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Young Women Encouraged to Go For IT
An anonymous reader writes "Wednesday Microsoft Canada's vice president of developer and platform evangelism encouraged 9th grade girls to head for an IT career with a presentation that debunked key myths. Apparently IT isn't geeky or socially isolating. From the article: "Some issues (the girls) brought up included fears that their friends will think (working in IT) is a geeky thing to do, and that IT work is not very social...They were concerned that there were limitations for women in this area of technology, and they felt there is a stigma associated with IT in terms of it not being a very exciting place to work."
WTH are they smoking?
Now, as an alpha geek (Slashdot on Saturday? guilty) I'd be the first to say that geeky isn't something to avoid or be ashamed of. But trying to claim that something very obviously geeky isn't, won't help get more women into IT.
And as a guy student at Georgia Tech, I definately hope that more women start studying the sciences..
We'd all like to believe that those 'myths' *are* in fact myths, and that the stigma associated with IT careers is unwarranted.
But I think there probably is more than a kernel of truth to them. IT careers, at least the ones I've had, aren't in fact very social. Aside from the not-so-infrequent game of foosball, there was not a heck of a lot of interaction going on. Let's face it, IT-centric jobs are not exactly hubs of social activity, so why pretend otherwise?
Certainly there will be much anectodal evidence to illustrate the converse, but on the whole I think it is difficult to discredit the assertion that IT workplaces aren't as socially-friendly as many other fields. If what women are looking for is human interaction, we should not mislead them down the path to computer-centric work.
It behooves us to be honest about what we do.
It's rather imperative that young women get an early jump into the world of technology. The earlier, the better. IT is a very tough world, and it's extremely competitive, particularly in the realm of programming. I believe (note: personally - not backed by science) that girls develop faster intellectually during jr. high and early high school. The earlier the better I say to get the jump.
I can only attribute my own success in the IT industry from being exposed to computers and getting involved with them as they began to take root in the very early 80s. My dad got me a Vic20 when I was 8, and I was writing programs soon thereafter. I went through the whole gambit of OS's and languages and whatever software I could get my hands on. Because I grew up real poor, I was lucky to use what was provided by the schools, so it gave me a wide range of exposure.
By the time I got to college, I had developed chronic pain, and couldn't do work study in the cafeteria (why is that always the first job??) - so I picked up a job because I knew MSDOS and WP5.0. I was a consultant for a lab at college! And they put me through 2 weeks of school at HP!! *woooo* Not long after that, I changed my major and I was on my way to where I am today. Then I transferred schools to a better program.
Coming up through the ranks in the relatively new field of Information Technology has been fraught with a lot of challenges. Not only is it you against everyone else who is better trained, smarter, or more motivated.. but there truly is a battle of the sexes in IT. Particularly on the network systems operations side of the house. Come on... you know it and see it every day. Sometimes it's caused major issues, but it all has depended on the environment and the level of professionality within it. It's *tough* when you are faced with working 75 - 90 hours a week, and then have to go home and raise a family and care for a home. But we do it, we do it gratefully, because it's afforded us girls a chance to stand on equal footing for once. At least I did.
All of that being said, I fully believe that there should be strong internship and mentoring programs for all young people getting involved with IT, especially those coming in from the bootcamp schools like Microskills, or whatever. While they may have the knowledge and motivation - there is an awful lot more to the IT culture than knowing how to install Windows 2003 or Linux. I sure know that I could have and still do need a good mentor to help me through tough situations that arise in the day to day operations of IT. Some things, I couldn't get through on my own, and left me high and dry, not because of any other reason that my own dumb ass.
Finally, I have to say that 14 years in the industry, I've gone from a flunky consultant bossing around lunkheads in business school to a sr. systems engineer doing huge infrastructure implementations and upgrades, project management, and policy design & implementation. And every 72 hour stretch, all nighter, business trip, massive outage, tear, sweat, blood and torn muscle has been worth it to be where I am today. And I couldn't have done it without the love and dreams that I started building as a child.
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
"While it may just be "stigmata" about the socially isolating aspects, it surely isn't about the "boring" aspects. I promise you my girlfriend just wouldn't ever enjoy spending 6 hours recompiling and securing a *nix system."
I don't think that's a gender issue at all. The sheer mind numbing boredom of a lot of IT is what's kept me (a male) from entertaining the possibility of going in that direction myself, despite the fact that I've been using computers (macs in particular) literally since I was in diapers. I'm not really qualified to speak about differing genders' attitudes on different fields of work, and I think any generalization in that regard will certainly be flawed, but I think it all comes down to the fact that, and I hate to put it this way, the IT biz isn't really many people's dream job anymore. The promise of guarenteed riches evaporated, making it merely a tolerable and necessary profession earning a living wage. It doesn't inspire lust anymore, sorry to say.
Yup...
Most girls in high school consider working at the Gap to be the holy grail of employment.
Mind you, most guys in high school consider working at McDonalds to be the holy grail of employment.
In short, high school is a fucked up place that has no bearing on reality. And the people in that society aren't very good at making life-changing decisions.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
In Sweden, a couple gets to -split- a year
of Family Leave (paid at 90% of the salary
of person taking it - on a particular day)
If the man doesn't participate in the 1st-
year's child minding (after the woman goes
back to work), they lose some of the bene-
fit.
A man almost -has- to look after the kids;
in Sweden, it's not really an option.
(The women wouldn't want it any other way,
nor would a Real Man(tm), either, I think)
In my experience, girls/women just don't see IT and CS as "fun". Part of the focus needs to be on figuring out what young people find interesting about computers and guide them in that direction. Systems administration? Probably not. Maintaining their own Linux box so they can use free software like inkscape and the Gimp, or have their own website they have total control over? Now you're talkin' our language.
I remember 9th grade - that 8086 my parents set up so mom could dial into the mainframe and work from home. Icky black screen with white text. I ran through all the text-based "games" and got bored of it. Fortran in college didn't do much to help matters. Computers didn't get fun until much later when I figured out I could do pretty stuff.
A young woman I know decided to take a Basic class in high school, thinking it was an easy A for some credit she needed. It wasn't easy. And, mostly, it wasn't fun. We spent a lot of time helping her figure out her assignments without actually doing them for her. One night, she was polishing up an assignment early, so I did a quick hunt and gave her some hints on how to tweak her interface with color and ascii art (animated even). All of a sudden, the whole thing was kinda fun. The next day in class, all the geeks were around her monitor, oohing and ahhing. Not only did she have fun decorating her program with faerie dust and roses (or something like that), but the social aspect of the situation improved drastically - she had been an outsider in the class. The class of 20 or so kids were all guys, except her, and part of the math-geek clique surrounding the instructor. The instructor's reaction was disappointing - he didn't understand why she'd decorated her program, and wasn't impressed... bad move dude.
Part of the key to getting kids interested is exposure on several levels - to folks they can identify with, to activities that tweak their interests and are applicable to other aspects of their lives, and actually using and maintaining their own computers. Kids who could become "geeks" often don't because they're intimidated, bored, perceive it's a clique they can't fit into, or simply never given a chance.