ISG Launches Awards Program for Women in Digital Key Positions

Women are significantly underrepresented in the digital industry. To change that, there are various initiatives. One comes from Information Services Group, ISG. The large U.S. market research and consulting firm has just launched the ISG Women in Digital Awards program.

On Girls Day 2022 at the end of April, women and girls in IT professions are still clearly in the minority. Germany is also not in a good position when it comes to women in IT professions. This was also a major topic again recently. The German government’s third equality report, published in July 2021, was finally discussed in the Bundestag at the beginning of April 2022, after a delay of more than half a year. In response, the Green Party in the Bundestag issued a press release calling for more digital participation by women and girls.

Women significantly underrepresented in the IT world

At present, the proportion of women in the industry is just 16 percent, and they are hardly represented in management positions. This shows that there should be more initiatives like the ISG Women Digital Awards from the Information Services Group, ISG for short, which is headquartered in Stamford in the US state of Connecticut and is one of the leading market research and consulting companies in the IT sector.

Eurostat figures from 2020 paint a somewhat better picture. According to these, Germany was pretty much in the middle of the pack there with a 17.5 percent share of women. Surprisingly, Bulgaria, Greece and Romania are way up there with an IT women’s share of over 26 percent each.

Compared to the 19 percent ten years earlier, Greece has made a considerable leap, but Germany has only increased by about one percentage point. But if the work, as experienced in southern Chinese factories in 2000, consists mainly of snipping off excess solder joints with nail scissors, the women’s cause is little served. Nor does it really solve the shortage of skilled workers in the IT industry. Ultimately, the goal is to get more women into qualified to highly qualified jobs within the industry.

5+1 Categories of the ISG Women in Digital Awards

And that’s where ISG comes in with its ISG Women in Digital Awards program. As Michael P. Connors, the company’s chairman and CEO, says, the awards program aims to recognize extraordinary leadership by women who are driving the digital revolution, while also promoting the advancement of women in digital switchboards (literally, roles). “Companies actively recruit women for their unique and valuable skills, and they realize the significant business benefits they gain from the diversity of leadership approaches, perspectives and backgrounds that women bring to the table,” Connors said.

An independent panel of judges from the corporate, provider and consulting communities will evaluate the nominations and select the winners in the following five categories:

• Digital Innovator is the award for significant impact on an organization, business or customers through creative use of digital solutions.
• Rock Star Leader is the award for initiating a massive transformation with significant business impact and demonstrating exceptional leadership.
• Women’s Advocate is the award for playing an active role in helping women find success in the digital world.
• Rising Star is the award for demonstrating exceptional continued growth with advancement to higher levels of leadership, responsibility and influence.
• Women’s Initiative of the Year is considered an award for a program or initiative that has been instrumental in advancing and empowering women within the company or an organization.

In addition to the five categories mentioned above, the “Digital Titan of the Year” award is also planned, with which the jury will select the most outstanding “Women in Digital” from all the applications received in 2022.

Prominent role models, but still too few

In the U.S. and some other countries, there are and have been a number of outstanding female executives in the IT industry, though most of them at the business rather than the IT executive level – and far too few overall.

Admittedly, in Germany there are and have been some powerful women at the top of companies with headquarters or large branches in Germany. The best-known example today is probably Sabine Bendiek, who was CEO of Microsoft Germany from January 2016 until the end of 2020 and then joined the SAP Executive Board as Labor Director. Incidentally, her post at Microsoft Germany was taken over by French lawyer Marianne Janik.

Source header picture : Adobe Stock / jozefmicic