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Home > All Blogs > It's Time For Womeninit, Is It?

It's time for Womeninit, is it?

Sat 07 November 2009

, Lydia Duijvestijn


Tags: women in it

Being one of the nominees for the first awards for women-in-it, assigned by the network of the same name, I had plenty of opportunity to formulate my own thoughts about yet-again-a-women's-network and about the categories for the awards. There were awards for managers, talents and colleagues. An award for 'best female IT professional' was missing...


For me it is beyond doubt that high profile female IT professionals should receive appropriate attention. There are very little of them and they are mostly working in extremely male-dominated environments. The question is, however, if these women aren't better served by a 'sub-community' of some sort within existing professional networks. After all, a certain level of surrounding professional experience is required to help one grow professionally. And, let's face it...male professionals have lots of bright ideas that we would like to add to, react on, elaborate on and improve. Diversity to me also means that a woman is accepted as an equal in her own professional networks....



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Comments (6)


Lydia Duijvestijn

Sat 21 Aug 2010 18:47:58

Re-reading my own comment and having attended more meetings of the womeninit network, I have changed my opinion and came to the conclusion there definitely is a need for this type of network.

Lydia Duijvestijn

Mon 07 Dec 2009 17:49:01

Hi Liz



I was at Randstad and was inspired by the presentations, I am part of a number of professional and other networks including women's networks. My observation in women's networks today is that the number of women striving for an executive career is increasing. However, the number of women in technical professions is still very small. My point is that next to information regarding personal development, a professional also needs to engage in lively discussions regarding topics related to their profession. This is very hard given the low numbers of e.g. IT Professionals. Maybe it is easier for lawyers or for docters. This was the reason why I asked the question whether subnetworks should be formed inside existing professional networks.

Liz Hector

Sat 28 Nov 2009 07:39:46

Did you come to the live Leap! event on 26 Nov at Randstat? Did that help you change your view at all?

Liz Hector

Sat 28 Nov 2009 07:39:35

What about Choice? A womens right to choose is about life, work and career choices that you, not society, want to put upon you. I belong to Facebook for friends, Linkedin for work, Twitter for instant news and pulse info. I also below to 3 professional organizations and Leap! They all are a part of who I am, and form and inform me in different ways. That is my choice.

Lydia Duijvestijn

Thu 19 Nov 2009 15:13:56

Hi Marianne,



Taking the risk that this is becoming a very IBM-oriented discussion, I would like to react to your comment. I just started to redefine the WiT initiative that was started 5 years ago but died somehow. We gathered the metrics (numbers of IT specialists, IT architects and IT consultants), we identified a number of actions that we would like to take, one of the first being a round table with IBM technical women and senior technical leaders within our region. We, the Netherlands IT architects will have lunch with Herman van Dellen in december to discuss how we can benefit from what he is doing. There is management commitment at IMT level, so I have good hopes that the initiative will stay alive this time.

Marianne De Jager

Fri 13 Nov 2009 10:14:34

Lydia,

Thanks for starting up this conversation. A feminine perspective on the technology side of the businss is very important I think. Presently there is a Technical Profession Council that hosts 4500 professionals in IBM Benelux. Herman van Dellen is leading this. I am sure you know about it. What would it mean if we could identiy the female professionals and find out what it is they need? We have a "Women in Technology" network in IBM, how is that represented in NL for instance?

Marianne de Jager


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