When American-born Joe Kremer arrived in Australia in 2005 as Australian managing director of tech company Dell, after a few weeks of meetings with IT professionals he had one question: "Where were all the women?"
Similarly, when Julie Bishop took over as Foreign Minister in 2013 as the only woman in Tony Abbott's ministry, all the meeting rooms at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's office building were, like the RG Casey Building itself, named for men.
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Raising the number of women working in IT in government and private industry has been the goal of Dell's Women in IT Executive Mentoring (WITEM) program, which Kremer set up in the December 2005.
This week it celebrated a decade of mentoring female technology leaders across government and corporate Australia at a forum in Parliament House hosted by Foreign Minister Bishop.
![Dell Australia and New Zealand managing director Angela Fox.](/web/20161126093918im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/v/x/3/a/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsvfvj.png/1480071044034.jpg)
The WITEM program was set up in response to a call to action from the then communications, information technology and arts minister Helen Coonan.
Dell called in Jenny Morris, founder of the Orijen Group to help set up a range of mentoring programs – to stop the flow of women out of the industry – which she called the cycle of "whinge, complain to management and then leave".
She helped set up programs that ranged from women's circles to one-on-one mentoring, to address both the lack of women in the IT sector, and retaining those already there.
Its aim was to accelerate the development of leadership skills of women within the IT industry and across the profession.
![Foreign Minister Julie Bishop addresses the Dell WITEM event this week at Parliament House.](/web/20161126093918im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/v/m/a/k/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsvfvj.png/1480071044034.jpg)
Over the past 10 years, 340 participants have taken part in 20 programs with 170 mentor-mentee pairings. Mentors – men and women – from across federal government departments, large Australian organisations such as Westpac, Ernst & Young and Woolworths, as well as technology leaders from many of Australia's leading universities have participated.
The Department of Finance was recognised at this week's event, as the government department with a recognisably higher number of women taking leadership roles in the IT sector.
Angela Fox, the managing director at Dell Australia and New Zealand since 2014, a zoologist by training, has continued the effort Kremer began, to help women navigate the "law of the jungle" in the IT industry.
She said there was an "unconscious bias" towards men, in what remains a male-dominated industry, which continues to need to be tackled.
"You need courage to address the issue of gender equity and the reality is you need men as part of that journey," she said in Canberra this week.
After Bishop appointed Frances Adamson in July this year as the first female public servant to lead DFAT, they both got to work on renaming the eight smaller meeting rooms, previously named for flowers, after significant female diplomats.
"We've named those eight meeting rooms after some of the women who were firsts in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Like Ruth Dobson, the first female head of mission appointed in 1974 – we now have the Dobson Room. While it's only a small matter, it has sent a very strong message through the department: we value women's contributions, we appreciate what they do and we recognise their efforts," Bishop said.
Helen Pitt travelled to Canberra courtesy of Dell.
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