WHILE the cybersecurity industry played an increasingly crucial role in the digital world and offered many fulfilling career paths and opportunities, it still struggled with significant bias and gender stereotypes, says Barbara Maigret, global head of sustainability and CSR at Fortinet
This year, on International Women's Day, governments, organisations, and individuals worldwide have been asked to help envision and create a gender-equal world. This is a world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination and a world that was diverse, equitable, and inclusive. This was a world where difference was valued and celebrated. This year's theme is #BreakTheBias.
Maigret said there were still significant barriers and misperceptions that drove the belief that a career in cybersecurity was not for women.
“While women have been disproportionately impacted by pandemic-driven unemployment (for example, one in four women reported job loss due to a lack of child care – twice the rate of men), the technology sector was less affected. This was mainly due to their being better prepared to pivot to remote work and flexible work models.
“As a result, according to a report by Deloitte Global, large global technology firms still managed to achieve nearly 33 percent overall female representation in their workforces in 2022, up slightly more than two percentage points from 2019," added Maigret.
While such progress was good, the technology sector still had a long way to go compared to other industries. Outside of the hi-tech sector, women accounted for 47.7 percent of the global workforce and also made up 50.2 percent of the college-educated workforce.
The gender gap was even wider within the cybersecurity industry where, according to the (ISC)² Cybersecurity Workforce Study, women only make up 25 percent of the global cybersecurity workforce.
“This gap is certainly not because there aren't any jobs. According to that same study, the cybersecurity industry urgently needs 2.72 million more professionals. And while 700 000 cybersecurity professionals entered the workforce in the past year, the global workforce gap was only reduced by 400 000, indicating that global demand continues to outpace supply. Women are just generally not applying for or being recruited to fill these positions,” Maigret said.
This lack of gender equity had also directly contributed to the low percentage of women who held cybersecurity leadership roles. In 2021, for example, only 17 percent of Fortune 500 CISO positions were held by women, with only one woman CISO in the top 10 US companies.
There are three main reasons why women continue to be under-represented in the cybersecurity sector: the sector is seen as a man's career, young women are under-represented in STEM programmes and the bias in cybersecurity hiring.
However, Maigret said the challenge went beyond hiring as the reality was that women in cybersecurity roles also tended to be promoted more slowly than men—something known as the "first rung" problem.
According to Fortinet CISO Renee Tarun, "Men are four times more likely to hold executive roles than their female counterparts, they're nine times more likely to have managerial roles than women, and (on average) they're paid 6 percent more than women."
In addition, women tended to leave the field at twice the rate of men, citing gender bias, discrimination, and harassment as their reasons for leaving.
Maigret said given the rate at which digital innovation was transforming organisations (and the efforts of cybercriminals to exploit those digital acceleration efforts), now was the time to break the cybersecurity stereotypes.
To change this perception and get ahead of the cybercrime crisis the world faced, she said more voices, perspectives should be included, as well as diversity to the cybersecurity teams.
The world needed to highlight the contributions of women in cybersecurity in classrooms and businesses, identify and promote positive role-models and examples, and actively encourage diverse career paths, experiences, and job functions to the young women, encourage young women to pursue STEM-based degrees and careers at a young age and create and/or be part of mentorship programmes at all levels, beginning with basic technology classes in elementary schools that model success in technology for girls that continues throughout their higher education and professional careers.
More inclusive work environments should be implemented by identifying and breaking bias in hiring practices, training all employees (not just executives) about true inclusiveness, and actively making every employee feel involved, valued, and respected.
“And we need to ensure that women, especially women of colour, are treated fairly and are fully embedded in the workplace. She said the "first rung" barriers should be eliminated by actively promoting more women to leadership at every level of the organisation, beginning with roles as project and team leads and first-tier managers,” Maigret said.
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