In Hungary, IT professionals and engineers are mostly men, and it is very rare to meet a female developer. Astron Informatics Ltd., one of the most significant software development companies in Hungary aims at changing this situation and we are very proud to have a number of talented women colleagues working with us.
Out of the 80 Astron employees, 15 are women. That constitutes for more than 18%. Besides women working in business administration, we have a number of female developers, testers, business analysts and project managers all with IT related degrees. ‘Based on the applications we receive, we see that more and more young people choose these professions knowing that they have a chance at above average income and career opportunities. This applies to women and men as well. We’re always happy to receive a female applicant. Our experience is that women are very highly qualified, hard working, and they get along well with colleagues and clients.’ – said Gábor Finder, HR specialist at Astron.
Zsófia Kelemen, a 24 year old software tester at Astron also says that choosing a career was a rational choice for her, motivated by the chance of higher than average salary, bigger professional challenges and a more successful career. More importantly, she never regretted her decision, moreover, she loves her job! Zsófi is currently enrolled at ELTE University, where she is doing her master’s degree in computer science. There are very few other girls amongst her fellow students, but she says that the situation is different with the first year BSc courses where the percentage of female students is much higher. ‘It’s still considered a male profession, but people are less and less surprised that I work in IT.’ When asked if she ever experienced any inconvenience because of the fact that she is a female IT professional, Zsófi responded with a firm no, and said that as long as someone is good at their job, nothing else matters really. ‘The expectations are high, and I really have to be good at what I do, but this is true for men and women alike.’
Viktória Matiszné Barna graduated from ELTE University specializing in computer science and mathematics. She has been working at Astron for 15 years now. She is managing a team of 10 people, and she is responsible for coordinating the transport control system development process in international projects. Because of her job, she has travelled numerous times to India, Germany or Hong Kong for example. In Hungary or Germany, she hasn’t experienced any inconvenience for working in a male dominated industry, but in India, the situation is totally different. ‘In India, there is a very strong prejudice against female leaders and IT professionals. They have a totally different perspective of a women’s role in society, and many times, they didn’t even understand what I was doing there. Luckily, as soon as they saw that I understood what I was doing, they started to slowly accept me.’
Overall, our experience at Astron shows that there is a new tendency on the job market in Hungary according to which more and more people choose IT or engineering as a profession and amongst them, the percentage of female developers has slowly started rising. Those who start working in the IT industry can definitely expect above average possibilities and they don’t have to be worried about inconveniences just because they are women working in a male dominated industry.