Immigrant women forge new careers in IT
Women continue to struggle to increase their numbers in the male-dominated field of information technology, but when you add being a new immigrant female, the challenge becomes even greater.
Women represent only a 24 per cent slice of the workforce in IT in Canada. Of that, immigrant women represent 38 per cent, according to the Information and Communications Technology Council.
It appears some progress is being made, however, through support programs that help female newcomers with an IT background to transition into the workforce by gaining Canadian experience and by gaining additional certifications to get them up to speed by national standards for the industry.
Lamia Al-Azzawe is very familiar with the effort required to integrate into the Canadian IT industry as an immigrant from Iraq.
“Experience is everything at the end of the day,” says Al-Azzawe, who is currently a support technician for Acrodex Inc. in Calgary.
After moving briefly to Egypt, she immigrated to Canada in 2005 and ended up in Toronto. She already had nine years of experience working as a computer programmer with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from her home country.
The main obstacle was updating her education to Canadian standards and then gaining the local experience needed — a barrier familiar to many immigrants in many occupations.
“I try to be up to date, but there is lots inside the IT field and lots of different areas,” Al-Azzawe says. “I look at what I’m doing, what the organization’s needs are
We had hands-on training, classes, exams ... so I got some certificates and worked as a volunteer
LAMIA AL-AZZAWE
and what I need to do to develop my skills.”
She adds: “It’s just that when we go to another country, it’s just sometimes language, culture — it takes some time to become familiar.”
Statistics from the Immigrant Women’s Centre in Ontario show new immigrant women earn 20 per cent less than other Canadian women and 30 per cent less than men. Newly-arrived immigrant women who are university educated are also less likely to be employed than their Canadian-born counterparts: 68 per cent versus 83 per cent, according to the report.
Al-Azzawe turned to a nonprofit organization in Toronto called the Community Microskills Development Centre, which offers tailored programs to immigrants to help them integrate into Canadian culture. It also offered her a program to update her IT skills.
“We had hands-on training, classes, exams ... so I got some certificates and worked as a volunteer,” she explains. “(Employers) always want to see Canadian experience.”
She also gained additional certification through an organization called CompTIA, which further enhanced her ability to compete in the labour market, ending up with her landing a job at Acrodex.
That wasn’t before her volunteer experience, and then a contract job in Red Deer, before finally moving to her permanent home in Calgary. She doesn’t see being an immigrant woman in a male-dominated field as an ob- stacle.
“Women are less than men in this field, but for me it’s not an issue,” says Al-Azzawe.
The Information and Communications Technology Council released a report earlier this month as part of its Road Map for Building Digital Skills workshop that identified diversity and inclusion as “critical” factors in addressing skills shortages in the IT sector.
It found training to address emerging technologies was key, along with lifelong learning and collaboration among all industry stakeholders, as playing a crucial role in who gets into the field — and how they progress in their careers.
Encouraging more immigrant women, for example, to transition more easily into the field, will play an increasing role for organizations searching for top talent.
“The inclusion of more women and youth in ICT professions is a particular opportunity to address the workforce demands of emerging technologies,” says Namir Anani, president and chief executive of ICTC. “It is also clear that better mechanisms for information-sharing — domestically and internationally — would be beneficial.”
Al-Azzawe looked up to a mentor in her homeland — a colleague from school — as she progressed in her career. While she lost an opportunity to grow her career in Iraq, she remains optimistic that the journey was well worth it in Canada.
She encourages other immigrant women not to be intimidated by the process involved in pursuing a new career in IT when they arrive, even if it takes a lot personal time and resources.
For her, it was the right decision. “I wanted a future for my son,” she says.