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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)
There were women working in IT???? Where?
Simple, less geek chicks!
And that's terrible. How am I supposed to deal with a woman that doesn't think compiling a just released kernel is exciting and the best forplay one can have?
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...
Why is this necessarily a concern? I'm not against the presence of women in I.T., but I don't see that it's a problem if the proportion of female I.T. workers declines. This is just sexist scaremongering, along the lines of the GNAA.
While this is certainly a concern, what are the overall effects of such a mass departure?
Less sex on the job?
Oh, wait, we're talking about IT right?
Nevermind.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Now I'll never get a date.
what are the overall effects of such a mass departure?
Er... tangible masterbation material is thinning out?
Jonathanjk.com
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.
Its because theres only one of me to go round, and they're unhappy not to be working with me all the time.
Yes.
Thats it for sure.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
"While this is certainly a concern, what are the overall effects of such a mass departure?"
We will have to get the teas and coffees ourselves.
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.
Isn't this just another baby boomer generation leaving the office to have kids?
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
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?
Women _are_ smarter than men.
May the Maths Be with you!
I worked for a female I.T. manager once. She fired someone every 28 days.
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
If they include call centres as "I.T." jobs then offshoring may have had an impact.
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
How do they define IT in the first place? It seems like an increasingly vague concept to me.
Does writing content for websites count as IT?
There used to be a time when women had the majority. Then, coding was seen as a boring women's thing. Later men realized that it can be fun and drove the women out. Could this be a wave of retirement women?
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 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
I think what it means is that Information Technology is, from the point of view of a company that isn't writing code, making hardware, or providing connectivity, a dead horse. The corporate world doesn't need in-house geeks soaking up the payroll and hoarding the sacred knowledge of esoteric, arcane legacy systems that don't work.
That equates to corporate IT being a pre-capped stove pipe within any given non-tech company - something women who are looking for good paying positions with the possibility of advancement aren't finding attractive. It may be that they aren't drawn naturally to the "me geek, me play with cool toys" life, but that life has limited applicability outside of the tech sector. Why would anyone intentionally choose to enter a career track that leads to becoming the digital equivalent to a cafeteria server or a janitor?
Until someone comes along and changes the landscape of Information within business (and society) to something that more closely approximates electricity - Information Utility - there won't be any truely good reason to get into anything but the super creative core disciplines of IT in a shrinking number of tech firms that are charting the course for the future of business computing.
Because women constitute both a more observed and a smaller population, trends will appear sooner in their group within the IT world as a whole. I think they are leaving because it's smart to be leaving this particular ship if you aren't in a position to steer a new course.
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.
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.
Both of them?
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Two different call centers in my area closed down and both of those who lost jobs were women. My understanding was that were more women than men at both. So I am curious what is counted as IT in this report...
:)
As for maternity leave. We have 3 out now and one more going by July here. Two are out on 12 week maternity leaves. This is where I disagree with the article. We, like other companies, simply don't move that fast. Yes a lot can go by in 12 weeks but most of it is meaningless. There might be one major change, maybe two if some managers actually got out of their own way. Two of them have come back once already from an earlier pregnancy and nothing really changed here other than they have a few more missed days throughout the year.
Leaving in droves? Maybe they got smart
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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.
You can't compare percentages like that and come to the conclusion that women are leaving the IT market without mentioning the actual numbers...
It's 11pm, do you know what your deamons are up to?
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).
When the ship is sinking, the women and children leave first don't they? :)
Blame the outsourcing iceberg. Something about "no longterm prospects".
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Rather than crying that the sky is falling and theorizing as to why a trend that may not exist happen, maybe the article should question the way it uses statistics more closely. (You see similar things in Apple marketshare stories -- Apple is down to 2% of the market, but they sell a steady or increasing number of machines. Why? Because the market is growing. It helps to have perspective on these things.)
Women aren't ruling the world?
It's simple, studies have shown (I don't have links off hand, but I'm sure you guys/gals can back me up on this) that men are more geared toward math than women. Women are more geared towards language, which is why women are better at expressing themselves.
If you like TV shows and gaming please check out BornSlacker.com
When I worked for a game development company in the US it was extremely rare to meet a female developer, occasionally an artist or level designer. My company had a single female - the office manager.
:-)
When I came to Korea I was amazed at the ratio, it's approaching 40-50% in my new company. And not just artists but programmers, sysadmins etc.
It's not unusual to see a girl on the subway studying a cisco, C++ or Linux book. There's definitely no sense of uncoolness being in IT - it's not even seen as geeky, just a good career.
So in Korea, only old women are leaving IT
Just take a quick glance through the comments here and it becomes kind of obvious.
/* This sig is disabled. Press CTRL-W to enable. Thankyou */
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
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.
1. It's seriously flawed journalism. IT can encompass many, many fields. If they're taking into account call centres, for example, a lot of those have been shipped out of the US. Tech support also went through this crazy phase were they were hiring Customer Service types to do tech support as well. As much as I hate to say it, the sort of prejudice in tech support leans way more towards women. (Just an example of what could be veering these stats around.) 2. I doubt it's the family juggle that's making my gender less prolific than a few years ago. Perhaps it's actually that we have to work so much harder to get people to understand that not only do we know what we're talking about, sometimes *WE KNOW MORE.* I've been asked if I was an office manager, sales, a receptionist... All sorts. Things that my male colleagues have never had to deal with. 3. It is a cause for concern, if women are leaving just a little bit because of option two then dammit, something needs to change. I'm tired of the seemingly prevelant attitudes of the above comments peppering my career. I have boobies, get over it. There is no reason I should be treated any differently. That needs to be looked at very closely. 4. I hope this kind of crappy journalism continues. It makes me seem even more special than I already am. {If I had a sig, it would include some amusing comment about vi. However, I gave up on sigs years ago.)
When people start worrying that there aren't enough men going in the dental hygienist field (I've never in all my life seen one), I'll start worrying about the lack of women in IT.
--Good morning fellas; Hand me that thing; Boy, this work's hard; Guys, break's over.
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????
I've met far fewer women doing IT here in the UK than men. I'd bet good money (if I had it) that the % of women in UK IT is much lower than in the US.
Why? IMHO those [women] that I've met in IT are very competent and good at their jobs. But I've not met any yet live IT . Doing the job 9 to 5 is all well and good, but I've yet to meet a woman who does this kind of thing in her spare time. The sort of thing we all do, home projects, fun hacks and the like. I think there are women out there like that but not as common as the men like that.
Why is it always a concern when there are insufficient women in, or entering, a traditionally male dominated field? Is it not possible to let women naturally choose to join the field they wish?
When I was in university (88-92) there was a huge drive on to bring women into engineering. Scholarships and reduced entrance grade averages were used to attract them. This kind of discrimination against males was all the rage (and continues in some quarters still) during that time period. I've often wondered what, 15 years later, the outcome was. Is the engineering field better in some way than it was prior to massively (and I would argue, artifically) raising the number of females in that area of study?
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...
I think that the real cause of the female IT exodus is twofold: The first is that the money is no longer there. Fortunately, this means that IT candidates now are likely more dedicated. On the other hand, that means homogeneity... you only get those that are dedicated in the field, and that seems to consist almost entirely of males. Additionally, there is a social stigma associated with these sorts of fields... or, for that matter, demonstrating rational intelligence at all. Women are expected to be nurturers because that is what society expects of them, not because of any significant innate difference. Likewise, men are supposed to be the rational protectors and financial supporters. For a woman to defy what her peers may think of her in order to pursue the field that she really wants to is rare. Then again, how many male nurses do you know?
I think it's a lot more likely that women are leaving IT because of attitudes like this.
-mkb
i can come up with several reasons why my career is taking me ever more into the business side of the aisle, away from the geek cubes::
First, I've still never met another female software architect. People like to work with people who are like them. It gives them more to talk about than just "the code". It's hard to make friends at work when you're surrounded by mostly men. Everyone thinks you're "more than friends".
Second, IT managers tend to have less "soft skills" than their business-side counterparts. Face it, we live in a world where women do the lion's share of child-raising. If my manager isn't sensitive about the time I *need* to be away from work cos school is closing early, then I'm going to be less happy on the job.
Third, IT managers tend to be male (as are most IT workers). Managers like to promote people who are like them. It's been hard for me in some organizations to envision a good career path.
Lastly, it sucks sometimes to be in meetings and be the only woman there. Yes, that can be a point of pride, but it's not always a comfortable feeling.
I hope that you're not serious, anyone who would leave their chosen career field because someone else didn't think that they could cut it is a very weak person indeed. I really hope that you'd give women more credit than this.
After watching my mom go back to school and work her ass off for what she wanted I'm offended when I hear statements like this.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
I'm not sure that I'd say women are "better in less geeky programming, where it is more business oriented," but I would say that (in general) women I've known tend to prefer that end of the field. Maybe it's a desire to not have to spend their evenings learning new languages and technologies; maybe it's just less of an interest in pure technology and a predisposition toward seeing tech as just a tool for getting other things done; maybe it's something else entirely. But in my experience, the pattern does seem to exist. That generalization doesn't apply to me. I strongly prefer the "more geeky" hackerish stuff that requires keeping up with tech; it appeals to my curiosity about how things work. Nevertheless, the generalization has affected my career, because it's a perception many of my managers have had over the years. To be fair, my career does span two decades, and I started out in the southeast US, an area not well-known for progressive attitudes towards women in the work force. Lately, I've seen MUCH less of this, though perhaps it's because I'm now on the West Coast.
The experience I gained for myself in school included UNIX file systems kernel work, IBM mainframe data communications and systems-programming-level assembler, writing an ancient commercial computer game, etc. I spent my vacations paying my own way to Usenix UNIX research conferences and my spare student cash on a Compuserve connection and the PC Pursuit service (cheap long distance for calling BBSes) in the pre-Internet days. When I got out into the real world: "no, we don't think you're right for this systems position, how about this COBOL application development group?", (I was far better, and more experienced, at OS internals in C or assembly than I was at COBOL) "we need someone with your expertise in user interface design," (huh? I had none), etc. An astonishing percentage of the time, companies have steered me toward work in business applications even when I demonstrated more aptitutde and interest in other areas of computing. One choice quote: "Oh, honey, you don't want to spend your days lugging 50 pound servers around." Reality: I have found it frustrating to work in the same business apps development environment for very long. After a very short period of "learning the environment", my work consisted largely of tediously lining fields up on grids and populating database schema, NOT learning about technology or improving/challenging my dev skills (companies specifically didn't want new technologies used in their apps because then, horrors, my coworkers would have to LEARN them!). At one place of employment, a small VAR, I referred a (less technical) male friend to my employer. Before I knew it, he was the organization's official customer engineer (a job function that previously occupied half my day), getting to do customer system configurations, on-site support, etc. I was only trotted out as a problem solver when customers had trouble with their installations, complained and specifically requested my presence, having heard through the grapevine that there was a girl at the company who really knew her stuff even though the company insisted my friend was their best techie. Other women I know have had similar experiences.
It wasn't until I hung out my own shingle and had right of refusal over EVERY project, that I was able to lead my career away from that.
This is applicable to the slashdot crowd because I'd like to encourage folks to take an open mind toward the women you encounter in tech. Some of us have wired our homes with X-10 gear, read OS source code with breakfast and yes, even have a history of butting heads with school admins over learning activities they insisted
Lemme tell you why I also don't believe the problem is as clear cut and biologic as you seem to think.
You see, as I've mentioned several times before, I happen to have some first hand experience with Eastern Europe during communism and the cold war. The funny thing about Soviet-style communism is that, at least in theory, they were really hammering on the gender equality idea. (Of course, theory and practice still often diverged nevertheless.)
And you know what? They had a _ton_ of good programmers that were women. Damn good programmers, in fact. Also a ton of physicsts, doctors, mathematicians, engineers, etc. And an almost 50-50 distribution in college students. Including, yes, in CS and electronics.
So the problem _is_ a social one, not some biologic/genetic pre-destination. (Unless you're willing to tell me that they had some rare genetic strain of women;) It's also a complex one. It can't be reduced strictly to "males are sexist", either.
For a start, there was no stigma in being good at maths or science. It was a pride. The whole social system artiffically put nerds at the top, and made sure they're much better paid than, say, plumbers are.
So there was a helluva lot of an economic incentive to actually become a doctor or an engineer, as opposed to just a pretty and popular airhead.
And the whole school system was a rather brutal exercise in selecting who can learn, from who can't. They didn't have some watered-down "science" class in school. They did physics, chemistry, and maths in high school at a level comparable to what you'd get in the USA only in a college of that profile. E.g., they actually learned quantum physics in high school.
The idea was not to have it all at a level where everyone can understand it. The idea was to filter those maybe 10% who can, from those who can't. Being among those who did, was seen as a thing of _pride_.
Also, their education really hammered on the idea of equality. E.g., in the USSR they had even books about female military heroes of WW2. The whole message was, "yes, you too can do everything that the guys can!"
So, on the whole, what we have here is a massive difference in social- and peer-pressure.
The girlfriend you base your generalization on, was told by society that _the_ way to go is to forget those childhood dreams of being a chemist or doctor, and just be a popular skinny airhead. That's the message we give to kids in the west.
On the other hand, the message they got back then and there, was the exact opposite. "Hang on to that dream. Fight your way uphil through the education system, and actually become that engineer or scientist or doctor. Being an intellectual is _good_."
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the Soviet-style society and enforcing an unnatural social structure, was viable. Their system did go bankrupt, after all.
But incidentally it also did show that, if given the proper motivation and peer-pressure, their women could and did make just as good programmers, engineers and scientists as the men.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Okay, so i'm the first 'barbie' to reply. I'm a 31 yr old female and i've worked in IT since 1998. As always, i'm in the minority as a chick, varying from 10% to 40% women of the workforce of the company (and the 40% was in a web/graphic design company). Don't forget that career choices are motivated by social stimulus and peer pressure which begin in the perambulator all the way thru educational career. It's still not hot for girls to go for science/technical careers. My dad always told me how good I was in languages. My tests showed that I had a natural affinity for mechanical insight. I ended up studying English lit. and autodidacted my way into IT. This illustrates how girls in general are hence less confident of their abilities. Recent studies actually promote the separate education of girls from boys in computer and science subjects at grade/primary school to counteract this not genetic, but social issue... Because of the growth in specialisms, and different programming languages, girls i reckon "perceive" IT to have become more difficult. And besides, how much fun is it to be the only girl out of a 100 geeks in CS? :)
Well, I'm sorry you're offended, but if people constantly get brushed off there's often a limit to their patience.
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.
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.
-mkb
And besides, how much fun is it to be the only girl out of a 100 geeks in CS? :)
Well, it's great if you want attention, I suppose. I'd rather be the one dude in a French class...
-mkb
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.
3. They married the billionaire CEO and quit working
2. They went back to grad school to shut that Harvard guy up
1. They got tired of being asked to dress up as "7 of 9" every Halloween.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Stereotypes seem to be prevalent in our society. A lot of people have to fight hard to prove that they can do the job while some are assumed to be able to do it, and these assumptions do not always agree with the results.
I've seen employers expect less of people based on sex, age, race, nationality, etc. I'm lucky enough to be a white (mostly... a little Asian, but most people don't seem to notice) male, but unfortunately too young. I'm 21, and I generally get the feeling that my bosses are surprised whenever I deliver any results, whereas the older people in our company are generally assumed to be exeprienced professionals, yet not all of them are necessarily that good at what they do.
Just trying to give this discussion a little perspective. The world isn't fair. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about it though.
A very interesting comment. I would say roughly half of the people I've had working for me over the past few years have been women. Some were hard core Unix geeks (one was a Unix geek and held a Masters in Geology to boot) some liked networks, others were into programming. I really didn't (and still don't) make a distinction with gender when hiring new people or managing existing ones. I'm only interested in those folks who can do the job and work well in a team. Gender, ethnicity, religion etc etc I could care less about to be honest. What I did notice, however, is that *all* of the females working for me have come from other fields (Geology, Biochemistry, Neuroscience to name a few), whereas the fellas all came directly through CS or Engineering degrees. I'm not sure what that says about them or me, but it's a data point I guess. What all of the folks had in common (once again, regardless of gender) was that they were (and are) sharp as tacks. That has value.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Unfortunately, the way the human brain works more or less requires that we stereotype people. It's how we sort 'the world', post-descartes. The distinction people usually leave out is the implied preceding word 'negative'. I'd love to meet a person who doesn't expect anyone to act/exist in a certain way because of their outward appearance [be it positive, or negative]. Don't get me wrong, many people try very hard. It's an ideal, though, like the fully objective scientist.
The odds are good, but the goods are odd.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
There's a sort of mild autism that makes people a whole lot better at math-related fields. From this little we understnd about autism, it could well have a sex bias. I'd certainly like to know the answer myself, but as the president of Harvard demonstrated, one can't even *ask* the question in Academia today.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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)
But it can be overwhelming. Sometimes you just want to talk to someone who shares your gender.
*That's* propbably the important social phenomenon here! There's a certain arrogance that's required to be a good programmer IMO, to always think "it's software, nothing is impossible", and I'm not buying the other social arguments in this thread. If you have the confidence to do programming well, you're unlikely to be discouraged by idiots (heck, you'll never make it a year in a large IT shop if you're discouraged by idiots).
OTOH, having *some* ability to socialize at work is a pretty important requirement in life, and without a certain critical mass of women in the field, that could be quite a barrier.
There must be something else at work, however, as at least in my shop most of the female programmers choose the management career path, while most of the male programmers choose the tecnical track.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Isn't that what college is all about ? (besides the education thingy)
music lover since 1969
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.
While its true that men and women's minds work differently, that does not mean that women are unsuited to IT. What it *does* mean is that women are unsuited to IT _as defined by men_. The male managers and higher-ups in the field expect things to work they way they've always done them--but they way they've always done things favors male thinking, which makes it much harder for a woman to succeed. Men tend to be single-minded and can focus on a single project to the exclusion of the rest of the world for a long period of time (think of a cave man spending all day hunting a single animal so he can provide meat for the family). Women throughout the ages have learned to track a lot of things going on (think of the cave woman gathering food, preserving the previous day's kill, and tracking a handful of kids at the same time). When men and women work together and realize that their skills complement each other, then they achieve greater success. But when a man decides that everyone must be measured by how big of an animal he can hunt, then the women's contribution is undervalued and it appears as though she's unfit.
If you think that being discriminated against means being given a comfy office job, you're waay off the mark.
;)
It more like means that is that you'll be pushed in a stereotypical, but crap paid job.
Like receptionist. Nothing says "equality" to some companies like having a black and/or woman as receptionist. It's right in the front, so, hey, everyone can see how equal they are to women and minorities.
Or like waitress, dish washer, supermarket cashier, etc. I think you'll find more women pegged in that kind of low-pay jobs than in offices.
And outcry about shortage of men in _crap_ high-stress low-pay jobs like teaching? Well, gee, that's so discriminated. I soo feel sorry for poor you, being denied that job and having to do with a high-paid office job instead.
Or nurses. Well, gee, males are so unfairly discriminated. They get to be the well paid doctors, while those lucky women get to change bedsheets and bedpans for a fraction of the pay.
I mean, gee, that must be as discriminated against as the whites were on the southern plantations. I mean, all those lucky blacks got dream jobs like picking cotton, while the poor whites were pegged into roles like plantation owners and merchants
That was some heavy sarcasm, if anyone can tell. And disgust.
Now seriously: If you think there's some sexist conspiracy that keeps you from teaching as a male, go apply for that job at some inner-city school. You might find that they'll take you in an instant, and noone will start harrassing you because you're male. And noone will ask stupid gender-related questions. Nor ask you to work twice as much as a woman teacher to be considered equal, in spite of your "obvious" gender handicap.
Dunno, whenever I see this kind of "waah, but they have all the (insert crap low-pay work) jobs" and "why don't they also take the (insert other crap line of work) jobs, then?" demagogue rhetoric, it just makes me wanna puke. I've heard it about women, I've heard it about blacks, I've heard it about foreigners, etc.
It invariably just means "but I really want to keep getting an undeserved privilege, not for any personal merits, but just because I happened to be born the right gender/race/nationality/whatever. And I'll scream and moan against any comparison of _merits_ and _skills_, instead of that undeserved privilege." Which is just disgusting.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...they made me nervous anyway. They kept wanting to talk and stuff.
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.
You're missing the point. It's not simply that society at large looks down on geeks (yes, yes, we ALL have to deal with that), but that a lot of male geeks seem to think women are just too stupid to work with computers. Just look at that asshole who posted the original "It's just too hard for them" post: he pretty much says outright that women are good for cooking and babies and should leaved the heavy thinking to the men. That's the extra load that aspiring she-geeks have to deal with.
"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.
how many in IT are 25 to 35 now? Because that's the age when many people have kids now. My wife was in IT till our son was born. She's staying home with him. Although not as many moms stay home while the kids are in school, a lot more stay home with them for the first year or so.
About 45% are home atleast a year -- "55 percent of women who gave birth between July 1999 and July 2000 returned to the labor force within a year of having their babies". "Of the 41.8 million kids under 15 who lived with two parents last year, more than 25 percent had mothers who stayed home, according to a Census Bureau report."
Some might think this is a bad thing. But "You're not how much money you have in the bank."
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.
My guess is that it's cultural. As I recall from my undergrad days, the women that were in my CS classes were by and large non-American. It's very likely that there is an ingrained stigma against American women entering science fields, although I can't imagine why, as I do not see any variation in the range of skill or expertise between men and women in my workplace -- there are good and bad for both, but neither is ahead of or behind the other.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
I never once heard him address her ability (or inability) to do the job. Now I don't consider myself a feminist, but I was left speechless by his complete lack of professional (and social) competence.
Anonymous Kev
Proudly posting as AC since 1997
(Finally got a dang account in 2004)
My wife graduated with her BSEE last may and she's still looking for a job. She was one of 2 females in her class and 98% of the others were from out of country and many of them went home.
Living in DFW you'd think it would be easier for her to get a job but despite her skillset and companies "wanting" to hire college graduates it still has not happened.
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
But in the end these are all antidocial(sic) evidence and not real scientific evidence. A good cross country, cross gender study of these aspects of men and women in the work place needs to be done, but good luck trying that in our society without being called sexist or bigoted.
Space for rent, inquire within
An interesting thought I haven't seen in any of the comments on this yet... I've been in IT (web programming, actually) for 6 years. I'm female. I admit to being a very unstereotypical geek. I spend most evenings either in front of my computer or in a ballet studio, two very seperate worlds. People that meet me as a dancer are suprised when they learn I'm a programmer. People in IT are suprised to find out I do things of the non-geek persuasion like ballet. I'm currently engaged and plan on having children in the next few years... But I think my job in IT actually caters BETTER to my desire to have a family than most other fields. I can (and plan on) transition to telecommuting after maternity leave. The IT industry is one of the best areas for telecomuting I've seen. As long as I have a computer and internet access, I can do my job from pretty much anywhere. I've been offered the opportunity for higher paying jobs in other fields, but I'm purposfully staying in this field because its the best fit to my future goals.
Those who dance are thought mad by those who hear not the music.
You mean the one STRAIGHT dude in a French class.
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
Ah, yes. Scientifically proven.
See, the big problem here is that two people can look at the same data and interpret it different ways, and they interpret it the way they want to see it, even if they are scientists. For example, a famous study conducted by Benbow and Stanley (1980) regarding the math skills of junior high students was widely reported to support a clear superiority of male students over females students. But when you look at the actual graph of the scores, you see two bell curves pretty damn close to each other, and if you remove the prodigies from the mix (which DO happen to be mostly male and rare), the scores for the sexes are virtually identical. That was back in 1980, when I'm SURE women were not encouraged in science and math.
Or how about Gustave Le Bon? He was a scientist who in 1879 wrote: "In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion."
Almost laughable, right? But it still goes on today... Science magazine reported in 1983 that "Math Genius May Have Hormonal Basis," a story based on the work of Geschwind and Behan, who claimed to have witnessed differences in the development of male and female brains. Well, yes, they did. In RAT brains, where after undergoing a testosterone wash, male rats' brains were 3% thicker on the right than the left. From this, Geschwind and Behan, ignoring an earlier study of human fetal brain development from 10 to 44 weeks gestation that found no sex differences, decided that this was because the male rat needed better spatial skills to watch for other rats while having sex. They then essentially ported this theory and applied it to humans. Great science, chums. What's even more insulting is that Science never published any of the articles, corrections, or letters to the editor that neuroscientist Ruth Bleier sent to them contradicting and poking holes in the shoddy science.
And this is what most people have grown up reading, so it's what they believe, and it's what they pass along. And frankly, if you don't know you're supposed to be bad at math, you're a lot less likely to be bad at math.
Anyways... My point is that before you claim anything is "scientifically proven," keep in mind that we're always discovering and reinterpreting scientific findings, and that any variation between the sexes in ability is much less than the variation within a sex. I know a lot of women in IT who are very good at their jobs. I know a number of women with advanced degrees in math and science. It's certainly not a result of sex that anyone has to be bad at anything.
And frankly, as a woman who has generally scored in the top percentile in math and logic tests, I have a hard time believing I must be deficient because of my chromosomes.
>I'm a second year student at Dalhousie
>University (that's in Halifax, if anyone
>cares),
Good to see someone in the same province as me posting. This place doesn't seem to be very "knowledge economy" right now unless you count call centers - I've about given up on sysadminning and am looking for a receptionist job (seems to be all I'm qualified for). Good luck with the CompSci.
>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.
"Java - that's about coffee, right?" I'd be tempted to blame some of it on morons with more money (correction, parents with more money) than brains who follow a boyfriend/girlfriend to college and then just take whatever 'looks good'. I knew a guy who did that. He wanted to play in a band for a living and wound up in a marine biology track. Why? He liked to fish in his spare time, so he figured he'd get to know what bait was best for the fish he liked.
>My question then becomes, how do we get
>more intelligent girls in computer science?
How do we get more intelligent girls? Not to say that boys are more intelligent, but school (and life) seems to select against geek girls. Geek guys don't do so well, and are often bullied, but some of us were fortunate enough to get a fairly large and imposing type build (Thank you puberty!) that scares most bullies away. Girls don't have even that refuge from the more emotional bullying of their peers. They also don't necessarily have refuge with the geek guys, who sadly can get into "EEEE! COOTIES!" mode. Isolation, depression, or forcing onself to conform. Not pretty options for a geek girl to face. (Of course, being a geek guy, I could be completely wrong. I didn't much pay attention to social dynamics of females. Or males, even, I just knew enough that when I got tall and broad, guys didn't tease me or pick fights as much.)
The media isn't kind either: There's even a minor geek guy hero archetype (the guy who stays at base typing on a PC or giving info via radio to the Manly Men who go on the dangerous mission), but geek girls? Unpossible! Sandra Bullock vehicles notwithstanding, all you see is that villainess who can do kung fu and fly planes and use computers, but that person's almost always the "villainess who can do everything", not a specific geek type. And always a villain. (Grrr! Og says smart woman evil! Evil woman witch! Burn witch! Arrrrg!)
>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?"
Less in the workforce. Also, you've been legislated a minority; therefore, you are a minority. Besides, it's cheaper for the Big Boss to say "We hire minorities, like women!" and junk all male-named resumes for the occasional job than it is for him to pay their women employees identical wages to men. Sexism is alive and well in the workforce. Isn't the difference between female and male wages (on the same job) increasing again? People got so focused on "chairman" vs. "chairperson" and other "political correctness" that they forgot that a lot of women were still only making 80 cents to a man's dollar.
>Doesn't it occur to anyone that we might
>not like that treatment?
Not really. You're supposed to be the downtrodden masses who only get anywhere because the White Male Empire is nice enough to throw you a line every now and then. Merit? Skill? Oh, womenfolk don't have that!
It's part of the reason I don't like affirmative action. It's supposed to be a defense against sexism/racism - force Bad White Men to hire fairly - but can be twisted into sexism/racism easily. The implication is that non-whites/non-males need lower standards. As you've said, any female or non
We have had women entering the field in droves. There is a strong interest in work that is performed out of doors by young, college-aged women. This mirrors an overall trend seen by outdoor sports retailers who have seen and increase in sales to women.
More of them are getting out of their parent's basements and are coming out into the cold light of day.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"