The low representation of women in the ICT sector's leadership and general workforce is a growing concern according to South Africa's Commission for Gender Equality (CGE).

The CGE has warned companies that action will be taken against them if more is not done to include women and ensure that they play a meaningful role.

Javu Baloyi, spokesperson at the CGE says women have contacted the institution to share their dismay at the lack of opportunity in the ICT sector. "As a commission we even know women who send CVs to us saying they are looking for jobs in the ICT industry to no avail. There are plenty of qualified women, including disabled women, who want to join the industry and they are qualified but some in the industry continue to make excuses that keep them out. It is doable but there is resistance."

Baloyi says the CGE has the law on its side and will use its powers to conduct search and seizure, subpoena and litigate with companies that fail to meet targets for gender parity.

"In discharging our mandate we can take companies to the equality court depending on the merits in each case."

Setting gender targets

Baloyi says ICT companies are free to consult the CGE in order to determine whether keeping with the legal requirements.

"By law they must have gender disaggregated data in the workplace and women in senior decision making roles. They must look at the employment equity act and also have policies that are enabling in their nature because they might want to recruit women into situations that are not conducive."

One senior female leader in the ICT industry, Tumi Chamayou Vice President, Strategy and Marketing sub –Saharan Africa at Ericsson says her company sees ICT as an important player in addressing gender imbalances globally.

"One of the things that we are doing at Ericsson is breaking it into sizeable chunks. Currently at an executive level we have at least 22% of execs are women as of 2015 and from a leadership perspective we are sitting at about 19 to 20 percent and our ambition is that by 2020 we would like to go to about 30% globally including our workforce. Our target in Sub-saharan Africa is about 24% and the reason that is lower than the global target is that we are having challenges with regards to the workforce in general as the pool is much smaller."

Chamayou who also leads the diversity and inclusion programme at Ericsson says while a target of 24% may seem miniscule, more has to be done to skill the women and ensure greater take up of technology, engineering, mathematics and science by young women and girls at school.

"If we look at other organisations that are similar to us like Intel, Cisco and some of the mobile operators we see the same trend and this gives us the impression that the pool is the same. If we look at Sub-Saharan Africa countries in a global list of 145 that are closing the gender gap Rwanda is number six, Namibia is sixteenth and South Africa is seventeenth. We need to ensure that that progress trickles into the ICT industry. I would say that we are doing our bit, but the general pool also needs to be bigger in order for us to to increase our numbers."

The Women for Science: Inclusion and Participation in Academies of Science report published earlier this month by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) evidences Chamayou's view of the dearth in skills and the need for investment in women's education.

The report notes that even though "great strides have been made in enrolling more women in undergraduate courses, especially in the biological and chemical sciences (success has been more limited in the areas of physics, mathematics and engineering), there remain significant challenges in ensuring that women scientists are able to have fulfilling careers with increasing levels of responsibility, eventually taking up leadership and decision-making positions."

The CGE says it has worked to ensure that universities and learning institutions adhere to gender equality targets and has gone so far as to call for the department of basic education to encourage schools to teach about the need for gender equality and share information on opportunities available for women and girls in specialised industries.