More than 90 percent of the engineers who make Internet systems work are men.
In the next four years, women will continue to be massively underrepresented in the networking field, despite a major shortage of skilled engineers in Europe that threatens to hamper the industry.
The number of women working as network professionals in Western Europe is expected to double by 2004, reaching almost 94,000. But that's still only a fraction of the number of people working in the industry, according to a report by IDC for Cisco Systems (CSCO).
Increasing the number of women in the field could help offset an impending crisis.
"The networking skills shortage in Europe isn't going away despite the recent economic downturn," said Mike Couzens, managing director of corporate communications and training for Cisco EMEA. "Women could make a major contribution towards plugging that gap and help companies and countries stay competitive."
At the end of last year, only 5.6 percent of engineers in Western Europe were female. That number is projected to increase to 7.3 percent by 2004.
That upsurge alone won't be enough to offset the shortage of skilled networking professionals, which is expected to exceed 500,000 in the region by 2004.
"The number of men participating in the networking profession will almost double as well, which is good news for the industry, but still not nearly enough to close the skills gap," Couzens said. "The forecasted strong growth of women joining the industry is welcome, but it shows more needs to be done to encourage those who perhaps never considered networking engineering as a career."
So why do so many women find the Internet networking field undesirable?
Many women perceive the field as "nerdy" or "too technical," the report found. Also, a lack of strong female role models discourages many from entering the industry.
British Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt recently announced an initiative to boost the number of women in information technology in Great Britain, where only one in five people currently working in the industry is female.
"We need to give IT an image makeover to make it more attractive to women," Hewitt said in a statement. "The image that many schoolgirls have of IT is more computer geek than computer chic."
The major hurdle for boosting the number of women in the industry is convincing young women to join a technical profession in the first place, the report says.
"There needs to be a change in women's attitudes to technical careers, and the best place to do that is during their education," Couzens said. "The more women who enter the industry, the more women there will be."
Women in the field say they are well rewarded with opportunities for fast career advancement, according to Marianne Kolding, co-author of the report.
In Western Europe, organizers are already seeing an 11 percent participation rate of female students taking the Cisco Networking Academy Program, a free networking curriculum that Cisco offers to schools and colleges throughout the world.
Out of the 13 countries surveyed, France is projected to have the highest percentage of women in the networking industry, with over 12 percent participation rates projected by 2004.
That high participation rate could be due in part to a major equal opportunities initiative, which the French government launched last year, to encourage men and women to consider jobs that are not usually associated with their gender.
But governments and industry need to not merely educate women who are interested in the field, but to also retain those who are already in the industry, the report suggests.
"There isn't much point in training women to enter the industry if no effort is made to retain them with good working conditions and career prospects," Couzens said. "It's also important to retain them so there are more role models in the future."
