Women's Role in Plugging IT Skills Gap Boosted with First Female Regional Cisco Networking Academy
March 20, 2007
By Jason Deign, News@Cisco
The role of women in plugging IT skills gap has been given a boost in one of the world's most important developing regions.
Pakistan, the sixth most populous country in the world and second most populous Muslim country worldwide, has leapt to the forefront of IT training for women with the opening of a women-only Cisco® Networking Academy® Program Regional Academy in Lahore, the country's second city.
Women-only Local Academies have previously been launched, and still operate, in countries such as Togo and Saudi Arabia.
But what makes the Lahore initiative special is that it is a Regional Academy: in other words, one tasked with providing support and training for Local Academies in the region.
The Lahore College for Women University (LCWU) started operating as a Regional Academy in May this year, adding to its already considerable reputation as one of the oldest female institutions in Pakistan.
It first opened its doors to students in 1922 and today it has more than 6,500 women enrolled on intermediate, degree and postgraduate courses.
The addition of Networking Academy program training is highly significant given the growing IT skills shortage faced by the country.
A report by the research organization IDC shows that Pakistan faces the largest skills gap of any country out of 38 nations surveyed across Europe, Africa and the Middle East in the last two years.
IDC estimates that the gap between demand and supply of networking skills will rise from its 2005 level of 31.8 percent to 45.5 percent in 2009.
This will equate to a lack of some 20,600 skilled professionals in the workforce, higher than countries such as Kuwait (with a predicted 2009 skills gap of 40.6 percent or 11,400 individuals) or Qatar (at 36.7 percent or 3700 people).
Such a dramatic shortage could seriously hamper economic development in Pakistan, according to Phillip van Heerden, the senior analyst at IDC who wrote the report.
"The business environment has evolved in recent years where supply chains compete against supply chains," he says. "Organizations are now, more than ever, interconnected entities that depend on the network for integration with their business partners.
"Not having sufficient networking skills available for this integration influences the competitiveness of not only organizations, but the country as a whole."
This is why the Lahore Women's Academy is good news, along with changing attitudes to women at work in the country generally.
Humaira Alvi, administrator for the Networking Academy at LCWU, says: "Until the near past, women had employment opportunities only in limited fields. However, with the passage of time, the behavior of society has changed.
"Organizations today are increasingly striving to induct more women in their workplaces. Commonly, their objectives include improving female-male ratios to support women empowerment and participation.
"There is a huge job potential for women, in call centers, educational institutions, public and private organizations and related domains, as they are often considered more reliable than male employees."
Similar Networking Academy program initiatives and changes in attitude are helping women to contribute to meeting skills shortages in countries such as Saudi Arabia, which IDC estimates will face a 33.4 percent deficit by 2009, and Jordan, where a 43 percent gap is foreseen.
Saudi Arabia is increasingly becoming a 'connected Kingdom', with the potential to leapfrog more traditional markets in its adoption of advanced technologies. And the opportunities for women to contribute to the country's economic growth are greater than they have ever been.
Kerry Laufer, Vice Dean at a women-only Networking Academy, Effat College in Jeddah, believes that acquiring the right skills to enter the job market in a changing society will be increasingly important to Saudi women.
"Doors are starting to open and we aim to equip our graduates with the expertise and self confidence to make the most of every opportunity that comes their way. These are potentially exciting times for women," she says.
In Jordan, meanwhile, 40 percent of all Networking Academy students are female and UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, holds regular recruitment fairs to help graduates find jobs.
Amal Tafish, an instructor in the Queen Rania Center for Educational Technology Networking Academy, says that joining the program as the only female student out of 15 "was an incentive for me to prove to myself and to others that networking is a field for both sexes."
She completed the course and became the first Cisco CCNA®-certified woman in the country's Ministry of Education before obtaining a Cisco Certified Network Instructor certification and assuming teaching and administrative responsibilities for the Queen Rania Center.
"It pleases me to see that the number of women joining the project is increasing constantly," she says. "The percentage of females in the first group I trained was 40; this has increased to 65 percent."
Jason Deign is a freelance journalist located in Barcelona, Spain.
