Opportunities for women grow as BPM emphasizes collaboration, innovation.
The number of women in Business Process Management (BPM) is increasing, but women still have a long way to go to achieve equality in the field. Men dominate information technology (IT) around the world, but the tide may be turning. In India, a 2015 industry report revealed that women made up larger portions of IT job applicants (28%, up from 23% in 2012), and that 51% of entry-level IT hires were women. When it came to receiving job offers, women’s chances were 50% higher than men’s.
Women Still Outnumbered in Leadership Roles
While workplace diversity and gender inclusivity are on the upswing in India, and women are gaining ground in IT, they are still rare in senior positions. While female new hires were growing to 51%, the gain in management positions was just 2%.
Historically, women have made up a lower percentage of India’s work force – whether due to pay disparity or personal choices – which impacts their representation at the management level. Worldwide, factors that have prevented women from breaking through the glass ceiling to attain senior leadership positions include:
- Gender discrimination
- Stereotypes that assign certain characteristics to men and women
- Funneling women into administrative, human resources and support roles, rather than positions where they’re responsible for an organization’s sales, profits and losses
- Pervasive underrepresentation that gives the appearance that leadership roles are out of reach
- Fewer seasoned female mentors to guide women up the career ladder.
Changes Make Room for Women in BPM
As BPM became widespread over the past two decades, diversity in the IT field has increased, but the patriarchal atmosphere persisted. Workers of both genders, but particularly women, found it difficult to fully participate in an era of all-night work sessions, inspired by a deadline-driven work environment.
In time, a shift from using IT to drive efficiency and processes, to a more holistic approach that takes into consideration customer experience, effective team building and collaboration, opened up avenues for women to succeed. Technology became not just about changing business for the sake of technology, but for facilitating the meeting of objectives and achieving quantifiable results. IT was not just for cutting jobs and costs, but for growing business.
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These changes in BPM are creating openings to career paths for women. And men are helping to facilitate these paths through coaching and mentorship. Acknowledging the underrepresentation of women in BPM worldwide is the first step to rectifying the situation.
Taking Steps to Develop More Women Leaders
How can organizations actively promote women in BPM to ensure that their talents, ideas and skills continue to be developed? Stephanie Berthe, with Capgemini, a consulting and technology firm in Paris, outlined her ideas in a recent blog post. She acknowledged that men still dominate IT, but added she has not let it stop her from becoming successful. Berthe believes that women should have the confidence “to stand up and forge our own careers,” as she said in her post.
Berthe offers several examples of how lack of confidence stymies women in their careers:
- Men often apply for jobs, even when they lack the required skills. Women don’t always have the confidence to take the same risks.
- Men often endorse men and encourage each other to apply for job openings.
- Women not only have to prove that they’re qualified for a job, but they have to prove to themselves that they are capable of “aiming higher.”
Younger women often take gender equality for granted, entering the workforce with more confidence than the generations before them. However, Berthe notes that things can change when they land a job and start dealing with an older, male-dominated management.
Berthe offers steps to changing the landscape for women in IT. She believes that first, women need to leverage their personal networks, and encourage women they trust to join their organizations. “I also believe that we need to change the mentalities of both men and women – women to be more confident, and men to give women space to grow,” she said.
With help from their more experienced colleagues, women can overcome challenges in male-dominated industries such as IT and BPM, especially with the right mentoring, coaching and training. It’s all about women and men helping women, thinking about the women on their teams and finding ways to help them grow.
