Are (IT) women from Venus?

A new survey on behalf of Total Recall has found striking differences between the sexes about technology. The research, which examined the attitudes of male and female IT Directors, found that women were more security conscious and confident in their computer systems than their male equivalents but had significantly smaller IT budgets.

Security first. The most important IT headache for women was ìemail and internet downtimeî ñ a third 33% of female IT Directors identified this as their key concern. Only 9% of men felt the same. In contrast, the most critical issue worrying men was ìday-to-day IT hasslesî. 37% of men and 26% of women thought this was their major problem.

Less money. Women were responsible for smaller budgets. Over half (52%) of those questioned had annual budgets for hardware/software of under 25k, compared to 27% of men. The average IT budgets for men was 67k, more than a third higher than the 43k average for women. Interestingly, however, almost half (48%) of female IT Directors were expecting their budgets to increase in 2008 ñ the comparable figure for men was 29%.

Home sweet home? Women were far more likely to take their backup tapes home than leave the tapes in the office ñ a third of those questioned stored backup tapes at home in contrast to just 23% of men. Intriguingly, less than half of women IT directors (42%) had ever tried to restore a file from their backup whereas 72% of men had performed the same task.

More confident. Female IT Directors were more confident in their IT systems than their male counterparts. 89% of women rated their computer systems as good or very good, with 79% feeling as positive.

Mark MacGregor, CEO of Total Recall online backup, which commissioned the research said,

ìAs a company we have been trying to recruit more women into IT. There are still many people who believe that women and technology simply donít mix. These findings show that women who have managed to succeed in IT are more confident in their systems despite having less to spend.î



The survey of 151 IT Directors was conducted by The Survey Shop in October 2007. Full details of the survey can be found at: