Deborah Andrews, Professor of Design for Sustainability & Circularity at London South Bank University, gives her view on the importance of encouraging a balance between men and women and why there’s a desperate need for organisations to introduce a more positive and definitive career structure to enable women to take up progressive opportunities.
Can you tell us about your background in this field and what prompted you to take up a career in date centres?
Although I’m an academic and I work with various industrial sectors on issues around sustainability and circularity, I’ve spent most of my research time working with the data centre industry. Like quite a few others, I fell into the industry by accident – a happy accident.
Around 2010/2011, I was invited to supervise a PhD called an Industrial Case Award, funded by the EPSRC (Education and Physical Sciences Research Council). The idea was that this kind of PhD enabled industries to work with universities to engage in research they wouldn’t necessarily be able to do.
The industry partner at the time was HP and I collaborated with other academics who had expertise in building services and construction and the PhD focused on carrying out the first comprehensive life cycle assessment of a whole data centre.
In your view, why is it that we’re still having this conversation about the industry’s gender imbalance today?
It’s interesting that whenever you go to events, the issue of diversity and inclusion is raised. Particularly at events where there’s a senior managerial level, most of the participants are male, pale and stale – they’re older white men which is partly because of the level at which they’re working. There are comparatively few women at senior level in the data centre industry.
I’d like to think that influence in employment selection is changing and further down the career hierarchy there are more women joining the industry who are yet to market at the highest level.
We are dealing with people who were maybe educated in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Some of the men are positively encouraging women working in the sector and see the value of equality and diversity, but we have a long way to go.
I hope that as more young people join the industry, things change at the top and we no longer need to have these kinds of conversations.
It’s important to attract more women into the data centre space but it’s arguably more important to retain them – how do you suggest this can be achieved?
This industry is not unique in failing to retain women. Coming from a product design background, that and the engineering sector often face similar problems. Part of the challenge is that although there is legislation relating to maternity leave and childcare and so forth, most companies adhere to the minimum baseline.
We need a definitive shift. When people go on maternity/paternity leave, their work becomes the responsibility of other members of staff which isn’t ideal. There are serious managerial issues here and management need to reconsider how they support all members of staff in this instance.
The other aspect is making sure there’s a positive and definitive career structure for women in the industry. There seems to be a glass ceiling and we need a more defining management and promotion career ladder to encourage women to stay in the sector and not be bypassed when promotion arises.
It’s extremely frustrating when people suggest women being promoted is tokenism to tick an equality and diversity box. Most are promoted on merit and this should not be undermined. It wouldn’t make business sense and these sorts of comments need to be eradicated.
What sort of employment model do you think best suits the modern way of working for women in today’s society and how can organisations support this?
Until maternity and paternity leave become more equal, there’s always going to be bias against women. In Spain, for example, men are entitled to six months paternity leave and I think for women it might be a year, but it’s certainly an awful lot longer than in the UK.
It would be appreciated if the data centre industry took the lead on this and displayed the benefits of having extended equal parental leave. Achieving this requires management and organisational support to ensure workloads are not simply shifted to full-time employees – and this is built into the business model.
How can we change the dismissive attitudes that exist towards women in this field and is it a case of starting at the education level?
I’m extremely concerned about the rise of misogyny online, particularly amongst young boys. Education is important both in the home and in schools. The misogyny is really divisive and male attitudes and behaviours towards women can be really toxic.
However, on a more positive note, I’m aware there are a lot of programmes in schools to encourage young females to study engineering, for example, but we also need to encourage them to study art and design. We need shifts in education to encourage young women to be confident about the different subjects available to them.
Can you offer insight into the opportunities available to women and young girls in this industry that exist outside of the day-to-day role – such as panel discussions, speaker opportunities – and how people can get involved?
As an academic, I’m involved in theoretical research, but also a lot of industry linked research. There’s the opportunity to submit articles to academic journals and publications and to contact editorial boards or media companies who can facilitate relationships with publications and industry events. I’ve worked with people who don’t like public speaking, so instead they write.
With panel discussions, once you get your foot in the door and become known to people in the industry, it’s quite likely you’ll be asked more and more to participate. It’s also a good idea to research industry events, find out who the organisers are and contact them to ask whether there are any research projects.
It’s important to understand the various routes available and it’s great to promote research at industry events like Data Centre World. These events are extremely beneficial for reaching people in influential positions very quickly, not to mention getting the chance to network with others in the field.
If you would like to watch the video interview with Deborah, please find it here.
