“Without quotas, things don’t change or change only anecdotally” – Johanne Duhaime

Johanne Duhaime has been in the IT industry for 30 years. She has worked for Banque Nationale and Hydro-Québec, to name but two. She is currently Vice-President of Information Technology and Communications (CIO) at Hydro-Québec, where 26% of IT staff are women. The vice-president thinks that’s too few, and “that’s why I talk so much about my job. I want to get them interested”.

What solutions does the vice-president envisage to counter the under-representation of women? They’re threefold: introducing young girls to technology, continuing to inspire women in the workplace, and perhaps even implementing quotas.

With a thirty-year career in IT, she’s no stranger to the industry, and we’re guessing she’s often been one of the only women around the table, especially as she’s worked her way up the hierarchy. We know that only 25% (PDF) of women in this country are vice-presidents, senior vice-presidents or C-suite executives.

Although Johanne wasn’t predestined for technology, she did have a trait that is necessary in this field: curiosity. “When I was at the start of my career, we were regularly looking for volunteers to come and test techno products or systems on weekends. Nobody wanted to go, except me! That’s how I discovered the business.” When her employers at the time realized her great interest, they offered her the opportunity to become a project manager. That’s how her love of IT began. She was 22 years old.

But Hydro-Québec’s Vice-President of Information Technology and Communications didn’t want to go into programming, even though it was the obvious choice at the time. I didn’t like programming at all,” she says, ”but I used to talk to developers a lot. I asked lots of questions to understand their reality and their job. These days, there are so many different professions in IT, that becoming a developer is only part of it.”

Johanne Duhaime says that the profession is much more varied than when she started. She notes that the worlds of business and technology are communicating much more. These two departments, which used to be quite separate, now work together to find solutions to market problems. “Thirty years ago, it was unthinkable that someone like me, not coming from IT, would become a CIO!”

“The under-representation of women in technology is a subject that should concern all women, but also all men. It’s not a women’s issue, it’s a societal issue!” – Johanne Duhaime

It’s not often you get the opportunity to talk to a woman who’s been in tech for so long, as we know they leave the industry at twice the rate of men. I wanted to know if the place of women in technology was worse in her day. Here’s Johanne’s answer: “I think it was pretty similar. Even though we’re pushing young women into the industry, the numbers haven’t changed much. The key for me is the school system and getting young girls interested in the industry.”

The Hydro-Québec vice-president was patron of the 2019 edition of Les filles et les sciences… Un duo électrisant! an association that aims to introduce teenage girls in Secondary 2 and 3 to scientific and technological professions. She even took her daughter along, hoping to show her all the possible careers in these disciplines, and it’s working! The principle of being able to show in concrete terms what a chemist or a developer does, helps young girls to take an interest in industry. Johanne Duhaime deplores the fact that we often only talk about video games and programming to promote tech. She hopes we can “start raising awareness even earlier and put career days back on the agenda in our schools”.

And what about women already in the workforce? Hydro-Québec is involved with l’Effet A. The vice-president sets up inspirational events such as sending a delegation of women to attend Randi Zuckerberg’s conference. But the numbers aren’t rising fast or high. The vice-president concludes: “I’ve come to think that we need quotas. 5 to 10 years ago, I wasn’t in favor, but I think that without quotas, things don’t change, or only anecdotally. We need to take concrete action to really promote women. Everyone has good will, but good will doesn’t change the world. That’s the responsibility of all of us.”