As women around the world are performing their duties alongside men in various fields, So we talk about the presence of women in the field of cyber security. It has been observed that there are fewer women in the field of cyber security than men. Now the question is why are they fewer?
Over the last three years, while living in the field of cyber security, I have noticed that women are less involved in this field than men. The main reason why women are not in this field is that women are not aware of this field. Another two main connected stereotypes that affect the gender gap in the field of cyber security: the notion that men are more equipped to master technical skills and other pursuits as well as the notion the cyber security field is solely or only a technical field. Two bogus stereotypes to make it challenging for women to make it into the field, as they are pushed away from the education courses, opportunities, and classes that could help them pursue careers in cyber security.
Another barrier into the cyber security industry is requiring a minimum of two years of experience for entry level positions. This poses the question: how do they get those two years without being offered an opportunity to gain the necessary skills or lessons. Lack of opportunities to acquire cyber security skills is also a major issue. Women do not know where they get their skills from. However, they can get basic information from the internet but cyber security field needs practical knowledge. So cyber security internships should be provided for women there.
How do we accomplish this? The solution lies in awareness. We’re doing a terrible job in awareness and selling these jobs to women who are young. It is important to inform young people, especially females about the reality that jobs in cyber security encompass a wide and varied variety of roles. There are positions in cyber security that require computer science knowledge as well as computer programming or network engineering abilities. However, being employed in a position that has these qualifications does not mean that you must wear the hoodie of a coder all day, or have to deal with cables and wires. Nowadays, cyber security is fashionable on the street, however in the media, it’s depicted as dark and spooky. We must change that for young males and females, as the negative perceptions and misconceptions can be detrimental to everyone.
As compared to men, higher proportions of women cyber security professionals have been promoted to roles like chief technology officer (7 percent of women. just 2 percent of males) as well as vice-president of IT (9 percent in comparison to. five percent), IT director (18 percent against. 14 percentage) and executive/C-level (28 percent against. 19 percent) Based on the results from the year 2018 (ISC)2 Cyber security Workforce Study. The data show that women are on an avenue to management. They tend to be educated and have a younger age. Although 44 percent of the men who work in cyber security have an advanced degree, the proportion of women holding a post-graduate degree is 52 percent. Nearly half of female working in cyber security are millennials, 45 percent in comparison to 33 percent of males. Contrary to this, Generation X men make more working in cyber security (44 percent) more than females (25%).According to the study the women who work in cyber security account for around one-quarter (24 percent) of the workforce. This is a significant increase result than in 2017, which saw only 11% of the study respondents were women. It’s important to note that this study employed an updated research methodology, which could be the reason for the higher proportion of women.