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Women Are Fleeing IT Jobs
Lucas123 writes "An alarming number of women are currently abandoning IT jobs that require workers to be on-call at all hours, according to a story in Computerworld. One study cited in the article states that by 2012, 40% of women now working in IT will leave for careers with more flexible hours. 'I think women in that regard are at a real disadvantage,' said Dot Brunette, network and storage manager at Meijer Inc., a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based retailer and a 30-year IT veteran. She noted that companies can fail to attract female workers, or see them leave key IT jobs, because they fail to provide day care at work, or work-at-home options for someone who leaves to have a child.'"
'I think women in that regard are at a real disadvantage,' said Dot Brunette, network and storage manager at Meijer Inc., a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based retailer and a 30-year IT veteran.
What a stupid name. Too bad she didn't get married to Jeff Matrix instead.
GMD
watch this
Why would companies want to attract people who aren't willing to accept the conditions of the job? If men in the same job are expected to be on call out of work hours, why should women get a free pass?
I thought we were supposed to have sexual equality, not special treatment for women.
I am not a woman. And frankly, I would LOVE to flee my IT jobs, ESPECIALLY because of the whole being on-call 24 hours, and all the after-hours work, etc. Yeah, I can move into Management, but at the price of selling even MORE bits of my life away. Honestly, if I had ANY skills other than the pretty small niche of IT I'm in, I'd be fleeing, too.
You ask me, women are fleeing IT because they're SMARTER.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
I tend to wonder if this has more to do with women having higher employment standards than men do--I know in my current employer, it's consistently more difficult to find women willing to work night shifts than it is men.
And FWIW, I got an assoc and had a couple calls for a networking tech positions.... part-time hours, and on call at times--like evenings and weekends.
Ummm,,,,,, no thanks.
Stuck trying to live off an $8/hr job with no way to even well consider a second job? Nope, forget it.
I never did get a tech job. It was kinda a bummer at the time, but nowadays I don't worry about it that much.
~
What happened to all those jobs in which you can work at home with? The training that is supposed to support via phone/internet is supposedly right down this type of work. Its not like the boss has to look over your shoulder all the time. Furthermore all e-mails and other work is easily documented isn't it?
Women and men are different, we just think different and enjoy different things. Men tend to enjoy playing with the latest and greatest toys, and IT lends itself to playing with the latest and greatest toys. I really don't see that in most women. That's not to say that many women in IT don't enjoy the work, but something tells me lots of women in IT got into the field in the late 90's when any joe schmoe (or in this case jane schmoe) in IT could make money. Now that there's not quite as much money flowing, there's much less of an incentive to stay in a career they weren't enjoying to begin with.
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So the problem is that women in IT are on call at all hours, which means that cellphones have a lot to do with this. But it goes deeper than that: cellphones are also causing honeybees to disappear. Notice a pattern here?
These women are obviously going wherever the honeybees went: obviously, a peaceful cellphone-free land, populated with women and bees, a land of milk and honey, one might say.
...in IT jobs who've never seen a woman naked outside of an LCD screen.
You do not see a whole lot of women in the construction business either. Not stereotyping but women don't fight for jobs they don't care anything about. I would LOVE to see at least 50% women mixed in at every job stratum but face it..there are some jobs women don't give a shit about and would rather fight for other lucrative positions.
I don't see an overwhelming majority of women fight for selective service either for that matter.
In other news, scientists finally prove women smarter than men. Film at eleven.
Because civilization depends on having children. How many new workers entering the workforce will you have in 20 years? Well it depends on how many kids are born today. Workers, citizens, et al, have a 20 year pipeline. And yes we can import immigrants but how many? And can we assimilate them?
You bitch about offshoring and H1-B visas. Well the solution is to have more kids. The ideal solution would have been to have more kids 20 years ago.
Demographics is destiny. If you don't reproduce your world view won't be around when you are not.
The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion. The problem is that secondary-impulse societies mistake their weaknesses for strengths--or, at any rate, virtues--and that's why they're proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam.
What's the better bet? A globalization that exports cheeseburgers and pop songs or a globalization that exports the fiercest aspects of its culture? When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they're running out a lot faster than the oil is. "Replacement" fertility rate--i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller--is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?
Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%. In America, demographic trends suggest that the blue states ought to apply for honorary membership of the EU: In the 2004 election, John Kerry won the 16 with the lowest birthrates; George W. Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest. By 2050, there will be 100 million fewer Europeans, 100 million more Americans--and mostly red-state Americans.
As fertility shrivels, societies get older--and Japan and much of Europe are set to get older than any functioning societies have ever been. And we know what comes after old age. These countries are going out of business--unless they can find the will to change their ways. Is that likely? I don't think so. If you look at European election results--most recently in Germany--it's hard not to conclude that, while voters are unhappy with their political establishments, they're unhappy mainly because they resent being asked to reconsider their government benefits and, no matter how unaffordable they may be a generation down the road, they have no intention of seriously reconsidering them. The Scottish executive recently backed down from a proposal to raise the retirement age of Scottish public workers. It's presently 60, which is nice but unaffordable. But the reaction of the average Scots worker is that that's somebody else's problem. The average German worker now puts in 22% fewer hours
To quote Philip Greenspun:
"Pursuing science as a career seems so irrational that one wonders why any young American would do it. Yet we do find some young Americans starting out in the sciences and they are mostly men... A lot more men than women choose to do seemingly irrational things such as become petty criminals, fly homebuilt helicopters, play video games, and keep tropical fish as pets (98 percent of the attendees at the American Cichlid Association convention that I last attended were male). Should we be surprised that it is mostly men who spend 10 years banging their heads against an equation-filled blackboard in hopes of landing a $35,000/year post-doc job?
Having been both a student and teacher at MIT, my personal explanation for men going into science is the following:
1. young men strive to achieve high status among their peer group
2. men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question "is this peer group worth impressing?"
It is the guys with the poorest social skills who are least likely to talk to adults and find out what the salary and working conditions are like in different occupations. It is mostly guys with rather poor social skills whom one meets in the university science halls...
What about women? Don't they want to impress their peers? Yes, but they are more discriminating about choosing those peers. I've taught a fair number of women students in electrical engineering and computer science classes over the years. I can give you a list of the ones who had the best heads on their shoulders and were the most thoughtful about planning out the rest of their lives. Their names are on files in my "medical school recommendations" directory."
- Women in Science
Tweet, tweet.
An entire continent of women were abandoned for the better part of a decade while their men went off to war, then came back shell shocked and broken to women who'd had their families providers ripped away long ago and weren't the tender nurturers they used to be. A unique cultural trauma in the world. For both genders.
Try to be philosophical about it. Other cultures will rise.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
A number of my friends with children are looking to get out of the drudgery of abandoning their families for 60% of their waking hours.
These are the people working a 55 hour week in a "9 to 5" job, with an hour of commuting each way. They are typically engineers or other professionals working in jobs where technology companies demand that the product be in the market yesterday. Their (ex) colleagues have been "downsized" and the company is too tight to employ replacements or there just aren't the qualified people out there. Consequently they are each doing one and a half jobs. Flexible hours policy is "We don't mind what hours you work as long as the job gets done", which translates to "55 hours".
These friends are figuring out that they are missing out on being part of their family growing up while earning 2-3 time the average wage. Often they are concluding that they are better to move to a part time job, earn a little above an average wage and be part of the family growing up. If the change requires a change of employer or profession then they are prepared to do it. When pushed the better employers realise that they are better to have a part time expert than no expert.
Although I think you have gone a little far with your statement (and have become flamebaited) I must agree that all this "retribution" is getting a little out of hand. Unfortunately, a man (like myself) can say nothing about it without be called a sexist. On the squawkbox or whatever news channel that is, there was recently a WOMAN complaining about the government getting in the affairs of women and how much they get paid. The govt wants to help women have increased wages so that they earn the same amount as a man. However, what hasn't crossed their minds is that the kind of work they do is FAR different from the average work of a man. Many men work in dangerous jobs such as construction, roofing, etc. Many women work as clerks/teachers/support calls/etc and work with more flexible hours.
I do realize that there are quite a few single mothers out there (of course, one could also blame the teenagers that are having sex at such a young age). In fact, I recently discovered that two of my former gradeschool classmates (like, from 4 years ago? I'm senior in highschool now) are pregnant, and one of which for the second time!
I personally think retribution is going a little too far for sexism. I mean, look at these women who marry millionaires and famous actors, then divorce, and NEVER get another job so they can just soak up their divorced husbands money. However, these are the women that do not care about equality, but rather themselves. Many of the women that are concerned about equality are those that do not have it.
Unfortunately, some take equality to the extent of give us everything so that we dominate males.
I do not think that daycare is something the business should have to pay for. You should be PREPARED to have a child, and not already knowing of a neighbor or a daycare center in the area is a serious lapse in judgement. But who am I but a senior in highschool. I say it as I see it.
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Utility companies need to have staffing for 3 shifts and pay overtime when they call extra people in for emergencies. IT techs just suck it up. Guess who's unionized?
I saw an article by a woman talking about why women are paid less than men. She figures it is because women go for the quality of life jobs while men go for the money. Women will take lower paying jobs with higher job satisfaction, better hours, etc. while men will kill themselves for the big buck.
No surprise that women are leaving IT when the jobs suck more and more.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Equality these days essentially means that one group is given an unfair advantage over another: It might be women who expect to work fewer hours and get the same pay, or it is things like affirmative action. In both those cases, and others , the action is self defeating: if the group demands help to be equal it undermines the cause because it doesn't make them equal, it just gives them an unfair advantage over others, and admits that the group being helped is lesser because they need help.
"The quickest way to end a war is to lose it" -Orwell
This was my fault. I'll take more showers.
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
If women want freedom and equal rights, then they have to grow up. Equality does not mean self-entitlement, and liberation cannot be just a convenient excuse for unbridled narcissism. Men and women should be equal partners in this world, but such a lofty goal can only be achieved if women start acting like equal partners -- that is, giving instead of constantly demanding and taking.
Although I don't necessary agree with many of your premises, nor your conclusion, I do agree with that particular statement (well, not the generalization that all women today are necessarily "constantly demanding and taking," and I think the tone is a bit strident -- did you just get out of a bad divorce or something?).
I think the people who get screwed worse than just about anyone, under our current system, are the women who really want to compete on a level playing field; either they get hobbled, or they get tossed crutches they don't need and don't want (and which cause them to be discriminated against).
An easy example of this is with child-care policies at work. Some workplaces have very biased policies surrounding parenting; they have maternity leave without any corresponding paternity or adoption leave, etc. What this does is make women, in general, much less attractive employees to lower and middle management. If you're taking on someone into a management or competitive career track (think junior partners in big law firms), who are you going to pick: the male employee, who's going to work his ass off, and then work his ass off some more, or the female employee, who's going to work her ass off, but then quite possibly go take six or nine months off to have a kid, and then only want to come back on a reduced schedule? It's a no-brainer, and this is why there's a culture of discrimination in many of those workplaces.
The people who this really hurts, though, are the women who aren't interested in having children, and aren't going to ever exercise their maternity leave, and are going to work the same 60-hour weeks for as many years as their male counterpart would, and not expect any quarter on account of sex. They really get hosed, because they get discriminated against without any good reason, due the cultural stereotype that all women want to be nurturing mother-figures, when there are definitely women out there who have zero interest in it.
I've met a lot of aggressive, careerist women in my life, and a whole lot of them are pretty bitter that they always get pigeonholed in the "so when are you going to get pregnant?" box. Conversely, I've met a few men who are pretty clearly looking to be primary caregivers and bitter about the flack they get for asking for child-care and leave, or for not being as aggressively career-oriented as others around them. So it cuts both ways.
I think there are really two fair solutions: you can make all policies gender-neutral, and encourage male employees to take the same sort of leave, when they're adopting or their partner is pregnant, that a female employee would take for a pregnancy, so that in hiring or placing people, managers can't just assume that "male employee = no leave" and "female employee = leave" (although if you have more female employees taking leave, then you'll still have discrimination). Or, you pick some sort of well-known, performance-based metric to do your advancement/firing based on, tell people they can take as much leave as they want, whenever they want, but if their performance suffers too badly, they'll get canned, and let the pieces fall where they may. Since I think the latter plan is probably illegal in the U.S. and other "pro-family" countries, I think we're stuck with the former.
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Well.. One thing is now certain about Geek IT culture... There goes the Geeks only chance of meeting a woman..
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I know it's a stereotype but almost all of the geek's I know are in stable long term relationships, either married or live in SO's. The people I see who are all alone in their parent's basement are simply nerds, they don't appear to have any real amount of skill or focus, just a lack of social adjustment. I think once they get out of HS most geeks blossom somewhat and are able to make a connection with people not intimately involved with their geeky subjects (or perhaps involved in secondary geeky subjects like say renfairs). Of course the internet and the fact that the richest people in the world have been geeks for a couple decades has probably helped the situation for Gen X geeks.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'm fine with the whole "gender equality" thing. Men suck. Women suck. They just happen to suck differently.
Case examples (which I've encountered on a monthly-to-weekly basis since around the time I hit that puberty thing: Men muttering (or bellowing) ZOMG WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT ASS?! or otherwise spluttering when some moderately pleasant whatever walks past. I'm a guy, and I find that shit disgusting. Stop it. Women getting pissy and grumpy and muttering (or bellowing) WELL I GUESS CHIVALRY IS DEAD, ISN'T IT?! when you don't hold the door for them, give up your place in line for them, or otherwise bend over backwards for them? You wanted equality, you got it. You can't have it both ways, lady.
Aside, I think anyone who wants to be in the kitchen belongs in the kitchen. A good friend of mine is a far better house-husband (a "mister mom" if you will) than his wife ever was - he's a far better cook, he's much better with the kids, and he likes doing it. And his wife happens to be a far better wal-mart manager than he ever would be. Marxism on a micro-scale.
A few thousand years on and society is still in the zits-and-rat turd mustache part of puberty. If we're still acting like this in a thousand years, then we definitely have a problem.
That's very rarely true on a literal basis. Any "interchangeable" jobs are usually hourly, and every cog in the machine gets paid the same thing.
If you're working on salary, then there's rarely such a thing as the "same position" despite lots of folks having the same title -- and salary is negotiable. For a multitude of reasons (some historically sexist, others not), men do tend to negotiate more and harder over salary.
Much like car prices offered to women buyers (which have been studied quite extensively as it's much easier to isolate than salaries), there's a lot of chicken and egg going on in terms of where the fault lies -- do women accept worse offers in negotiations because they're conditioned to or feel they have no choice, or do worse offers get made and stood by simply because negotiators know women will more frequently accept them?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
When you do a study of average wages, adjust for average hours worked and adjust for work experience and education, you discover that the wage gap is 6.2% (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3678/is_2 00010/ai_n8912803). I have seen some articles that suggest that even this is high, but I can't find those articles at the moment. Please note that this article points out that this does not adjust for career choice. Studies have repeatedly shown that women are less likely than men to choose jobs that are extremely physically demanding and/or highly dangerous (this doesn't mean that women can't or don't do those jobs, just that they choose to do so at a much lower rate than men do).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
If you live in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico you'll only get 7 days. Chinese workers probably envy their neighbors, assuming that this page can be trusted ...it's not without errors though, here in Denmark we've only got five weeks and not six.
The Forbes U.S. Top Ten:
Bill Gates
Warren Buffet
Sheldon Adelson (casino gaming)
Paul Allen
Michael Dell
The Walmart heirs
This is fundamentally a list of first and second generation entrepreneurial capitalists. The money isn't in the technology , it's in marketing the technology.