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Women Leaving I.T.
Deinhard writes "NewsFactor is running a story on the exodus of women from the I.T. field. According to the article, women made up 41% of the I.T workforce in 1996. That number dropped to 35% by 2002 and that "the downward spiral is gaining momentum." While this is certainly a concern, what are the overall effects of such a mass departure?"
... of participants here this has long since happened.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Easy, stigma of the geek. Kill the stigma of IT and the geek and IT will attract more Women. Meanwhile IT will scare away just as many Women as any other geek...
How often is it though that you see an actual vagina-and-boobs bearing person in the IT field? Their scarcity may be scaring them off (No pun intended). It's simply a male-dominating field, considering some studies have shown that males have better grasps on logic and reason than woman, who tend to think more emotionally. That's obviously not the case with ALL women (See: Hilary Clinton) though, and I shouldn't be taken stereotypically.
Sure it's great to have some chicks around but really, they go wherever they want to go and so do we guys, why is this so alarming?
The general exodus from IT given the fact that most jobs in this sector pay next to nothing and seem to be as satifying as a red hot poker crammed up the *ss.
Is it any wonder the people are leaving given that family friendly seems to be a concept completely lost on most companies.
The few women I know in the IT field seem to have gotten into it for the money or because they couldn't think of anything else to do, rather than because they like working with computers. Now the money's gone, so are they.
The same applies to many men of course, but it seems to me that geeky traits are exhibited more often by men than women, so women are going to be fewer than men in geeky endeavours.
I don't think that a 50:50 split in any particular field is necessarily fair, what matters is not the male:female ratio, but that somebody with the requisite talent is able to pursue a career in a field without being artificially held back on the basis of their sex.
Judging by many of the replys so far probably the bigest thing driving women out of IT is the attitude of male IT workers who seem to think that we're still living in the 50's, for an industry thats meant to be the cutting edge of the future, many peoples attitudes seem to be about as old fashioned as they come.
Where you stand depends on where you sit...
Lets face it, women generally aren't interested in computers. (being very general here)
There is nothing wrong with this. Why is it a crisis?
I suspect the "downward spiral" is due to a lot of women who went into IT (perhaps due to all the efforts made to attract them) only to discover they really weren't interested.
The effects won't be very significant. (it may have an impact on the consumer level as less software is written with women in mind though)
Live and let live. They're not interested, so what?
we're talking about IT, right ?
I think this sums it up nicely : the field of IT is not what it ws 15 years ago. Today, 95% of the so called IT staff are project managers & planners. In other words : suits.
It's common knowledge that that kind of jobs is still a highly men-only world.
So it's not the number of women that declines, but the number of male boneheads that increases.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
I assume this is a troll, but, anyway...
It is a well-established fact that women are generally better with (human) languages, and given that a lot of IT is not about advanced math but is about manipulating symbols you would therefore expect women to do rather well in those areas of IT. And of course a large part of any job and the main component of many support-based jobs is interpersonal skills, which is another area where women do well. In any case, the bell curves overlap a huge amount, so while your average woman may be slightly more or less gifted at some tasks than men, a lot of women will be better at the task than a lot of men, and vice versa.
I know plenty of women working in IT, and their spread along the competent-incompetent axis is pretty similar to the men I know. One of the best Un*x sys admins I know is a woman, who also happens to have a doctorate in math.
I'd suggest that the exodus, if it exists, has a lot more to do with issues such as working hours, and maybe with the limited novelty value of working with neanderthal male colleagues who can only rate to women on the basis of their genitals.
Virtually serving coffee
You're not sure why? But that's obvious - women have great people skills, men are better at building things, constructing objects. The later is true also for virtual objects - all great programmers or architects that I know in fact see how the code works. They unconsciously kind of visualize it in their mind as a functioning mechanism.
Project management in turn is a people skills exercise. You have to be very good at dealing with people, understand them, communicate effectively and so on. Women are much better at (unconsciously) manipulating people (especially men, above all geeks) into doing something they want. A man would sooner retort to using authority and orders - woman would first try to make you want to do it. Guess when the job is done better.
While the article's conclusion seems insightful enough, it doesn't take account of aspects like the general outsourcing of data entry (formerly the only kind of IT work women could get), or the sheer lack of advancement opportunities, particularly in telecommunications. Even with good prospects, women are disadvantaged.
Given the current wonky state of the larger IT companies, are they missing a useful female perspective?
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Start with the two years the mention: 1996 and 2002. 1996 was the start of the dot-com boom. And 2002, a slump after dot-bombs are clearing away.
Where's the numbers in the middle? Did it drop in 1997-1999, in the boom? Did it stay the same until 1999, then drop? Has it been a continuous rate change? Where's the support that it really is a "downward spiral"?
Second, lacking from TFA are actual numbers and places.
Is this the IT market globally, including countries like India, China, Russia, and others? Or is this the IT market in the US? Or perhaps just the San Jose area? Or just Arkansas where the school that ran the survey is at? How many women? Has there been an increase in the number, just less of an increase relative to men? Or has the total number stayed about the same, or dropped? What are the women doing? Are they including women employed as secretaries and managerial operations within the IT business? How about men similarly working in IT companies, but not doing IT? What about the people not in the IT business but doing the work for small companies?
Given the (lack of) data we are shown, their conclusions are not really warranted.
frob
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
I don't think it is a concern if women are leaving IT because they can get better jobs elsewhere or because there are less IT jobs or something.
What is a concern is if they're leaving because they're being driven out by sexist attitudes or working conditions (not deliberately sexist perhaps, but more likely designed by single men, for single men and with a "you have to change your life, because we're not changing our conditions" attitude). If this is the case then a) that shows a deep ingrained prejedice that belongs in the 50's rather then a 21st century cutting edge industry, and b) we're losing lots of very talented people who can bring whole new ideas and ways of looking at problems into the industry because they were born with a particular set of physical characteristics rather then for any worthwhile reason.
Diversity is good, not just in the operating system and software market but also in the people that produce that software.
Where you stand depends on where you sit...
I really don't see why people get overworked when statistics like this come out. Is there anything really wrong with the concept that there might be inherent differences between men and women that would account for something like this? Or will I be modded down like Lawrence Summers effectively was?
[ home ]
Given any particular male in IT, and any particular female in IT, the male is much more likely to be proficient in what he is doing. The exodus of women from IT just coincides with the burst of the tech bubble. Now that there are a lot less IT positions, the people who are filling them are the more qualified candidates, which means men. The girls who went to school in IT to make money/meet men aren't employed anymore.
Now, I'm sure a buncha people are going to get up-in-arms screaming 'Men are not better than women!'. To which I wholeheartedly agree. However, people who spend their entire adolescence in their basement working on computers are better at computers than those who do not, and people who spend their entire adolescence in their basement are far more likely to be men. Ergo, a particular male, having been far more likely to have been hiding in his basement working on computers while other people were dating, is more likely to be qualified for an IT position that a particular female.
paintball
If IT remains a field where the only relevant knowledge is what you've done in the last two months or two years, then it makes no sense for someone to spend a career on it. Kids are coming out of school (in schools around the world now) with the latest programming languages. If a short absence from IT means you are less valuable than a recent graduate, then it makes sense to leave the field after an absence. Women are more often forced by circumstances like having children to make more mid-career decisions like this than men.
In other professions, there are skills you use and tools you become proficient at over the course of many years. It seems that these either don't exist in IT, or (as I believe) they do exist, but are rarely developed or valued. If returning to IT is as difficult as starting over in a new profession, we shouldn't be surprised that people choose to do so.
Same at my school. Many women that I've talked to (well ok not many) switched majors because the male to female ratio was way to high, so they switched to Chemistry or whatever other science has a more reasonable ratio. I don't blame them since geeks aren't usually the most hospitable group either.
People always bring up the issue of what the female sex can and can't do, well IMHO it's all BS, it's all about what they want to do.
who has a husband that works in IT, here are my general observations:
My husband's working hours are 8 to 5, yet he's never home before 6 (and that's on a VERY quiet day).
When he's on standby he gets calls all times of the day, night and weekend and has had to drive to work in the middle of the night because a server is down.
And when he has a major project to work on he works even more overtime then he normally does.
Now, I don't have kids (yet) but if I did I don't think I'd cope with the erratic nature of his IT work environment. Kids have school and activities that run to a schedule, you don't get to chop and change that at will. And babies, well, they have a schedule all their own.
I am lucky, I have a husband who does more than his fair share at home, but are other working women (especially working moms) that lucky?
It's no surprise then that IT is not that appealing a career choice for women, but it has nothing to do with their talents and abilities. Rather it has to do with the inequalities in our social systems (as opposed to the work place) where women are still expected to put family first while men put work first.
"I'm going to worry like hell and that's not an easy job, believe me" - Lu-Tze "Thief of Time"
We should fight for equal rights of women and men, that we should all have the same credit for the same work. But we should not decide that just as many men must do the same thing as women, or that there should be just as many women as men at every workplace. That's an artificial ideal. Women and men have different dreams for how they want to live.
However, I have always found it more stimulating and interesting to work in an environment with a balance of both sexes. If some workplace attracts mainly women or mainly men, one should perhaps see this as a problem with the workplace, not as a problem with what women or men generally want to do with their lives.
E.g., according to real studies, 3 out of 4 "programmers" just can't program. E.g., about 2 out of 3 don't even know the basics of the language they're paid to program in. Yes, males included. Doesn't really have anything to do with gender.
The dot-con fraud attracted a _lot_ of frauds in this field. The dot-cons were throwing other people's money out the window with both hands, just to show that they can. People with less brains or economic sense than a garden snail, had found themselves in a bunch of money, and had no idea what to do with them... other than show the Joneses that they too can spend like the big boys. Fast cars, huge headquarters, corporate airplanes for a tiny startup, or expensive programmers, it was just conspicuous consumption. (I.e., same as having a massive gold watch, just to show the neighbours who's rich. Doesn't even have to be a good watch: it just has to look blatantly expensive.)
And they hired _anyone_. Literally _any_ drooling ex-burger-flipper was suddenly employable in IT or programming. People who were too stupid to operate a cash register, were ok as "web application developpers" or whatever.
Lots of them, preferrably. Having 20 programmers and 30 artists for a 3 page web site was _cool_. Made the PHB feel like he too can play with the big boys' corporations.
And unsurprisingly, a lot did fake a resume and move into IT or programming. A whole caste of fraudsters was created whose _only_ skill was marketting themselves. They too "deserved" the big bucks, a sports car and a plasma TV, and were not gonna let utter lack of skill and knowledge get in the way of their American Dream.
It had nothing to do with liking to use a computer, or having any skill or inclination. Most not only had none, they didn't even try to learn either. They just "deserved" the money, they didn't actually want to start working for them.
And I don't think that being male or female played that big a role there. If there weren't 50% females there, if anything, makes me suspect they're more honest. Because anything to do with skill or liking computers, it sure didn't have.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I tried not to be redundant and all, but ...
TFA talks about women's participation in IT as a percentage of the IT workforce, but that doesn't tell us anything about whether or not women are fleeing IT. Try this as an experiment:
Time 0: 100 IT positions. 40 are women.
Time X: 1000 IT positions, 350 are women.
We've gone from 40% women to 35% women. Have women fled the field? HELL NO.
We need absolute numbers to figure out whether or not there are less women in IT than there used to be, but TFA doesn't seem to have them (or I missed them -- I did R it, of course).
Actually, no...that's not fair to say either. What's really happening is that there were never as many women in IT as this story suggests. There were roles in the IT field that were held by women more than men, but those roles weren't really *IT* roles...and those roles don't exist as much now.
Its simply a matter of how IT was defined then, and how the landscape has changed. The core support and development teams (what most of us would call IT) have always been overwhelmingly male....never were they 44% female. On what planet did that happen? I've never seen an IT dept with more than 10% females. That's really unfortunate, I think, but...that's just how it is (esp in the sysadmin ranks...the women population goes up some in the web dev ranks).
Just take a quick glance through the comments here and it becomes kind of obvious.
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You know, I sorta wonder about the generalization that everyone who left, was in it just for the money, and everyone who stayed is passionate about it.
I personally know people who left a field or a job precisely _because_ they were passionate about it... and it had turned into something they disliked. E.g., we have at least 3 people here alone, who used to program assembly since the days of mainframes and long before dot-coms, and then left for other completely unrelated jobs (2 of them became marketters and 1 trained to be a usability expert) when basically the job was no longer what they liked to do.
Loving computers and programming is sometimes _the_ best way to _hate_ an IT or programming job, respectively.
People liked coding a smart algorithm or maybe a cute game at home, they had their peer recognition for being good with computer in university, and... then moved into a real world that doesn't even vaguely resemble that. In the real world they:
- got bogged in hundreds of hours of verbal-masturbation meetings,
- were forced to do overtime for someone _else's_ mistake (e.g., the boss being too weak to tell the customer that completely changing the program needs more time and budget),
- were asked to implement blatantly wrong specs, or use the blatantly wrong tools, just because a PHB (own or client's) said so and wasn't gonna take feedback from a lowly peon. (The nice salesman says it's the perfect "solution" for anything, so now go make it work. If it doesn't work, it's your fault, not the nice salesman's.)
- had to wrestle with systems that wouldn't have been the wrong tools as such, but were wrongly configured and piss-poorly adminned by some other corporate department that's above the law,
- had to deal with co-workers that were annoying in a miriad of ways (ranging from the 400 pound stinking geek, to office backstabbers, to people who are utterly incompetent and lazy but awesome at selling snake oil to the boss, to whatever else),
- were forced to do stuff that really had nothing to do with the job they had signed for, such as being the poor-man's marketer instead of a programmer,
- were asked to do blatantly unethical stuff, like to actively lie to a customer,
Etc.
And some of us just learned to shrug and deal with it. Some left the job. And I think it's a bit unfair to just lump them into the same category as those who were in it just for the dot-com's money.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
social desirability theory says that, in general, women percieve themselves as less desirable if they're good at math, or involved in the sciences. If they're not 'normal' they're different.
Women in science aren't in science to "hook a man". They're there to study science.
The women going to college hoping to get married along the way and be a dependent for life are the ones that go into gender-typical classes (ie: elementary education, liberal arts, to a lesser extent management or nursing).
You say that men spend more time in the basement with computers in their adolescence while women don't. First of all, I do not see an argument supporting this, maybe your own experience, which has not enough statistical weight anyway.Second, suppose it was true. Then, what do women do in their adolescence? You'll perhaps agree that they have a more social life (this argument does not have statistical validity either). Well, if so, then they are probably more aware of what a certain customer might need while developing software. Also they'll be more efficient in communicate with the customer to achieve better results in the software developed. This is as important for IT as the programming itself. Therefore, the fact that men spent more time in their basements playing with computers in their adolescence does not make them more suited for IT. They are just more specialized in certain tasks, while women are specialized in others. The mixture if the two specialities is crucial in the proper running and development of an IT company. BOTH are important.
The managers, hence fuckwits (just like men.) Very few managers are not fuckwits. Unfortunately, with one possible exception, on which the jury's still out, the female managers I dealt with were as bad as the usual male manager. By virtue of having contact with more male managers than with female ones, the chances of meeting a non-fuckwit female manager was greatly reduced.
The uninterested--as another poster described, these were the sort of trend-drones seen during the dot-com boom. Once again, fuckwits. Fewer women percentually means fewer non-fuckwits, absolutely. In my case, the non-fuckwit female trend-drone share was nil.
The intimidated--because of the (real or perceived) disadvantages faced by women in IT, these were the mousy, quiet types who never had anything to say. Happens with men too, but as men usually tend to be at least a bit more assertive, it's less common. Not unpleasant to work with, mainly since you never encounter them (they're hiding.) "Oh no I could never do this, I might break it."
The intimidating--taking the previous class a step further, these are the ones who treat every personal encounter as a confrontation. Not man-haters, just insecure people afraid of being fucked by god-knows-what, or unsure of their ability to deal with people trying to fuck them (in a professional manner, mind--no, not that kind of professional manner.) See managers.
The officious--an offshoot of the last category. One of my dearly held stereotypes is that women care more about rules than men do (as in Dilbert's Wally vs. Alice.) These are the types who will throw rules and roadblocks in your face out of principle, because you COULD BE TRYING TO PULL A FAST ONE OH MY GOD. See managers.
The cool ones--don't care, are professional and competent, have the self-confidence to ignore harassment or hit back with wit and style, and understand that there's a job to be done and hey, can't we all just get along. Very rare, but oh so incredibly appreciated. They get things done, are more responsible than the guys, come up with cool, creative solutions, and basically combine all the good sides of a "typical" female personality with a few characteristics making it easy for guys to work with them.
Once again, I realize that most of these stereotypes apply to men as well. I love working with women, if they fall into the latter class. It's just been my experience that a far higher percentage of men tend to be competently agreeable to work with than women.
The main points that I make to women (as with anyone) when talking about IT careers are: (a) don't be intimidated, and (b) don't do this job if you don't love it, and can deal with technical and human shit a lot of the time. Rule #1? Relax, it's a job, get it done and that's it.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Dude, just wait till the clueless girls in marketing need to remove some spyware from their computer and don't know how...
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I hardly bother making comments anymore, I just exit to BoingBoing until the slashcode gives me mod points, but this really needs to be said. The deprecation of computer related fields which is so prevalent in America is NOT the case elsewhere. Where I grew up, the "computer guys" were treated with a certain reverence and awe.
Brains are appreciated in systems which aren't the meatgrinder and specialisation winnowing of US education. I was puzzled for a long time by the "news for nerds" tag on the front page for a long time, eventually I just figured it was there to keep most of the meatheads out.
I mean I fit the classical "nerdy" stereotype almost perfectly, but I'll plant you on your ass if you call me a nerd, son. Mod me down if you like, but seriously, people, a little perspective here!
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
I could equally say that there's plenty of shallow men out there, interested in little more than:-
Cars
Toys. Including iPods and the like.
Babes/Porn Particularly with ludicrously inflated breasts.
Beer
Crap sci-fi movies and series
Maybe they're not too interested in you. Perhaps, because you show little interest in the things they might be interested in (eg Clothes).
Actually, there's plenty of bright, interesting women, but the way your carrying on, I think the real men are more likely to get a share than you.
As much as I love women (after all, I'm a man) why is it a concern that women might prefer work that's a little less tedious and a little more rewarding. Maybe we should worry a little bit more about improving the quality of IT jobs and software engineering jobs in particular rather than sexist or racist issues of why we don't have equal numbers of every sexual and ethnic group in IT jobs. Is it a concern that most garbage collectors are men????
The system that was designed for single men, by single men has worked very well thus far. It has caused the industry to advance with a unprecedented velocity because of its culture of obsession, and isolation (which are two things that most but not all women I know generally find hard to deal with). It seems to me that the most productive and innovative companies are the ones that embody this culture the most, such as EA which although is a horrific workplace, manages to produce inordinate amounts of software. Open source which is done primarily by the most hardcore of nerds in an environment with typically no human contact, and at late hours because of sheer obsession has created some terrific software and innovation.
Beleive it or not, but I actually really like women, and I'd love to be in the company of many many women while working, especially if they are women who like and are good at computing and this is not simply because of sexual attraction, I actually like them for many reasons. So I most cordially welcome anyone to join this system as an equal, regardless of sex and also for that matter race, colour or creed. For it is true, computing does lack gender diversity. But simply put, if someone is wanting to be useful, they MUST adapt to the only system that has proved itself to work. If computing is to remain the 21st century's most cutting edge industry it must keep itself geared towards production over inclusiveness and comfort. As for losing people, if they are not willing to give themselves to the pursuit of excelence as the great minds of computing have done before them, they are simply not worth persuing because their potential, no matter how high, will not be exploited as well as the moderate potential of someone who is committed in mind, body and spirit to the tasks of this feild.
If women are kept out of the system because of active sexism, that is wrong and it needs to change. If women are kept out of the system because they don't fit into the system, they need to try to fit in. After all, there are plenty of systems relating to jobs that a geek would need to change their life to be a part of.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
This was even apparent at school, where even though only 5% of the students were female, only 30% of them had any business being there. (Then again, only 30% of the guys had any business being there, so it's even in that regard.)
This is really the heart of the point if you have a low number of women entering IT then you have a very low number of women who are any good entering IT. I can count on one hand the number of women I have met who were good at IT as well, but I can only count on hand the number of women I have met who were actually involved in IT anyway (well it may be 2 hands but with several spare fingers!) so how does that prove women are naturally bad at the subject? surely its more likely to prove that many women who would be good at it dont get involved for some reason.
I'm with you on there being a wider problem of society funnelling people ionto gender stereotypes though, but lets face it its easier to change the attitudes of some computer professionals then the entire of society
Where you stand depends on where you sit...
"Certainly a concern"? Are you sexist? If not, then should it matter how many women are working in I.T.? As long as both have equal opportunities to be hired by means of qualifications, then I don't see a problem. I'd rather have people that really want to work in the field, than forcing an equal ratio of both males and females.
It's not avoiding sexism by making sure the jobs are split %50/%50, it is sexism when you do that, because you are discriminating really qualified people of a certain sex when its %50 is filled, just because you want to hire someone of the other sex, even if they are lazy--non efficient--asses, just to be seen as "Non Sexist".
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
I think it's a lot more likely that women are leaving IT because of attitudes like this.
-mkb
- Work 12+ hours of the day
- Carry a pager when you're not working
- Deal with minute details and irritating incompatibilities all day long
- Spend your life alone in a server closet talking to the blinkenlights
Basically, this is your average obsessive single guy job. But that's the *nature* of IT. It's not sexist, and there's nothing wrong with saying "you have to change your life" to take this job, that's what jobs ARE. You can't be a forest ranger and hate the outdoors, and you most likely won't like IT work unless you get off on talking more to computers than you do to real human beings. And not having much social life.
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
But it's not just the IT sector: Capitalism is rigged so that single workaholics with no children are the ones rewarded the most because they have no life outside of work and don't mind putting in 50 or 80 hours a week and dedicating their lives to a company.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Agreed.
Honestly, the answer to the question of precisely why there are so few women in computer science, physics, math completely eludes me. I'd really like to know why. I can't find any one good reason why not, and nobody else seems to be able to agree on a reason either.
Maybe it's a combination of everything. Overall, women and men do seem to have different distributions of personalities, aptitudes for certain skills, etc., just as any two distinct groups will. You can just as easily qualitatively compare the residents of two cities or Americans vs. Canadians, or anything else.
But it's always hard to point out some specific REASON that would explain the differences, be it genetic or upbringing or social expectations or hormonal or anything else. Maybe the fact that these distributions change over time serves as some sort of hint. Say, I haven't heard of many women physicists a hundred years ago, but today we at least have some.
From personal experience, though, I've observed that a sort of segmentation of the mind, whereby one can think about something while completely forgetting everything else (e.g., the ability to concentrate on a math problem after a nasty fight with your best friend) seems to be more common in men. I really might be wrong. But not being able escape your personal life while concentrating on hard abstract problems would make a technical profession rather frustrating, I think. Just a guess, maybe.
In 1998, I knew a woman with 22 years experience as a nurse, who wanted to get into IT. Unimaginable now. In 2001, I knew a woman programmer, who got laid off and went back to accounting.
During the boom, virtually anybody could work in IT. After the boom, you had to know your stuff. My guess is, that after the boom the re-treds, both male and female, went back to their old professions. Leaving the field as it was before the boom - predominately male. In fact, often the same males who were there before the boom.
I get turned off by the alpha male attitudes. Even on places like /., there's this low level one-upsmanship going on that really gets to me. I prefer to work in a collaborative environment, and viewing the world as a zero-sum game just turns me off.
I happen to be much more stubborn than the average woman, and so I stay in IT, but I see this whole attitude turn lots of talented women away.
Except that, in the fields of mathematics and logical thinking, the stereotype has been scientifically proven to be true in most cases. So, what we are seeing is exactly what we expect to see: some women in IT and many men in IT. This fits the distribution pattern as seen by years and years of aptitude tests.
Men and women's minds simply work differently. No amount of wishful thinking will ever make it otherwise. It comes to me as no surprise that there are more men in IT than women, not just because it has traditionally been a male-dominated career path, but also because men are simply better suited for it. Women excel in some areas of thinking, and men excel in others. IT just happens to land in the areas that men excel in, on average.
What you're saying is that as Computer Science classes get harder, you find fewer and fewer women who can hack it.
... what, exactly, to do with the topic under discussion?
Granted, I'm a female in engineering, not Computer Science, but I found this comment a little offensive.
Not everyone is as tenacious as your mother. Having work done for you and having people treat you like you're a "special person" is a pretty bad impression, and if a woman wasn't set on an IT career that could turn her off.
Huh? What exactly are you trying to say? Nobody treats me like I'm "a special person" because of my gender, and I do my own schoolwork. Really, the only difference is that I don't have to wait in line to use the bathroom.
Hell, idiot geek students almost turned me to another major. When it looks like you will have to probably spend the rest of your life with people you can't stand, you start looking for alternatives.
Which has
Apart from moral questions, it's not even productive. Find where people are good and work with their strengths.
First of all, I'd like to say a little bit about myself and what I've observed around me. I'm a second year student at Dalhousie University (that's in Halifax, if anyone cares), and I've only been an official computer science student for this past term. Before that, I was a biology major, so I'm really behind in my cs courses and have to take both first and second year classes concurrently. I've noticed that while my first year Java course has quite a number of girls in it, most of them are from other faculties and, quite frankly, wouldn't cut it in any IT-related field. These are the kinds of girls who got it into their miniscule brains sometime in highschool that boys only like stupid girly girls, so they seem to make a sincere effort to not learn anything about computers. In my second year classes, the girls are more like me -- perfectly ordinary geeks who just happen to like computers and want to learn more. Of course, there are far fewer girls in those second year classes because the aforementioned bimbo types have already been weeded out by the insurmountable challenge of writing a Hello World program in Java.
My question then becomes, how do we get more intelligent girls in computer science? Not just girls in general, but ones who actually have some kind of talent for it and aren't going to make the rest of us look bad with their antics. I don't think there's an easy answer to this, but I suspect that the current initiatives are doing more harm than good.
For example, when I see a job ad that says "We encourage minorities like blacks, Native Americans and women to apply!" I'm sitting there thinking to myself, "Uh... OVER 50% OF THE FREAKIN' POPULATION HERE! How the HELL are a minority?" But for some reason, we're treated as if we're some kind of endangered species. Doesn't it occur to anyone that we might not like that treatment? Doesn't it occur to anyone that we just want to be treated like ordinary human beings, no matter what's between our legs? I mean, I'm not going to refuse if somebody throws money at me for having a vagina and using a computer, but it's really not a good way to encourage other girls to join the field. It's hard to see myself as successful when I so often have to wonder if everything I've "achieved" is only because I'm female (and thus have to be specially encouraged and rewarded to keep me from running away.)
Oh, and another thing: I never see any similar initiatives to get more men into... say... nursing, or even regular biology. They're definitely in the minority, but either people are afraid of being called sexist for favouring the sex that's supposedly in power (even though it hasn't been for decades), or they've figured out that the best way to get men into something like nursing is NOT to say "Oh, don't worry! It's not just for women! You won't be less of a man if you're a nurse! Not feminine at all! Trust me!" because they know that any man will look at something like that and think to himself "So wait, nursing makes me gay?" thanks to the wonders of reverse psychology. I just wonder how long it will take for the faculty of computer science to figure that out as well...
(Yes, I know I'm bitter.)
"A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name" - Evan Esar (1899-1995)
I have worked for the various government agencies and departments for 8 years now, and the number of women working in IT is definitely above average for the IT field. I attribute this to the fact that they are not being driven out of the field here. As a government employee, we have steady and predictable hours with little overtime. Vacation time is quite generous, and family related leave is available. These working conditions are not only attractive to women, but also to the men that I have worked with as well. I knew one guy who took a 20% pay cut (transferring to government from the private sector) so that he could have dinner with his family on a regular basis. I know another who is taking parental leave shortly so he can raise his daughter while his wife goes back to work early (in the private sector, she also works in IT).
I think the problem here is that the expected working conditions in the (North American private sector) IT field are atrocious. Long hours, unpaid overtime, arcane technology that is constantly changing is what's wrong with the IT industry. Women leaving the field in droves are just a symptom of a deeper running illness.
She has NO desire to go into IT. Nor do her friends.
Why?
These girls have seen all the "girls can do math/science" stuff their whole lives. They KNOW they can. They will take that else where.
When IT becomes people friendly, the women will come back. Many men are leaving for the same reasons.
And as a single childfree guy who prefers computers to socializing, I therefore don't need a wife. All I can say to that is WOOHOO!
(I was recently described as a "good catch" by a cow orker who suggested I ask another cow orker out sometime. The look of bewilderment on her face when I explained that while I like teh b00bies as much as any male, I don't need 'em to feel like my life is complete. It's not so much about "get a life" -- I've got one, but it's just different than that of the nongeek because I chose to optimize mine for efficiency. I'm relatively frugal, don't want a family, and my right hand is cheap and available. For me, the gains in autonomy, simplicity, and elegance of going solo outweigh the drawbacks of not having a financial and emotional failover unit. "One less box on the rack to maintain" is sometimes a feature, not a bug :)
"women and men do seem to have different distributions of personalities, aptitudes for certain skills" This point says alot, I have always noticed that women and men tend to think differently about things. Men usually approach something with the 'how does this work' mentality. Women on the other hand look at it differently, i think most would ask themselves 'how does this affect life as a whole' or something more abstract. I can remember having this discussion with my wife, i've even noticed that the way she analyzes certain things is totally different than the way I would. It's just like they say in Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Men like to fix things, and thus want to know how they work. This is most likely why the IT profession is dominated by men. Now i realize that these are simply generalizations and don't apply to all men and women, but it seems like the majority of men and women fall into these two categories.
From what I've seen, I'd say that the results will be a stronger, healthier IT workforce. The law of natural selection is at work here and we should not try to infuence it artificially with our political, social biases. Why is it that professions like nursing have a majority of women, but nobody seems to lament the need for more men in nursing? Individuals gravitate to fields that fit their genetics (oh, no not that word!) and conditioning. So, more men like/have natural abilities toward IT/Engineering? So what? Let's call it what it is. As long as women are not prevented from entering fields that they enjoy and excel at then there should not be a problem if they choose to not go into fields that they don't enjoy or excel at. It's choice, not numbers that count. Let's encourage ANY sex to be happy in whatever they choose to do and not worry that the numbers show what we've all known but are afraid to admit--that women and men are different. D'uh.
People say that university was the best time of there life.
I wouldn't recommend computer science to my worst enemy.
Not only do you not meet any girls in any of your classes you carry around the stigma of comp sci.
On top of that I graduated at a time when there were no computer science jobs.
I was forced to take a job as a bartender.
Let me just say bartending was fun.
The stigma for girls is even worse in comp sci.
It's got to be hard not having any peers of the same gender.
They are surrounded by a buch of sex starved guys.
But look at the other side of the coin for example nursing.
Not a lot of guys there.
You never really hear studies about guys not going into nursing.
Even though there is a huge shortage of nurses.
The stigma of being a male nurse is a lot worse than comp sci.
If you look at country like Korea, The stigma of comp sci doesn't really exist.
I would imagine there is a high enrollment rate for women in comp sci there.
Technology is very much a part of their society.
Simple, women are smarter than men, and they already see that IT is a dead end field, like making buggies after the Model T came out.
Although there will still be IT jobs (unlike the buggy makers) from here on out IT will be drudge work, and not a desireable field to be in anymore. It is just that women noticed this first.
==>Lazn
My mum's a java/C++ programmer who works on unix for the department of energy - highly respected in her field.
I'm a C++/multimedia programmer who works mostly on windows.
I have no children, but hope someday to continue the line of women geek programmers.
When I graduated from college - I majored in CS - we had 6 women out of 300 graduates. Then during the IT boom, the numbers seemed to go up - women, as well as men - were attracted by the "promise" of easy money.
Then the dot com bubble burst, and there isn't "easy money" anymore, so the numbers have gone down - back to about where they were before the dot com boom.
I believe that society does not tend to create as many geek women as they do geek men. I'm an exception rather than a trend. I learned to pull the power plug out of vt100 terminals to get my mother to pay attention to me. I helped my dad build our first computer - an 086 - from scratch when I was 8. I played adventure with my mother at 9, and together we charted the maze of twisty passages. I installed Linux at age 14. Had my own web server running in my bedroom by the time I went to college.
But most women aren't given the resources and encouragement I was. I was given free reign of the home computers. I was told at one point that anything I could do to the computers COULD be fixed. So when I corrupted windows at age 10 through experimentation, I was not punished, which allowed me to continue to view computers as learning experiences rather than "Scary machines".
My father had no sons. He loved to teach me "boy things" like tools and cars and computers, because there was no one else to teach it to. Had I a brother, I probably would not have been allowed to convert the spare computer into a linux box. Had my mother not been a mathematician and a programmer, I probably would not have been taught QBASIC when I was 9 - and then given a set of BASIC books and left to my own devices.
Most girls are taught to concentrate on other things. Clothes. TV. Boys. Art. Makeup. I am horrid at wearing makeup. My fashion is incredibly boring. I was never a "popular" girl. Most of the time I got treated as one of the geek guys, because I could program as well as any of them.
Which brings me back to my original point. There are only so many girls raised with the encouragement and inclination to become geeks. There are many more boys who are given the tools and resources and society pressure to become geeks. Therefore, boy geeks will continue to outnumber girl geeks.
The increase in girls in CS in the past few years was mearly an echo of the promise of "Easy money" of the dot comm boom, and now that it is gone, only those who do it because they love to do it remain.
Sincerely, A Girl Geek.
Tepp