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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."
I can't believe these are even real concerns among women. Why does your profession have to seem cool to other people? You do stuff because you think there's a challenge there or if it's interesting. Who cares what your friends think? What the f is wrong with women in the US and Canada? If they think like this, I almost don't even want them in the IT industry. I want free thinkers.
"For the next twenty years I'll sit in a big box called a cubicle. It's like a restroom stall but with lower walls. I spend most of my time hoping the electromagnetic fields from my office equipment aren't killing me."
The coolest voice ever.
I know several women in IT...
It isn't really a stigma once you get into it. Usually they are popular girls. I have to say I have known fewer "geeky" girls in IT than the popular type... It really all depends on the person.
If there is one thing I can say for certain, it is that the female IT stigma is definately non-existant. I'm sure the fear of it exists, but in practice it doesn't. I believe most of the fear of the stigma comes from females that don't know what they are doing and make their way up for other reasons. I know this happens in IT more than other places. And it usually isn't because of a lack of qualified girls, but a lack of hiring experienced girls.
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
Anyone who's studied even a bit of psychology and perhaps some communications will realize male's and female's naturally excel in certain area's and are also drawn to those things. There's a REASON why you don't see many girl geeks... why try to force this on them by basically lying about it?
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. Where as I find it to be quite relaxing and a fun challenge at times.
With so many PEOPLE unemployed in IT, is it really responsible to encouarge people to take up this profession?
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
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.
Some issues (the girls) brought up included fears that their friends will think (working in IT) is a geeky thing to do
If someone is going to be influenced by what their friends think, perhaps we should let them be influenced. Many consider going into IT to be geeky. If you're immature enough to let your friends stop you from going into a particular market, then maybe your not really ready for any serious market and should work in a market that requires next to no maturity (I hear McDonalds is looking for people to hire).
What are you doing on slashdot?!
What I don't understand is why schools encourage people to pursue IT as a career.
1) Being in IT is not as profitable as being in management (from what I've seen).
2) Encouraging people into math and science and IT invalidates perfectly valid career paths.
3) Colleges (in my experience) have droves of people who sign up for computer science their Freshman year, and then change out to another major because they find out what the major is really like.
Why do you need to encourage anybody into a particular field in high school? Shouldn't they decide for themselves what they want to do? If you're going to encourage them into a field, why not one that's more profitable. Tell them to become architects or businesspeople. Business is where the $$ is.
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.
Go for IT: Conference tells grade-nine girls
By: Patricia Pickett
Lasha Dekker says it was mostly chance that led her to a career in IT - but that's not stopping her from encouraging young women to consider working in the same field.
Dekker, vice-president of developer and platform evangelism for Microsoft Canada Co., was a keynote speaker at Wednesday's Explore IT Conference, a one-day event that introduced grade-nine girls to career opportunities in IT. Conference organizers estimated around 500 students attended the event, held at the Alberta College of Art & Design (ACAD), the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, Mount Royal College and the University of Calgary, all in Calgary.
Participants had a choice of several hands-on sessions where they could try everything from building their own computer network to generating computer animations or designing a Web site.
Dekker noted that today only 20 per cent of graduates from college or university computer science programs are women. "There is a tremendous opportunity for women in this area. For girls...interested in IT, I want to underscore that they should go for it, and for the ones that are not sure, they should at least consider it and explore the opportunities available in IT."
Dekker said her own career in IT naturally unfolded because of her early academic interests. "I just got lucky when I was in high school; sciences and math came easy," said Dekker, who holds a B.A. in computer sciences and statistics from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. "It is not because I received a lot of direction (that I ended up in IT). It was really by chance that I ended up in the career I am in today. But through my keynote, I hope to provide a bit of guidance (to attendees), which I didn't receive 20 years ago...in grade nine."
Conference organizers invited Dekker, whose group at Microsoft focuses on the enterprise, academic and student developer community, to participate in the conference because of her team's connections with the latter two developer categories.
To prepare for the conference, she said she spent two hours with a focus group of grade-nine girls in Toronto, brainstorming about young women's issues and concerns about going into IT. From this meeting, she came up with her Top Ten Myths and Facts presentation about IT careers.
"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," she said. "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. They also had the impression that IT workers are chained to a computer and their office for all of their days."
Dekker said she addressed these myths by talking to conference attendees about what a career in IT is really like, drawing from her own experiences. "You often have the opportunity to work around the world...and you are not chained to a computer. There are different customers to work with, and you can explore different areas of IT, including research and development, programming, sales and marketing."
Victor Doerksen, Alberta's Minister of Innovation and Science, said his government division, one of the conference's Silver Sponsors (contributing between Can$ 3,000 and $5,999), supports science awareness not just for girls but also for all young people at the event's target grade level. "This is when students (start) to make decisions about what they will take in high school and beyond. We want to encourage them to stay in math and sciences to give them more options for the future."
Encouraging technology skills development will help the province compete over the next several years as the world moves toward a global, knowledge-based economy, Doerksen said. "The skill requirements will continue to grow, and we just need more people in (technology) fields with skills and talents to make us more globally competitive."
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Why not just encourage folks who are good at math (and/or science) to broaden and deepen their capabilities in these core academic subjects?
My father became an engineer because a teacher at St. Dunstan's (in Milbrae, CA), his parochial grammar school, encouraged him to do so b/c the guy -- my dad -- was always good at math and science. It wasn't til much later that he actually settled on the particular subcategory of engineering (post tours as a Seabee in Nam) and began working on his career.
I think the same model should still hold. We should encourage those who show aptitude to get into this field. And instead of encouraging them to "join IT," we should be encouraging them to take as much math as they can handle and worry about specific job/career paths later on, when it's more appropriate.
So my two gripes are: (1) don't just encourage girls for the sake of encouraging girls, encourage those who are actually likely to excel and improve the field and (2) don't start pushing specific career paths to 14/15 year olds. Instead get them working on the academics that underpin many careers in technology in general. To encourage someone to become a help desk employee is a bit premature at age 14 imo.
Oh yeah, I'm a girl (a woman, actually).
Once your High Elf builds up enough EXP points and you've found the right Star Trek .sig for your posts, all these fears will melt away.
Wednesday Microsoft Canada's vice president of developer and platform evangelism encouraged 9th grade girls to head for an IT career
In a related story, Microsoft was seeking ways to reduce its IT costs by about 25%.
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.
...you should focus on being a careful thinker.
That would include, for example, not drawing inferences about "women in the US and Canada" based upon the reported meanderings of 14 year olds.
OH? What part of Microsoft are YOU in that's not exciting? I work on the main campus and it's much, much more exciting than I ever expected it could be (and definitely more exciting than any place I've worked in years).
For example, within 6 months of employment, my released project was a subject of discussion on Slashdot. (Really, it's 2005, and Microsoft technology is not all about NEAR and FAR pointers, MFC and "NIH" attitude any more.)
The IT folks have all sorts of state of the art hardware to play with, and the stakes of "getting it right" are very high, because if Microsoft doesn't, people aren't inclined to give the company much of a break.
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
We need to stop trying to make it something it isn't in order to appeal to women. We don't try to make daycare, social working, teaching and other female-dominated areas more enticing for men precisely because the jobs fit women better than men as a general rule. These can be great, highly respectable jobs that do a lot of good. They may not be as glamorous as IT is in some circles, but they are necesssary and hard.
From what I have seen watching freshmen girls in CS now that I am a senior is that a lot of them really aren't interested in computers. Most of them really aren't at all. At my university we have a female CS professor who is very incompetent and tries to recruit girls because they are girls. Then she turns around and gets on their cases in her classes when they screw up, in part because they're "making girls in CS look bad." This isn't healthy and at its core, this is what specifically seeking out girls for CS does. It makes them a statistic and ignores what they might actually be good at and enjoy.
Women should be encouraged to try things for the sake of the liberal arts experience, not because "we need more women in IT." Frankly we don't need a hell of a lot more IT workers. We are already training lots of people who suck, are apathetic toward it and/or would be happier elsewhere. That last part is the most critical part. These feminazi recruiters don't care what might make that girl happy, they want to see their quota of estrogen for IT filled, even if the girl ends up in a field she hates with a degree that is worthless for what she ends up wanting to do.
This is the natural result of the "group rights" bullshit popular on the left. You see the forest, but you don't see the trees. You are so damned concerned with gender politics to realize that, regardless of what the Vagina Monologues say, a woman is not defined by her vagina anymore than a man is by his penis. A woman's destiny, is not in her gender, but in herself and God's plan for her. Oh wait, did I just say God's plan for her? Another strike for political incorrectness.
I think anyone with some interest should be encouraged to take an entry level CS/CIS/IT class to see what's involved. Just stop pushing girls to do more than that. Let them make their own decisions and stop telling them that their choice isn't good enough. If she wants to be an IT worker, that's her choice. If she wants to be an artist, that's her choice. If she wants to work on cars for a living, that's her choice. If she wants to be a housewife, that's her choice. It is no one's right to tell her that because she was born female that any of those choices are invalid for her. Her career choice, as long as it is legal, is her choice. If she wants to get married and stay at home to raise her kids, that's her right and choice.
So repeat after me: let the girls make the choice and then respect it. The fucking elitists, most of whom are feminists, have no right to criticize a woman for pursuing the occupational path that makes her happy. Social justice is about people being free to live as individuals and to pursue happiness, not about stuffing individuals into a faceless quota. The irony is that feminism has accomplished nothing for women. Coercing them into professions is no different than coercing them into being "barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen." It is not liberation to chastise her until she feels unhappy and without self-realization outside a 9-5. It is nothing more than a different manifestation of the same alleged patriarchical drive that "forced women to stay home" the only difference being is that the feminists tend to want to force them into the work place. If the goal of feminism is freedom for women it should place a huge sample plate of life options before them and let them choose and then be proud that they are happy regardless of which one they choose.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Why?
I won't let my daughter go into IT if I have any say. If you don't go into IT management, your options shrink when you get into your mid 40's and after. Plus, global competition is eating away at both salaries and opportunitees. Business and sales have more long-term opportunities and safer from cheap offshore labor. If she has the knack, that is where I will encourage her to go. IT is fine if you really dig it for technology's satisfaction alone; otherwise it is a dead-end wallet-drainer going the way of manufacturing.
Table-ized A.I.
I'll go ahead and respond again, just in case my argument got lost in there.
The point isn't that IT isn't hot. It is. The point is that high schools seem to push everyone towards it.
The result of this is that you get a lot of people going down a career path that they don't actually want to be on. You take some 9th grader, and tell them that the career that they are interested in is "nice," but today, we're going to explore the great future you could have in IT. Soon, everyone thinks that IT is the career for them, or, at least, that's the one that the smart kids get into, or that's what they're supposed to do, or that's where the money is.
I talk to all kinds of people who think that IT/Programming/Computer Science is a great, high paying career. That's why CS people should go into the field. The fact is, that the guy who went into business school, for the "to make money" reason, did better than the guy who went into Computer Science "to make money."
As for smarts, sure, you can be very smart and go into IT... or Political Science... or Business... or Architecture... or Music. Life as a musician may be hard... but we're not outsourcing all of our music to foreign countries. If that's what the kid wants to do, why are you telling them that they should go into Math/Science/IT.
For that matter, why are you telling women specifically to go into the field? I agree that there are fewer women in CS (and I wish that the ratio was better... it's hard finding a date in the department), but telling a bunch of high school women "you should go into IT to even out the ratio" is akin to saying "all of the jobs that you'd rather pursue are girly jobs, you need to go into IT to keep up with the boys."
You should just provide the best environment possible for kids to become the best whatever they want to be that they can be. You should get rid of sexism by not practicing sexism. You should get rid of racism by not practicing racism. You should let kids pursue a career path that they enjoy so they don't become 20-something slackers that don't have anything to do with their lives, because they foreclosed on the opportunities that they wanted to pursue, because you told them that all of the money was in computers.
Seriously, why would anyone want to encourage men OR women to enter a career path that is currently in decline? Between the budget cuts, increasing security problems, and constant outsourcing of jobs overseas, IT is becoming a MISERABLE profession to be in.
Hey, I'm all for women entering high skilled jobs, but I'd recommend going into law or management instead. That's where the money and future career growth is.
Encouraging technology skills development will help the province compete over the next several years as the world moves toward a global, knowledge-based economy, Doerksen said. "The skill requirements will continue to grow, and we just need more people in (technology) fields with skills and talents to make us more globally competitive."
I notice a weird hyprocracy. Countries overall seem to want more techies for national security and "global competative" reasons. Yet, they don't take care of the techies they have. They happily let them compete with Phd's making $3-an-hour in Cheapbuckistan, and then complain when not enough people go into tech.
Use the carrot, NOT the stick if you really want more techies. Draining the paychecks and opportunities via "free trade" is not going to encourage potential techies. One hand tries to create what the other hand is destroying. Typical of governments.
Table-ized A.I.
and a coordinator for my university's Women in Computer Science initiative, it's good to see more organizations target girls, specifically, in their recruitment efforts. There have been many studies that show that disproportionate numbers of girls "lose interest" in science, math, and computers as they progress through adolescence. This may be the new millenium, but there are still influences that turn girls off these areas of study.
While there may be physiological differences between men and women (and there are studies supporting that), no study has conclusively shown that women inherently lack the necessary skills to succeed in math, science, and engineering. Therefore, the reasons that girls choose English, Psychology, and Biology over Math, Computer Science, and Engineering (for example) are societal influences. There is a real male-oriented culture still in these areas, and people have two choices: to point to all the progress that has been made over the past century and the lip service that equality is given and say "Look! There's no problem at all!"... or to open their eyes and realize that discrimination and discouragement happens in subtle ways.
Adolescent girls, like adolescent boys, are delicate. A few off-color comments about women's ability in a field by a person in a position of authority, and a girl may, when the going gets tough in junior high, decide to go the safe route--and excel at writing, art, music, etc.
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)
Unlike boys, I suppose?
Because, as we all know, young male geeks are always the most popular kids in high school. They're never social outcasts. They're never isolated. They always have girlfriends. They never EVER get bullied.
See the point?
In your rush to play knight in shining armor to these "victims" who don't feel "encouraged" enough, you've completely ignored the fact that boys have traditionally never been encouraged to get into these fields either. They've typically received harsher treatment, including physical violence, just for being geeks. But notice, they didn't give up, they didn't run off and major in business or medicine, no, they stuck it out.
Remember when Jon Katz tried to make a big deal out of bullying? Most Slashdotters would have nothing of it, even though many were themselves victims of bullying. At worst they might crack the occasional joke about it, but they seldom--if ever--complain.
Why can't women do the same? Why can't they just stop complaining, STFU, and do their work just as men do? Why do they always need special treatment, special privileges, and special protection?
I don't know. I think gender does play a considerable role, but not necessarily for the reasons usually mentioned.
You're absolutely right though about I.T. in general. I think the *only* reason people flocked to it a few years ago was this idea that you'd get a huge paycheck for doing relatively little actual work. (Everyone from construction workers to truck drivers were chomping at the bit to get their MCSE, A+, and so on - and to then free themselves from physical labor and boredom while doubling their take-home pay.) Unfortunately, this only lasted for a short while, at best - until the bottom fell out of the crazy dot-com era and Y2K panic subsided.
I.T. today is pretty much back to what it always was before the "general public" thought it was a career track worth pursuing... LOADS of PATIENCE and a stubborn desire to find solutions to frustrating little problems and glitches. It likely includes pulling some LONG hours, and/or researching things on your own time, off the clock, to find answers.
Male or female, this isn't usually most people's idea of a "rewarding/fun job" - but it fills the bill nicely for us long-time computer geeks who did this stuff all day long for free anyway, as a hobby/personal interest.
That's where the "gender issue" really comes in, IMHO. The vast majority of people I meet in I.T. today who are really sharp and do their job well have had an interest in computers for years before it became a career path for them. 99% of the time, women didn't have this interest - so when they get into I.T., it means they're only using knowledge they gained through school or study guides/courses. They're not applying a vast collection of real-world knowledge built up in their head from the time they were a young teen playing for hours each day with a home computer in their house, etc. etc.
I am a highschool senior girl working as an IT intern. I wouldn't consider myself particularly popular or geeky. I love my job, but I don't think that it is something that I will do my whole life, I have other plans for the future (involving science and CS). One of my favorite aspects is the social aspect... talking to the other people I work with. If girls don't like IT because it is not social... I'd say that being the only girl working with a bunch of guys is a great way to meet guys. And not all of them are geeky.
A degree in computer science generally isn't a degree in hardware, or in Microsoft Windows.
Some very good programmers I work with have no ability to use a computer above and beyond the compiler, and a few unix commands. The ability to work with end users, gather requirements and turn them into a working system are distinct from the ability to understand why MS made a "Pro" and "Home" version of Windows XP (something that still isn't clear to me).
I'll grant you, there are a few people who understand everything from the boot manager, to device drivers, to HTML coding, to Java coding. Those people are exceptional, and I don't think that makes other people "bad" or "dumb"
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
What a backward society. Here in America men and women can return to work within mere days of the birth of the new child. For the first couple years of the child's life they leave him or her with strangers at an all day care facility. What a wonderfully uplifiting, social experience for the child. After that, our advanced technology has allowed us to use television, video games, and an excess of overly competitive sports and pointless hobbies to develop the child's intellect, keep them from trouble, and raise them to be wonderful members of society. Caring for your children directly is such a thing of the past, leave it to professionals is what I say.