Trust women! – both a perennial male exclamation and perhaps the answer to solving the Final Third problem too?
Anyone who spends any time at industry events will immediately recognise the gender imbalance in the telecoms sector – where are girls?
There doesn’t appear to be any technical reason for testosterone to be a mandatory requirement and the 4th utility that results is surely as relevant and suited to the fairer sex, so why the disparity?
It is all too easy to become focused on the technology and politics of telecoms delivery and to forget that what telecoms actually is.
An utility service that benefits all people.
The telecoms sector, like its close cousin Information Technology, is both historically and arguably currently over-represented by the male of the species and under-represented by the female.
Hence, it is helpful and salutary for the former to listen to the latter 
Having had a serious b*****ing of late by certain women for whom this male author has the greatest of respect, with due contrition, let us consider what actually matters.
Namely that the 4th Utility we all want to see delivered for the UK will only be successfully built if it takes into account the needs and wants of all of us.
And in order to deliver, we as a Big Society, must learn to work together, regardless of our personal agendas, friends and foes and above all Dangly Bits 
In no particular order, and by no means an exhaustive list, thanks to the following females for inspiring this post by what you do:
Helen Anderson
Libby Bateman
Val Smith
Chris Conder
Lindsey Annison
Fiona White
Imelda Havers
Jenny Wilkinson
Lillian Sizeland
Sally Bowman
Ruth Brown
Comments 4
Good post. IMO the main reason there are so few women in IT is because the internet has only recently become socially acceptable to them, in the last decade or so. Prior to that I remember going through school and higher education where the opposite sex would invariable disparage anybody who enjoyed working in IT.
Exceptions were often in stark minority and those that did exist could also face peer pressure to do something different and “less geeky”. So I imagine it will take just a few more years for a more mixed and modern generation to work their way up to being noticed. Cultural change takes time.
The internet is no longer a haven for geeks and boffins, at least not in the sense of an exclusive club
Posted 26 Jul 2010 at 12:27 pm ¶Thanks Mark – to read an excellent non-geek female point of view see http://5tth.blogspot.com/2010/07/broadband-is-boring.html
Posted 26 Jul 2010 at 12:36 pm ¶I can’t resist putting my oar in here (even though I should be doing something else – displacement activity or what!).
I don’t think it has anything to do with the Internet being socially acceptable or not. I think, generally speaking, women are more interested in what IT can do for us rather than in the technology for its own sake. I’m ancient and can remember the incredible time saving from the introduction of something as simple as ‘cut and paste’. We therefore became interested rather later in IT’s development as it took a while to actually become useful. Some of us did get addicted to the technology as well but it is the ‘what it will do’ aspect that got us interested in the first place. To be honest, even now I’m not that interested in specific ping times or speed. All that really interests me is that, now I’ve got the new connection, it’s not slowing me down. I can work at the speed I want to because the technology has FINALLY caught up with what I want to do. Yes!!
Cheers, Ruth
Posted 27 Jul 2010 at 10:59 am ¶Cool – best keep the new service up and running then
Posted 27 Jul 2010 at 3:08 pm ¶Post a Comment