Career women confront the silicon ceiling
By Nicky Blackburn
Jerusalem Post

(December 26) -- Female employees find themselves
pigeon-holed in marketing communications -- 

Who says there are no women in hi-tech? There are plenty
of them, but you'll rarely find them in the CEO's office or
running R&D. Few head up venture capital funds or are
investment bankers managing IPOs. Certainly the
receptionist who greets you as XYZ.com or ABC Tech will
be a young woman. But on the professional level, the great
majority of Israeli hi-tech women are in marketing, more
specifically marketing communications (marcom). 

By many estimates, maybe 90- 95 percent of all the people
in marcom are women and most of these are Anglo-Saxons
because fluent English is a sine qua non. 

Marketing is a critical function for all but seed-stage
companies, but that's not the viewpoint of many hi-tech
managers. In a world where engineers rule and financiers
come a close second, marketing is seen as a "soft"
profession and marcom, which doesn't directly produce
sales, the fluffiest of all. No surprise then, that despite the
plethora of women in marketing, few rise to vice president
of marketing. 

So why do women find themselves locked into marketing
and communications jobs? 

For a start, because men don't want to do it themselves. 

"Marcom is a professional job, it isn't secretarial or
administrative, but it is still an area that gives support to
other marketing functions in the company. We produce
product literature and posters and organize trade shows,
but this is all just to support other people in the company,"
says one marcom manager from a semiconductor company
in the North. "Men don't want to take on support-oriented
positions." 

In the most desirable technology jobs, the old-boy network
acts to exclude women. In Britain, the public school system
breeds those early friendships and connections; in Israel it's
the army, in particular the elite engineering programs and
intelligence units that count few woman among their ranks.
"A lot of people who reach positions of power in hi-tech
were in the same unit in the army," says Natalie Corren,
director of corporate communications at Nice Systems in
Ra'anana. "It continues to have a big influence." 

A typical Israeli hi-tech company is founded by two or
three men who have served in the same army unit. In the
first stage, as the start-up develops, the founders naturally
take all the top management jobs for themselves; later as
the company grows, managers tend to fill the jobs with
other men who served in the same unit. 

There are, however, other reasons at work here, most
notably family. In any full-time job, working mothers face a
dilemma about the amount of energy they can and want to
put into a career. In hi-tech, however, where the hours are
long and arduous, the problem is even more pressing. 

The marcom manager from the North, who has three
children aged 7, 14 and 17 says: "The hours are crazy. The
US doesn't even wake up until 5 p.m. in the evening. I
work late until 9 p.m. one night a week, but for many
people every night is a late night." 

Susan Dubowsky-Nehab, the vice president for marketing
and sales at e-commerce company Niks.com, admits that
she leaves the house every day at 7:45 a.m. and most nights
doesn't return until 9:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., despite the fact
that she has four children at home. "Not that many women
are willing or able to do that," she acknowledges. 

For Dubowsky-Nehab, who has attained that rare reward
of vice president, part of the key to her success is an
understanding husband, who is willing to share the burden
of the house and family with his wife. "You can't be
travelling every few weeks unless you have a very special
partner," she says. "Not all women get this support and
without it it's almost impossible to do this." 

For other women, a cooperative spouse isn't enough
because, with or without him, their heads are too much into
home life and concerns. "Women have to make more
compromises than men," says the marcom manager from
the North. "In hi-tech, you have to travel abroad a lot, but
you think twice about it if you have children at home." 

Francine Haliva, a marcom manager in the North, studied
marketing at university and says that she made a conscious
decision not to try to climb the corporate ladder. "I never
had a problem getting to where I wanted to be because I
was a woman, and I wouldn't say someone stopped me
from going forward. I'm just not willing to make sacrifices in
my own life" she says. 

"You need to give 110% to succeed to higher levels and
this is not an effort I want to go after at this point in my life.
Maybe when my children are older." 

In this respect she finds marcom a good place to be
because it allows her to work at home when necessary.
"This way I can mix my home and business life without one
affecting the other," she says. 

Despite this, however, some women do want to break out
of the mold but find it difficult to achieve. 

One of the most fundamental reasons is that women in
marcom tend not have an engineering background, and
without this it is hard to move up to other jobs in the
company. 

"You have to have a technical background to succeed in
hi-tech," says Haliva. "Many women fall into this position
just because English is their mother tongue and that gives
them an advantage. You can't succeed if you don't have
experience. That's what's stopping women." 

She adds that Israeli companies also tend to be start-ups
with a small number of staff. This allows women with
marketing experience virtually no opportunities to move into
other positions. But the problem runs deeper than that; it's
the nature of technology products that prevents an
ordinarily well-educated person from rising in the ranks
even on the non-engineering side of the business. 

"If I were working for a company that made pencils or
furniture - something more consumer oriented - then I could
move up to VP of sales and marketing. But we sell chips to
people who make the boards. It's extremely technical,' says
the marcom manager from the North, who studied the arts. 

"You have to go back and look at the educational system,"
says Dubowsky-Nehab. "Historically women tend to lean
towards the arts and not sciences. They aren't given enough
encouragement to take on these type of subjects." 

The impact of the educational system is evident in the one
hi-tech industry where women can be found in relatively
large numbers, namely programming. But those women
tend to be Russians, not Anglo-Saxons. 

"The Russians are strong in mathematics and science - there
was more emphasis put on these subjects in the education
system," Dubowsky-Nehab says. 

Most women in the field believe that they are paid less than
men, and that they have to work harder to reach the same
position. The marcom manager from the North says that in
her own company, the human resources manager is a
woman. 

"She invests more time in her work than the general
manager, and he's working his butt off. If she were a man
she could put out just 80% of what she is putting out now...
A woman who wants to work as a VP will have to perform
far better than a man if she is to achieve this position." 

Despite these very clear difficulties most of the women
interviewed say they believe that with the right background
and a willingness to put in the necessary hours women can
get to where they want to be in hi-tech. "Women can do
anything they want," says Dubowsky-Nehab. 

Most women also believe that they make better managers
than men, partly because they are used to juggling so many
different elements in their lives. 

"Women are more organized than men," says the marcom
manager in the semiconductor business. "They're used to
balancing a home, children and a job at the same time. A
man goes to work and that's all." 

The real key to change is in a transformation of attitudes.
Companies must make it easier for women to return to the
workplace and bring up their families. 

This means letting women arrange flexible working hours
and providing good day care so that they can achieve their
goals. Dubowsky-Nehab says that in the US things have
already started to change. 

"Hi-tech is behind in many socially-related fields but
companies are now being forced to adopt a different
culture. Many of them employ young women who have
become strategically important and these women now want
to have children. The companies must adapt," she says.
"This is a very new trend." 

Israel still lags behind, however. 

"Women generally are not seen in administrative positions in
Israel," says Corren. "It's changing slowly but the country is
still a male-dominated and traditional society. Women have
to be very strong and hard to succeed. They have to
sacrifice so much and I'm not sure it's worth it." 

In her 10-year stint as a working mother,
Dubowsky-Nehab says she has seen some improvements. 

"Ten years ago, when I went back to work, people kept
asking me what was wrong with me," she says. "They
couldn't understand why I was doing this crazy career with
lots of travelling when I had small children. Today more
women are willing to go back to work and put their children
into day care." 

She has her reservations, however. "Even if women change
their attitudes and their skills, they are still living in the
Middle East, and whatever job you have and however
many children you have, you still have to take care of the
house."