@AppDefects wrote:
@dcontesti wrote:
The 2019 Workforce Study on Women in Cyber is here:
https://www.isc2.org/research/women-in-cybersecurity
Glad to see organizations like (ISC)2 and other doing their parts on Diversity and Inclusion.
Equal pay for equal work! @david-shearer promote equality now!
I like the idea of the organization doing their part to promote equal pay for equal work but this is an age old problem not just in the security field but many fields out there. Many of the Fortune 100/500 companies pay to scale and parity is not an issue.
This also goes further than just the gender equality issue, there is also disparity in degrees in some corporations. When I first started working, I was in Engineering. I held two degrees (one in Computers and one in Commerce). A young engineer was hired from a local university and was foolish enough to discuss his pay grade. I was training him, and he was griping about the low wages after all he had to start at a salary grade 11.....at the time I was only a grade 9. As it was explained to me, he had an Engineering degree which was four years....hmmm I had a four year B. Comm and a three year Computer Science degree....
This was the mentality of the Engineering department at the time. I was also informed this had nothing to do with gender and that even if I were a gent, I would only be paid a salary grade 9, it had to do with not having an Engineering degree. I found that other departments also had similar mentalities regarding the degrees that one had. I went open door (fortunately the organization had that policy) and finally had my job and qualifications re-evaluated.....seems I was in fact a salary grade 14.....I got a nice pay increase that year.
Not only do organizations like (ISC)2, SANS, ISACA, etc. need to promote equality in pay, I believe that we owe it to ourselves to also stand up and fight for ourselves.
One way that women, can help themselves is by gaining a sponsor who will sing their praises to any that will listen and also step out of their comfort zones and become mentors.
There is a lot of work that needs to happen to bring equality to the forefront and I see ladies and gents doing this every day. It is a hard battle and if we have backing of our organizations, maybe we can start chipping away at some of the old norms.
d
