The career of men and women in the Flemish ICT sector. Opportunities and threaths.

Abstract

Because of macro-economic changes, organizations are now functioning differently than the classic bureaucracies with their career ladders: rapid technological changes and globalization have their impact on the way a company should ideally work. The work organization is being increasingly characterized by a less hierarchically organized structure with more autonomy and responsibility for each employee but also by ever greater demands on the employee, who has to be able to work flexibly in an ever-changing organization. As a result careers are changing. The traditional linear career has been replaced by a multitude of different career trajectories. The mobility of employees is greater and horizontal career transitions become more common. This paper will focus on equal opportunities in the new economy. It is clear that not everyone is capable of profiting from the opportunities that such a flexible labour market offers. The aim of this paper is to show that some of the mechanisms that hinder women to advance through the glass ceiling are strengthened, some can be more easily avoided and some new opportunities and threats arise. We use a survey in the Flemish ICT-sector to analyse the vertical gender segregation. We use the ICT sector as an example of a flexible labour market. The organizational changes that lead to flexible career formation are intensified in the ICT sector. The ICT sector is characterized by rapid technological changes that compel companies to organize themselves in such a way that they can respond flexibly to it: the companies have a flatter organizational structure with more teamwork in projects. Moreover, the ICT sector is an open community: we see in the ICT sector a great deal of cross-pollination between companies. Companies work together in a network on different projects. In this way, employees get to know different companies, which facilitates transition from one company to another. Because of the rapidity with which technologies come and go, employees, finally, have to constantly retrain themselves: in the ICT, life-long learning is not an empty concept but an essential component of each job. A culture of life-long learning minimizes the jump to a new job, to which a learning period is inevitably associated. Moreover, the ICT sector has, until the beginning of 2001, known a period of economic expansion whereby it was relatively easy to change jobs.