensure that everyone has an opportunity to try everything – from sport to science – and be encouraged to pursue their passions.”

She adds that while Veritas itself has strong gender diversity, it would still be nice to attend meetings with partners or customers where the gender balance was closer to equal. Although female representation abounds in most IT companies, says Noizeux, there is still not enough representation at the boardroom level yet.

“The good news is that such change is happening more rapidly all the time. Societal mores are also evolving on a faster timescale today and things that were frowned upon by much of society 25 years ago are perfectly acceptable now. With this in mind, I believe that as fewer people are pushed into gender-specific roles and more women achieve senior positions and can serve as role models, so the momentum will increase in the right direction, like a snowball rolling downhill,” she concludes.

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