If you can see them, you can be them

What do Globe Telecom, Orange and Telenor have in common? And what do those three do just a little bit better than both Colt and Singtel?

The answer, as you’ll see from the table, below, is that the three companies – one from Asia, two from Europe – have senior leadership teams that are a precise 50-50 split between men and women.

With the addition of Colt and Singtel, these five between them lead the industry in this Capacity survey for International Women’s Day on how well the telecoms and data centre industries are moving towards true equality at senior management level. [See note at the end of this piece about Colt and euNetworks, who have seen this report after first publication and have asked for amendments.]

And diversity is important, says Catherine Hemingray, sales director at SmartCIC in southern France. “We’re trying to make sure diversity is part of what we do. We’re trying to make SmartCIC represent the society we’re in. It’s not just a case of hire a woman so we can tick a box. It’s important to be aware of cultural diversity.”

Eugina Jordan, CMO at the Telecom Infra Project in the US, agrees: “Diversity is good for business. When teams are diverse, innovation is better.”

Gemma Edgar, digital marketing manager at Women in Tech UK, believes there are signs of progress. “There are now 26% of women in technology roles globally, compared with 19% four years ago.”

Of course, the industry as a whole is nowhere near such a standard. In our survey for Capacity, we found eight companies with women forming 9% or less of their senior management teams, and another 12 companies with just 10-19% women.

Not one company, not one, had a majority of women in its top management team. The best we could hope for was 50-50 – or, to be precise, four-four in Telenor’s case or six-six for both Orange and Globe Telecom.

Far to go

This sad data is not just an indication of how far the telecoms and data centre industries have to go – but it’s more than just data. It shows the impact on real people’s lives of this built-in discrimination. Real women are impeded in their deserved careers by this failure.

Unless, of course, you believe that there is something inherently male in achieving a management position in telecoms and data centre companies. What could that be? If you’re such a dinosaur, stop reading now.

One of the main challenges is that there are so few role models for girls and women coming through the education system. “You need to get every single school to know you can have an amazing career in technology and science,” said Edgar. “They aren’t just boys’ subjects.”

Aashna Puri, senior manager for strategy and sustainability at CyrusOne, says there is a lack of awareness of data centres. She came from a real estate background, but says: “Cloud I could understand, but what is a data centre?”

Puri has been promoting the industry by speaking to an academy about tech jobs. “Only two put their hands up to say they knew what a data centre is.”

Stumbling

She’s noticed how people stumble into the industry. “The has been drawing talent from a small group, from sectors that are more male dominant.”

Hemingray is a typical example of this. “I used to be a senior nurse at Guy’s hospital in London,” she says. At least that gave her a voice. “I had to make sure I was heard,” she recalls. “You need to speak out and raise your hand. It takes an effort to make yourself heard.”

Shahini Palmer, now VP of sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Analog Devices and the leader of company’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programme, studied electrical and electronics engineering at university, “much to the annoyance of my parents, who said it wasn’t a job for a lady.”

After university – Palmer originally wanted to be a sound engineer – she found no role models. “Where will I go?” I wondered. “One company wanted to hire me but said I’d be too much of a distraction.” But she’s worked in sales, applications and marketing for 27 years: “It’s been quite a journey.”

Two years ago we ran a survey, under the headline Where are the women?, that highlighted the problem of the scarcity of women at the top in telcos, from AT&T – two women and seven men on the leadership page of its website – to Vodafone, which in 2021 had a 14-member executive committee, led by a man, with just four women.

The most senior woman at Vodafone then was group CFO Margherita Della Valle, who is now also acting CEO, heading a team of 13. Essentially, Della Valle is now doing two jobs. We had one of those last time, when BT gave its general counsel the extra task of running regulatory affairs: one women, two jobs, we said, and we say it again.

This time, though, we’ve tried to be more analytical, by looking at each company’s list of its executive management, or senior management, or leadership team – the category has various names, and each company decides for itself who goes in. Oddly, Telus does not include CTO Ibrahim Gedeon in its leadership team, and other companies list anything from three executives, in the case of A1 Telekom Austria, to 25, for Charter Communications, as members of the top team. We have to accept their categorisation.

And on the whole we’ve stuck to the group level, and not drilled down to functional or regional/national subsidiaries unless they’re clearly different. So we have Vodafone group, but not Vodafone Germany, but we have counted Vodacom separately.

The star system

And this time, we’ve given companies stars to show how well they’re performing: gold stars for Globe Telecom, Orange and Telenor; silver for Colt and Singtel. We awarded bronze stars to 16 companies, from Bouygues Télécom and Comcast, with 39% women on the main management team, to BT and Digital Realty, with just 30%.

Below that – and there’s a lot below that – we thought lead stars were appropriate for companies in the 20-29% range, from CyrusOne and Vocus at the top of that category, to CityFibre, E& (Etisalat), iBasis and Intelsat.

Less than 19%? Clay stars, for 12 companies in our survey, from China Unicom, Equinix, Telefónica and TIM at the top end, if any of them deserve to be classed as “top”, to Exa Infrastructure and Tata Communications at the other end.

But there’s further down to go, believe it or not. We found six companies that thought it wasn’t worth listing any women as a member of their main management team.

The aforementioned A1 Telekom Austria, we’re looking at you, along with Amazon Web Services (AWS), América Móvil, China Mobile, STC [Saudi Telecom] and Telecom Egypt. There are 15 men on STC’s top management, but no women. Five men on AWS’s management, but no women.

Progress at last

But there is progress, say many of the women I spoke to. Palmer says the company she works for is now hiring graduates at a “near 50-50” gender split now. “There’s progress,” she smiles.

But she notes with concern that “there are a significant number of women leaving senior roles and being replaced by men”, especially after the tough times of the pandemic. “Covid was tough, looking after kids, looking after parents.”

Edgar says employers want to hire women, “but they don’t know where to look. Tech has been a male dominated industry. There are a lot of barriers. Young girls can’t see themselves in a technology role.”

Visibility helps, says Jordan. “If you see them, you can be them.”

In this Capacity survey, overall we found there are 522 men in the senior leadership in the companies we surveyed, and 173 women: that’s 695 senior managers, of whom just 24.9% are women. That shows how far the industry has to go.

And, of course, now that we have some numbers, at least for the major companies in the industry, we can keep track of the maths.

Apologies, by the way, for companies not included: we’ll try to be more inclusive next time. We hope you also try to be more inclusive.

Source and methodology: Companies’ own published data, shown as senior management team, executive team, senior leadership team, or similar term in March 2023. Teams can be anything from four members to more than 20, as determined by the company in question, so changes by one member up or down can result in significant percentage fluctuations for smaller teams.

Amendments:

Stephanie Lynch-Habib points out that the nine-strong executive team at euNetworks has four women. That indicates euNetworks' senior leadership team is 44% women. That earns euNetworks a silver star.

And Keri Gilder, CEO of Colt, says: "My executive leadership team is 50%/50%, so Colt is just as good if not better than Orange, Globe Telecom and Telenor."

Colt's website appears to show at https://www.colt.net/about/leadership/ that there are five men and four women in the senior leadership team, which is what we used for our analysis, but she says Mark Beedon and one other, not listed, are "part of my CEO support team" and not part of the senior leadership team. We are happy to make that clear, and have moved Colt from silver star to gold star.