Photo credit: stjoes_habitat (Creative Commons)
In the AV industry, there is no gender inequality. You can find women in positions as varied as CEO, programmer and technician. I had the opportunity to work with women who were programmers, designers, saleswoman, marketers and managers. Women perform their duties diligently and they are needed in the industry, to provide a wholesome perspective. In my experience of 10 years in the industry, I have never found a single female onsite engineer associated with any project, in India. They actually work offsite developing the project files but when it comes to final implementation the project is usually handed over to a male colleague. Women are equally and even more qualified to program complex sites but they just don’t prefer onsite work.
Basically it’s due to the following reasons, atleast that’s what I feel.
1) Odd Onsite Hours.
Sites are accessible at the whims of the client and this means after normal working hours, mostly. Services company generally don’t provide cab service or facilities like MNCs where women work through odd hours.
2) Site Conditions.
Systems integrators call for onsite work even if the room is already being taken over for plastering, networking,etc. In that case, an onsite engineer may have to work, sitting on the floor surrounded by the manual laborers which is definitely not ideal for a women.
I have seen female onsite engineers, during my onsite work in Africa and Middle East, but never in India. What other obstacles prevent women from working onsite, drop me a comment below.
