Mind the Gap

If youve been to London and taken the Underground, you may have heard an announcement at each stop telling you to Mind the gap, cautioning you to be alert as you disembark, so as not to hurt yourself by catching your foot between the train and the platform.

If several surveys taken now and in the last couple of years and anecdotal accounts are any indicator, it would seem professionals in the IT world also need to mind the gapthat is, to be alert to gaps with respect to gender, age, or any minority group.

For example, in a just-released survey of more than 6,000 IT professionals by online skills-measurement company Brainbench, women lost significant ground on the salary front in the technology sector in 2002. The percentage of females earning the same as men fell significantly in virtually every salary category above $40,000, the study says. By comparison, in 2001 women largely broke even with men. In fact, that earlier survey also indicated the percentage of females earning more than $150,000 outpaced the percentage of males by almost double in companies with sales in excess of $1 billion.

Is there a gap in insurance? Interest-ingly, while still heavily a minority, women CIOs seem to fare comparatively better in insurance, at least in terms of numbers. According to a new study by human resource consulting firm Sheila Greco Associates, out of 41 insurers in the Fortune 500, 18.5 percent have women CIOs. By comparison, a survey of a general sampling of Fortune 1000 companies indicated that about 13 percent of CIOs are women. Still, within the 41 insurers, there are an average of 10 direct reports to the CIO, and only five percent of those direct reports are women.

Jane Koppenheffer, CIO of Penn Na-tional Insurance, asserts finding women at her level is rare. Still, she says, she hasnt sensed discrimination; rather, she suggests, one reason for the gap may be the time demands of the job. It may be more likely that women have responsibilities outside the job that make it harder for them to be flexible. A lot of IT is being on call, on demand, on schedule, she notes. As for salary, she says her company uses a salary evaluation guide to ensure consistency. But she points out that some of the seeming disparity may be a matter of which jobs are valued most (for more on insurance IT salaries, see the cover story, How Does Your Garden Grow? p. 20) and how many women are in them versus some others with lesser value. For instance, she says, while there may be a higher job demand for programmers in the networking area in her company, there are fewer women there than, say, in the application development group.

However, of the gaps in question, Koppenheffer says, Id probably be most sensitive to the age one. I think of all the executive positions within an insurance company, the CIO tends to be the youngest. As for possible reasons, she notes, some people have concerns about those in management losing touch with the cutting edge of technology.

Studies regarding age are less definitive than gender. A survey in 2001 by employment-resource Web site Techies.com seemed to indicate, perhaps not surprisingly, that the perception of age discrimination depended on the age of the respondent. More than two-thirds of respondents over age 45 said age discrimination is a significant problem in the technology industry, with 31 percent saying they have witnessed or experienced age bias in the workplace. By contrast, less than a third of those respondents under age 35 said they have witnessed or experienced such discrimination or consider it a serious problem.

Koppenheffer asserts the bursting of the dot-com bubble may have helped to rectify some of this issue: In those industries, youth was everything. There was a strong bias against age. The Internet is a whole different way of doing business, [theyd say,] and these old people dont know what to do. That experience has shown being on the cutting edge is not enough. There is true value in maturity and having gone through different business cycles. I do think that will help over time to tip the balance more the way it should be.

Amen. Balance should be based strictly on finding the best available talent. If not, an insurer is doing itself a disserviceand that can cost a company its competitive edge. Even when not done on a conscious level, shrinking the talent pool or offering double-standard incomes, if that applies, has an opportunity cost. Its easy to get complacent in an economic downturn, when dozens, if not hundreds, of rsums come in for every opening. But its still important to keep those gaps in mind and recognize that a balanced management team and staff can yield more innovative ideas and better business solutions by tapping into a wider and richer range of resources.

Sharon S. Schwartzman
Editor-in-Chief