While there has been an increase in the number of females entering South Africa’s ICT sector, transformation is not taking place fast enough within the cloud and data centre industries.
She has held various senior leadership roles, including GM for engineering at the South African Broadcasting Corporation and market advisor at Intelsat, focused on delivering connectivity and digitisation capability for Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific. “And then when you look at board representation and C-suite level, you get an optimistic perception. But when you take a closer look at middle management and observe the rate of progression and calculate how long transformation is taking place at that level, you realise it happens at a very slow place. So, it takes the girl longer to climb the corporate ladder and move from intern, to manager and then to senior manager – than it takes her male counterpart.
“The progression metrics that are often used by some organisations can be deceiving when we look at women representation across the board. So, it’s important to focus on asking: What are the core functions of that organisation and what are the more technical skills required? Then you ring-fence that and start monitoring transformation based on incoming and outgoing female talent.