Reaching for the silicon ceiling
Ha'aretz July 24, 2000

Some women who work in high-tech give up maternity
leave and take the children with them on business trips;
others prefer to work part-time. Whatever they do, the
gender gap still persists.

By Michal Palti

In the high-tech market, it's called "marcom." In a field 
where time is the most valuable resource, it comes as no 
surprise that every job definition is combined and shortened 
- and becomes an internationally accepted term. And thus 
marketing and communications, which is usually a woman's job, 
has easily been turned into a catchy new word. If the job 
were usually the province of men, it would probably have been 
left in its longer version, with the addition of "president for"
or "vice president for." Is it only by chance that the word 
contains within it the two fields that are considered 
"feminine" in high-tech? It depends on whom you ask. High-tech 
is considered a masculine field, because the overwhelming 
majority of those working in it are men. At the forefront of 
the field are the technical professions, taught in high school 
science tracks, during military service, and in university
departments of computers and physics. Even though more women
choose high-tech professions today than in the past, they are 
still a minority. Work habits in this sector, including long 
working hours and sometimes frequent trips abroad, make it even 
more difficult for women to find a place in it. A woman who 
works in high-tech and wants to start a family must immediately 
get involved in a system of juggling the two careers: motherhood 
and work. Women can in fact choose to slow down the pace for a 
few years, but this choice doesn't necessarily make their life 
easier.

Definitive statistics can be found in a recent study by Dr. Dalia
Rachman-Moore and Dr. Nira Danziger of the school of business
administration of the College of Management - Academic Studies
Division, in Rishon Letzion. Men who graduate from the school 
of business administration and have exactly the same qualifications 
as women who took the course, garner many more of the senior
executive positions in the job market. Some 35 percent of the men
who studied business administration attained high positions, as
opposed to 20 percent of the women even though the women had
better final grades (an average of 78 for women, as opposed to 
76 for men).

Another conclusion of the study is that the higher the seniority 
at the job, the greater the gap between the sexes (41 percent of 
men in high executive positions, as opposed to 29 percent of women). 
This statistic has an encouraging side as well - the younger in 
age, the smaller the gap.

Mommy lives at work 

Dr. Dorit Dor, 33, from Hod Hasharon, married with two children
(aged 6 and 11), vice president for products at Checkpoint, 
admits hat she is a workaholic. "When I accepted the fact, my 
conscience stopped bothering me," she says. "I know that if I 
don't work as I want to, I'll be miserable." Dor says that her 
friends, working women who are also mothers, are divided into 
two groups: those who slowed their pace of work after giving 
birth, and those who continued to work with the same intensity 
as before, but suffer from pangs of conscience. 

In high school, Dor studied in the physics track ("two girls in 
a class of 20 boys"), then studied mathematics and computer 
sciences at the university ("there the gap between the sexes 
was even greater"). Afterward, she did her compulsory army 
service, and served with Shlomo Kramer and Gil Schwed, founders 
of Checkpoint. Two years after the army, she finished her 
doctorate, gave birth to her first son, and accepted Kramer's 
offer to join Checkpoint, which then had 15 workers. "When 
Shlomo recruited me to the company, I told him that my 
situation had changed, that I didn't know what it was like to
work with a child. 'It will be okay,' he promised," Dor recalls.

Dor comes home at 6 P.M. twice a week; on the other days, she
works unlimited hours. "I travel abroad often, and there are 
days when I get home after midnight, but I devote weekends to 
the children. One of her son's first sentences was: 'Mommy 
lives at work.' People asked me if I wasn't shocked to hear 
that - and I answer that I survived. My husband is also in 
high-tech, and comes home earlier twice a week. The rest of 
the time the children are in daycare or with a nanny."

Dor didn't take maternity leave. "I gave birth on a Thursday, 
and on Sunday, I already attended a meeting at the office," 
she says. "I don't see myself taking long vacations, because 
I don't enjoy myself without work. Recently I traveled to 
the Far East for work, with my husband and my son; I worked 
for four days, and then we spent time having fun. It was a 
vacation in every sense."

Dor claims that she sees no differences between women and 
men in high-tech. She says there are jobs that demand working 
late hours (mainly because of the workday in the United 
States, which begins at 6 P.M. Israel time), and there is 
an intensive schedule that promotes fast product development. 
"If a man or a woman wants to work until 3 P.M. every day, 
he or she can do that," she says. Dor says that recently 
she recruited a worker in her fourth month of pregnancy for
an important job. "It's true that there was a cloud of 
uncertainty, but she was suited for the job, and I didn't 
hesitate," she says. When she was invited to a forum for 
women in high-tech, she refused to participate. "I don't 
feel it's important. I was always in places where I wanted 
to be, even if I was in the minority," she says.

Drop in the bucket 

Ruth Rabin, 48, manager of the human resources department 
at Intel headquarters in Haifa, tries to combine motherhood 
and a career as much as possible. Married with four children, 
the oldest 25 and the youngest 12, she lives in Moshav Hayogev. 
"I always worked in a house full of children," she says. 
As opposed to Dor, she is aware of the price women in 
high-tech have to pay, and tries as much as possible to 
lower it.
Rabin works in a classical marcom job, and she's proud of it.
Because of her seniority in the field, her approach and the 
benefits she gives the workers have been adopted by other 
high-tech companies as well. Rabin started out as a social 
worker. After completing her master's degree in 1991, she 
started to work in the company's human resources department, 
and within three years became manager.

"The high-tech sector introduced different values into the 
job market, but as far as hours are concerned, there are 
myths as well. So many Intel workers go home at 5 P.M. that 
it's hard to get a taxi in the area at that hour. Nurses and 
bank clerks don't work fewer hours than I do. There are times 
when we stay later, but that's true of any job.

"In my opinion, high-tech affords women flexibility. When 
mothers or mother-to-be come for an interview, they are worried. 
But this worry disappears when they see the women who work 
for us. In my department there are only women, all mothers of 
small children, who want bigger families. And they all take 
maternity leave of half a year and more, and know that they 
will be welcomed back at work. We don't differentiate at all 
between the sexes - neither in job offers, nor in choosing 
who will fill certain positions. The salaries are equal, and
there are women in administration and among the senior 
executives."

There is a daycare center next door to Intel, to which many 
workers bring their children. "The workers, including men, 
enjoy bringing their children from the center to the office, 
to spend another relaxing hour with them, and only then to 
travel home," says Rabin. "I would like to make things even 
easier for the women who work here: I would like the company 
to have a daycare center, laundry services, more flexibility 
in work hours. I believe that we will get there soon, and 
that will allow more women to work in the field."

Such activity is welcome in the eyes of researchers Danziger 
and Rachman-Moore, but they claim that it's only a drop in 
the bucket. "The basic conditions have to change," says 
Rachman-Moore. "A woman who takes maternity leave, and was 
earning a certain amount, has to decide whether she wants 
to continue to work full time and to earn the same salary, 
or to work part time, to earn less, and to delay her 
promotion. It a system of decisions which is hard to deal 
with."

Some women deal with the difficulties by starting their own 
high-tech companies. This is evident in a study by Nira Boneh 
of the Technion, who wrote her master's thesis on women who 
launch high-tech firms. She interviewed about 20 such women, 
most of whom (about 40 percent) chose the field as a result 
of disappointment with previous career paths. An additional 
motive was the desire to combine motherhood and a career, 
and to create a flexible work schedule.
According to Boneh's study, women who start high-tech 
companies place an emphasis on the field of human resources 
in the companies they manage.

The next male stronghold 

Rachman-Moore is not surprised by the increase in the number 
of women who have found their place in high-tech in recent 
years. She says that the phenomenon is similar to the increase 
in the number of women studying law and medicine. "These women 
are well paid, and can afford to pay for household help," she 
says, "but while they are joining the world of high-tech, 
a new field of work, which is prestigious and male-dominated, 
is being created - biotechnology." Rachman-Moore claims that 
soon women will become involved in this flourishing field, 
but they will have to fill in the gap of the years they missed.

One woman who is already working in the field is Nili Beck, 
33, who heads a team for development of algorithms at Compugen, 
which is involved in human genome research. Like Dor, Beck 
studied at university before her army service, majoring in 
computer sciences, and she too joined the high-tech track at 
a relatively early age. In the army, she worked with computers, 
and at the same time studied for her M.A. in computer sciences. 
Today she is writing her doctorate, and together with her 
husband, raising their two-year-old daughter. 
Beck, who studied in the science track in high school, also 
sees no differences between the sexes in high-tech. She doesn't 
even think that combining motherhood and a career involves 
difficulties, mainly because she is satisfied with working 
80 percent of the week rather than full time; she devotes the 
rest of the time to her daughter and to writing her doctorate. 
Beck took maternity leave, and after three months returned to 
work gradually. "Since I had a baby, my life has changed," she 
says. "I chose a job that demanded fewer hours, and it suits me. 
With a supportive partner, one can do anything." Beck claims 
that she pays no attention to the sex of the new workers she
recruits. "A person has to be professional, and just as 
important - nice. At the moment, my team includes a man who 
is working on his doctorate, and a woman with a baby. For me, 
there is no difference between them," she says.

Gifts for a clean conscience 

Aliza Tamir, manager of the department of customers and 
business partners at Microsoft Israel, deals almost daily 
with the problem of balancing motherhood and a career. She 
is 35, married and a mother of three daughters, aged 6, 4, 
and 8 months ("and I still want more," she laughs), and lives 
in Moshav Herut. "I started working in Microsoft 11 years 
ago," she says. "I left a successful firm with many young 
people, in order to work in marcom at Microsoft. I was then
22, most of my girlfriends were working as waitresses and 
traveling abroad, and I was working overtime at Microsoft. 
The company grew and I became a sales manager in the 
wholesale field.

"The first two times I took maternity leave, I didn't 
cut myself off from work: I held meetings at home with 
the staff, and I was getting e-mail from the office all 
the time. Only during the last leave did I manage to
cut myself off, and I enjoyed that very much. I 
transferred authority to someone else, and it was very 
pleasant, but the change is of course connected to 
self-confidence, and to my seniority at the firm. 
In the past, if there was a big exhibition and I was 
on maternity leave, I couldn't sit quietly. It's a 
very distressing feeling."

Tamir admits that it's very hard to balance home and 
work. "My husband, who is self-employed, believes in 
equality, and shares the burden with me. When my baby 
was two months old, I traveled to a course in Seattle 
with my husband and the baby. It wasn't complicated, 
but everyone around me was surprised. My husband 
understood that it was important, and urged me to go, 
even though he knew that he would have to take care 
of the baby when I was busy. I appreciate that very 
much, and people's reactions only made it clear to me 
how unusual such a situation is," she says.

Tamir claims that she hasn't encountered discrimination 
against women in the company where she works. "Only 
recently, I decided to offer an important position to 
a female worker who was about to ive birth, and was 
very suited for the job," says Tamir. A week later
the woman gave birth. "It's true that it's harder 
for women in this field, but I don't give in, and I'm 
trying to teach my daughters to behave the same way - 
never give up, in spite of the problems."

Tamir also speaks of the emotional difficulty of dealing 
with her double role. "When we moved to another house 
recently, I threw out a whole box of presents for the 
children. I call them 'guilty conscience presents,'" 
says Tamir. "All around me, I see couples who work in
high-tech, where the woman is always the one who makes 
the sacrifices - she comes home early, and starts 
working the second shift. It's a social convention 
that is very convenient for the man; sometimes I wonder 
if this race is really worthwhile."

Even if Tamir is dealing admirably with the race, there 
are women for whom the rules are unfamiliar, and sometimes 
they don't even try to compete. Rabin says that in the 
United States, the birthplace of the politically correct, 
a trend to reduce workdays in high-tech is beginning to 
filter down. And when will the change come here?
Probably, as usual, a decade from now.