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Coping Strategies for Women in IT
Ian Lamont writes "Female workers are losing ground in the IT profession, reports Computerworld, citing statistics which show a sharp drop in the number of female CS grads since the 1980s, and a decline in the percentage of women in the IT profession since 2001. According to the article, causes include pervasive stereotypes and the locker-room atmosphere found in some IT shops — attitudes which some readers may recognize from the comments in a Slashdot thread last week. The IT professionals interviewed in the Computerworld article discuss a variety of strategies for coping. They range from trying to 'out-boy the boys' to watching what you say, as one Sun Microsystems executive describes:'It's not unusual to be the only woman at a meeting, she says, and because of that, there's often a tendency to remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say. "As one member of a small group, you feel you have no right to be mediocre ... You're not just representing yourself; you're representing [females] with a capital F.'"
Hrmmm,
I say we just give any and all female hires shiny new Sig sidearms with a license to shoot anyone (especially upper management) that harasses them. Seriously though, as one who has had to instigate actions against individuals senior to myself for sexual harassment of colleagues, the issue of unwelcome environments is well known. Fortunately, things are getting progressively better as I have been seeing an uptick in the number of seriously qualified individuals who happen to be women among the alpha users of the IT community (PhD candidates in Computer Science). But in the interim, I would discourage women from feeling that they have to "out-boy the boys" as that behavior simply compounds the problem and makes legal issues more complex leading to the likelihood that if problems do arise, everybody gets fired. Besides, the type of person that would engage in locker-room behavior may in fact be encouraged by a woman stooping to that level. I would also encourage women to be as vocal as necessary in meetings and not reserve comments for those times when you think that what you say is representative of genius. Just do your job, be professional, ask questions when necessary and remember that you do not have to tolerate any bullshit that your male colleagues do not have to endure.
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There are tons of women friendly companies out there!My work here is dung.
Bear in mind also the expectations that most IT people work in. You are expected to put in ridiculous amounts of hours, sometimes be on call 24/7, all for pay that's in many cases only somewhat better than that of a janitor.
No... women are leaving IT in droves because they're taking one look at what kind of career path they can look forward to and saying, "Screw this".
Local college is seeing the number of female MIS graduates steadily grow, can't say anything about CS. Course that doesn't mean they actually use the degrees for IT work either... I just feel sorry for any woman that is stuck in a stereo-typical IT shop. Lots of the guys I've worked with weren't exactly graced with social skills...
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
There is a reason why there are so few females in IT. Most realize it's a dead-end profession, filled with nothing but CS dropouts doing nothing more complex than cable-pulling, router rebooting, and windows reinstallations.
It's a good profession for those who obviously drank too much in College, but don't expect to get anywhere.
Hmm, TFA failed to mention the shake ups in the IT industry as a whole over the last 10 years, ( ie. consolidation, longer hours, outsourcing) and how that might be seen a negative to woman, especially ones with family. Never mind the "locker room" mentality, how about the entire corporate IT situation as a whole.
I've watched a girl get run out our IT dept by a manager with zero social skills. Sometimes, instead of coping strategies, looking at other jobs is probably the better way to go.
Well, I've also noticed that there isn't a good representation of women in garbage collection force either. Oh no, they're also under-represented in the mines!
Won't somebody think of the childr...err...women!
Maybe, just maybe, the different genders gravitate to the fields that they like. Or, gasp, are suited for.
That's not to say that women aren't suited for the IT field. Men and women are different, even if the politically correct people don't want you to believe it. So it makes sense that they just might be predisposed to liking different things...including professions.
But forget that, let's just force the different genders into the professions that politically correct-driven math says that they should be, and not what they want to be in.
I've worked in IT and a number of other 'male dominated jobs' and its interesting to see how those females who are successful actually knuckle down and get on with work - those who sit around and whine about the injustices of the world simply come off as complainers with the "I should get promoted because I'm a....". I've seen it before, females being over looked for a job, then blaming the 'old boys club' when in reality they ignore the fact that 100s of men were looked over for the job as well - are they going to jump up and lay claim because of their hair colour, skin colour, eye colour, car colour or something else stopped them from moving up? Simply expecting to get the job because you happened to get the 'highest qualified' happens to ignore the reality of how people are selected for promotion.
Just as a side note; for females who are reading - want to know how to get on with your male collegues - take the piss, have fun, take the piss out of yourself, go out to the pub and drink with the boys - and maybe realise that if you present yourself as an equal rather than a 'weak and frail women' you might actually get included as 'one of the boys'. Socialising is the key.
I mean, I've worked in female dominated jobs, and believe me - females do not make it easy for males to merge themselves into the company culture. Heck, they're not even nice to their own sex! my sister was in a very similar situation - her rule, never work with females. This is a female who can't stand working with females. I think that speaks volumes.
When there are millions of females 'getting on' in male dominated situations, I think those who do complain have no legs to stand on. Like I've said, I've worked in male dominated jobs, and those females who do knuckle down and work - socialise and act like 'one of the boys' actually enjoy themselves.
Don't try to 'feminise' the work place - realise that its rome, and its up to you 'to do as the romans do'
"Men are losing ground in the bearing of children, reports Maternity, citing statistics which show a sharp drop in the number of men giving birth since the 1980s, and a decline in the percentage of men in pregnant since 2001. According to the article, causes include pervasive stereotypes and the locker-room atmosphere found in maternity wards -- attitudes which some readers may recognize from the comments in a motherhood today thread last week. The mothers interviewed in the article discuss a variety of strategies for coping. They range from trying to 'out-girl the girls' to watching what you say, as one executive describes:'It's not unusual to be the only man at a meeting, he says, and because of that, there's often a tendency to remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say. "As one member of a small group, you feel you have no right to be mediocre ... You're not just representing yourself; you're representing [males] with a capital M.'"
I have worked in IT for a short time, and have came across only 2 Female that I worked along side. One has obviously put her time in (not to pull any bad strings there) and the other was fairly new. I valued both of their knowledge base when we discussed the projects on-hand. Actually they had their fingers on the pulse (up to date, and keep your minds out of the gutter here) more than the guy co-workers that I have worked with. At this time that I have learned from them, I was able to learn more from these projects.
Here's how to cope in IT as a woman: Be Pretty!
Its kinda sad, but true. I've worked in IT for 10 years. Of the dozen or so women I've worked with the successful ones are attractive (or sometimes slutty instead). The ones that are less than attractive seem to have a more difficult time.
Dont get me wrong I've seen a couple non-attractive women who REALLY know their stuff do very well. And I've never seen an attractive bimbo get far in IT. However for the middle-of-the-line types, the attractive ones seem to do better. Though I suppose this isnt specific to IT.
"I'm afraid to speak at meetings...it's totally NOT my own fault that I'm so scared to open my mouth that I can't do my job properly. It's those oppressive bastards that control the world."
Actually, they show a sharp drop in the percentage of female CS grads. I'd bet that the number is way up since 1985.
Slashdot, as always, does its part to demonstrate that men aren't so great at math either...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
IT is different from a lot of other fields because it takes a life long commitment to learning the new. As soon as you step out of college you realize you are already behind. I think the issue here is that a lot more men truly have a passion for this geeky stuff, where as most women may look at it as more of a career choice. If my job was to write gossip columns in a magazine I think I would have to kill myself, even if I had a degree in journalism. But a lot of women would love it and succeed in the field, but only a few men would be able to.
I'm a man, so I don't have first hand experience, but when women try to "out boy the boys", it does not work. It can be disastrous. Ignoring it is also bad, because it seems like approval. It seems like the best way is to address it directly and calmly: "I realize I'm the only woman here, so I need to remind you. Let's keep this environment professional and productive. Save the other stuff for after work with your friends." Women should also go to management as needed. Sexual harassment torts are very very expensive and management will want to head those off.
I don't see a problem. Quite obviously, IT doesn't appeal to women? We have one female member in the development team where I work. She's a very competent Oracle DBA/Developer, and it doesn't seem to me that she may feel isolated (she gets on well with everyone). In fact, there are more Women in the Testing department that Men. What does that tell us? (absolutely nothing).
Whilst it'd be great to have more Women to work with, why is everyone throwing a sh*t-fit over it?
ilovegeorgebush
"you're representing [females] with a capital F"
Then I'd say she has an issue. My personal experience of working with a lot of women (and yes, even more men) is that if people of either gender behave in a straightforward way, they'll be treated by the vast majority of their co-workers in an appropriate manner.
If someone starts to think they're representing more than themselves, maybe they need to look at their own self-image.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
.. but a good few of my female colleagues who do technical stuff regularly mass-email amusing porn and are the first to point out and make up innunendo. It works just fine.
"causes include pervasive stereotypes and the locker-room atmosphere found in some IT shops" I'm not wearing any pants as I type this.
...has never produced a useful or even tolerable story about women. These replies practically write themselves, and the impact of the paltry few who have any actual experience ia quickly overwhelmed by the torrent of horrifically juvenile +5 funny comments.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
clIToris!
Monstar L
Am I missing something?
I'm a man, have worked in the IT industry as a programmer/analyst and taught courses around the technologies I've used. In my experience women tend to cope better than men in the field. Women are often more level-headed, more organized, methodical and devoted to the cause.
I prefer to have women bosses and administrators.
The largest problem I've seen for women is having families because they are stuck with bearing the kids -- that's when women get taken out of the loop. There are always exceptions but often the women -- having born the kids -- often become comparatively more family-oriented than the man who will keep pushing through the industry and stay on top of things. The IT business moves fast. Having a kid can cause you to effectively be taken out of the race. No matter how much it sucks I've seen it happen a lot.
The biological clock factor doesn't help either because you have a limited time, often which could be peak career time, to have kids.
The IT professionals interviewed in the Computerworld article discuss a variety of strategies for coping.
Typical female stuff.. get together and share tips for "coping". Are we (successful men AND women) supposed to feel sorry for them? Wanna know my strategy for "coping"? I double down, dominate the problem, improve myself, and come out kicking ass. It never occurred to me that I should complain or change the system. I can only change myself, right?
They range from trying to 'out-boy the boys' to watching what you say, as one Sun Microsystems executive describes:'It's not unusual to be the only woman at a meeting, she says, and because of that, there's often a tendency to remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say. "As one member of a small group, you feel you have no right to be mediocre ... You're not just representing yourself; you're representing [females] with a capital F.'
People like this piss me off. (Some men do it too.) You're NOT representing all females, don't PUT YOURSELF in that role. Maybe other people think that, but WHY DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK? Do your job!
If you have something to say in a meeting, SAY IT.
Another thing that pisses me off: if you want a raise ASK FOR ONE. Don't just assume that you'll get one, and then complain that you didn't.
And hey guess what. Half the guys in the meeting are ALSO WATCHING WHAT THEY SAY. Guess why!
I guess what it comes down to is this: do you think the workplace is like a "locker room" because work is COMPETITIVE, or because of the MEN? What is the correlation? Hmmmmmmmmmm...
I know plenty of successful women (in business, as mothers, and as people in general). They don't whine about this stuff. My philosophy: if at least one person can achieve the goal you want achieve, YOU CAN TOO.
... was to treat people as allies right from the get-go. No need to be confrontational just to stake your claim, no need to be ingratiating, no need to be anything but yourself. In every environment I've been in, this strategy has worked wonders for me. The few hostile people who are to be found in any environment will generally be vastly outnumbered by people who are either actively friendly or just want to avoid drama, and making allies out of the majority of people will tend to make it very, very difficult for people who will try to make your life hell just because you're a minority. Making nice (not doormat - just nice) has the other benefit of not alienating people the way that trying too hard does.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Perhaps there aren't many woman in large groupings of IT positions because those positions suck?
There aren't really very many people in the world for whom the concept of being on call and only being visible to the organization when the shit hits the fan who would find such work appealing. IT is a very mixed bag. Most of the time it is a very low key position with not too many hard deadlines. Then someone breaks and the stress level rises significantly. Then something else breaks in the same window and you quickly outrun your human resources, because few companies actually plan for worst case IT failures. During those windows, everyone is screaming at the IT department, every mistake is logged and magnified, basically you are a whipping boy until you "save the day".
--- I do not moderate.
If you want to increase the number of Women in IT I suggest changing your focus. Rather than looking to colleges, try recruiting grade school teachers. They're used to dealing with people who have underdeveloped social skills. At a previous job we had 2 former school teachers they were both able to deal.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Let me see, become MD like most of my colleagues, get second Ph.D., work same amount of time, get more respect and earnings, or stick in IT and have people doubt you all the time?
I'm thinking they wised up that IT is a deadend while our companies outsource like mad, and many jumped ship to "easier" professions like bioengineering and molecular biology, instead of "IT".
But that's what I see here at the UW in Seattle.
You want women to get into IT? Make it a stable well-paying profession where people treat you with respect.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In college I took a few archaeology courses. In all, men were in the minority; in one, I was the only man. How do women make it easier for men in female-dominated fields? What are women doing to increase the participation of men in, say, archaeology? I semi-seriously proposed (to another guy in the department) that we should start a "Society of Men Archaeologists". It would have been way smaller than SWE.
Maybe being the odd man out back then has made me more tolerant today. Or maybe not. Who am I to say?
Anyway, this does not make IT special; it's true in any field with an uneven sex ratio. They're just being sensationalist because they can. You don't see "Coping Strategies for Men in Archaeology" on archaeology websites.
When will people get it through their head that CS and IT are NOT the same thing.
Would you mind PROVIDING any REFERENCES supporting your OUTLANDISH claims?
In our IT department, the females hold a majority, 4 to 3. Our Helpdesk (which is counted separate...don't know why) is all female, with 5 of them. The makeup of this department is a lot different than any I have worked in before. The telecom and electronics is all male, still, but the total comes out to be 8 to 7 in the favor of females between the three areas.
The article does make some good points. I've seen this in the college level, where the female students just didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the bunch on the higher level. Sometimes because they had a hard time with the learning curve (programming classes dropped by about 40% after mid terms), or they just didn't feel comfortable with the students around them. Those who did make it were very good at what they did.
In short, I do believe it can be harder for them to reach the bar, due to others around them, and I think that can be helped. However I don't think the bar should be lowered to help more get in.
Can be very different--if I remember the studies at my alma mater, they found that more women were in tech before the dot.com bubble burst, and the burst had a disproportionate effect, because a larger percentage of the women in tech were interested in it because it was a good thing to do from a career-planning standpoint, while the guys tended to be in it because they loved (or liked) doing it. What stayed fairly stable, I think, was the number of interdisciplinary female students--women in other fields (usually hard sciences) who wanted to have the comp sci background that would be useful for them in their disciplines.
...remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say
Shouldn't meeting be like this? Otherwise they go on for hours and hours without much being accomplished. Also, if you think your corp hired someone mediocre when they hired you, you really got more to worry about...
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
I've always dreamed about being a bikini and bra model. But because I'm a man, the industry is treating my unfairly, and I could never work in my field, and any attempt was met with cruel ridicule and attacks.
:( ?
Where are the articles for coping with that, huh
So we get this out of the way: Erhm...
... noooo, can't be that. But what the heck is it?
"The last time I checked, the majority of pages on the web were actually concerned with women. Or, rather, displaying them."
So. While I dodge now the slings and arrows of the feminists out there, let's try to find out what's going wrong here. I mean, we "geeks" pride ourselves that we don't fall for stereotypes, that we don't care about what a person looks like, or how he dresses, but suddenly, when facing a female of the species, everything's forgotten and we actually get hostile should she dare to be better. It's odd. I've actually seen it quite a few times. Race, sexual orientation, even mental disorders? No problem. Female? EEK!
Odd. Maybe we've seen everything else on the net and
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
are very social types and being "social" with hardware is not a trait usually bestowed upon them in the slightest. And reading up on "Women are from venus..." it is quite evident that IT is more of a cave dweller occupation than anything else.
I don't think this is bad because ultimately it is good to have balance in nature.
Has anyone conversed with a woman that has EVER been "one with the machine" ? I am sure they can be counted quite easy.
but I will.
.NET did it all for you).
Women in IT, generally suck at it. They suck as programmers. They suck even more as sysadmins. There is a girl I work with who is the 100% opposite to what I'm saying, so there are definite silver linings, and even I have eaten my words since I had given up on the idea that women would be good at IT.
In the 10 years I've been in IT, this is the first female whom I have met who is willing to learn, do the job, work hard, and has a sense of logic and systematic approach to working in IT. The other women I've met felt a sense of entitlement because they were women, felt a sense they were being put down because they were a woman, and not because they couldn't handle the work. Women I've met (as a sysadmin) wouldn't meet the requirements of moving servers because "I'm a girl!", but then expected to set them up from top to bottom after I'd racked and stacked it for them.
Programming is a similar story. Women I've encountered took a long time to come up with the logic to create a flow, create a procedure. Lots of questions to ask colleagues, lots of back and forth, and little actual code -- too much talking about the code. What they do code is usually well commented and indented (before
I am sorry to say, but if a woman feels that IT is her calling -- she better be good at it. They have a lot more to prove and as a manager myself, I would be wary of hiring a woman because the skills I look for are competence and the ability to 'figure it out' without interference. It's not to say that it cannot be done, but the burden of proof is on the woman in the job. It's unfortunate for sure, but there are similar circumstances where men would not be as aptly suited for a job as a woman would. Would you for example, hire a male decorator over a woman? The answer is MAYBE -- that person would have to prove their work.
Women are no different. It's just that there are so few of them that are able to prove their worth (just as there are so few male decorators), that it seems like a difficult task. Honestly, after meeting the girl in my current job, my respect for her is two times what it would be if she was a guy -- and she gets that from everybody whom she works with because she is competent to do her job. Usually the people who are bitching about fairness and being treated with respect, given the work of their position, trusted with it to be done quickly and efficiently... well they usually suck at their jobs and it's nothing to do with the fact they are women.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I've had to work for several women as my 'manager' and I've found them to be the worst managers out of all of them. The are extremely picky, critical, and impatient as they come and never understand that IT tends to require you to have more freedom and originality in thought than other career paths.
1 came from military background
1 came from teaching herself IT
1 came from MBA school
All could not manage their way out of a paper bag while I got male bosses who will bust your butt for doing stupid stuff, which we all do, and understand it's part of the job.
Yes I've had weak male managers but then again I could 'relate' in that way that men can relate to men and work through an issue, but women being overly critcal and motherly just isn't something I want. I can take a male boss calling me a slack jawed lazy bastard in one sentence while asking if that IT relocation is complete while surfing slashdot and telling him via IM nextel style it is and him grunting his acknowledgement.
I'm sure I'll here some psyche major try to analyze this or reason it down to me being "scared, intimidated, brought up by she devils and wolves" or some other nonsense. I find its easier to work for men that it is for women and hence I CHOOSE (gotta love that) that any new place I go find out if my boss is a female I immediately decline the offer and go find something else.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
Women never had much ground in IT. At least in my country. Not because they are dumb, or were handicapped by employers. Women are simply disinterested in computers. Yeah, there are exceptions, but exceptions make up a very small percentage. Back in school, we had 1/3 girls of the class, some said they will show the boys how good are they in CS. None of them remained in the field. Not all of the men either, but roughly half of us are still programmers. 95% of the women are simply bored with programming, if they ever do it, it is only to support something else.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
My wife is a software engineer, and a very good one. She hates working with most women, and this is why she's told me as such:
1) They're catty.
2) They often use the power of the pussy to get out of doing real work.
3) Many of them are there just because someone pushed them into working in IT.
4) Did I mention that many of them are extremely insecure and often viciously attack other women far worse than the men would ever even conceive of doing?
All of the women around me are the "intelligent, strong, independent women" that feminists talk about. Growing up around them, and then being exposed to almost nothing but "normal women" at a liberal arts college made me realize that the personality difference is hard-wired. They're not what women generally are, and that's ok. However, that realization made me have to face the fact that most women should be nowhere near anything technical, anymore than most men should be around a daycare job.
Call me a misogynist if you want, but clearly I am not afraid to simultaneously hold "retrograde views" on women, while being happily married to a woman who has several years on me professionally and makes more than I do at this point. The truth is, if you need to cope with your job, you have no business being there. Either it's the wrong environment or the wrong profession, and for most women, it's the latter.
are the root of much sexism from IT men. Yes there are other causes, like general asshattery, but I'd say insecurity leads the pack. Of course, the other causes tend to focus the attentions of the incompetent/insecure on sexism as an outlet for their aggression. Be professional, seek support, and generally outshine your pale movenist shig cow-orker. Make sure that management knows things go better when you're involved, but don't be the source of that awareness. Be nonchalant and modest about your abilities and let the jackasses hang themselves. That being said, don't stay in an intolerable situation that has no remedy.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
That's easy. Just leave wet towels on the floor and fart a lot.
As a middle-aged white male, I sure am glad that I still have the right to 'be mediocre'. Sheesh. Talk about the arrogance, "Joe over there, is mediocre, and i want to be just like him!" Since when has the feeling that you can slack off, ever gotten anyone ahead in the world!? We're all trying to do our jobs... despite the fact that it's often boring, soul-sucking, unfeeling, unrewarding drudgery. --Ray
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Never did I think I would somehow get around to submitting a story that would be accepted by the editors. Never in a thousand years did I think any comment of mine would be cited in a story... especially by CmdrTaco himself. I am truly honored.
Seriously, the irony (or technosocial fiasco if you prefer to look at it that way) of electronic talking Barbie back in 1994 was one of those memorable moments for me because I had just started teaching. Between "Math is hard" and "Let's go shopping" my students and I shared many classroom discussions over related topics (stereotyping, bias, patronizing comments, etc.).
Why should women be encouraged to work in a field where jobs keep getting outsourced to Elbonia or whichever random country the bosses think of next?
Because women are more willing to settle for lower salaries? While that's a _fact_ (go google for it), lower salaries, strange hours, higher chances of being outsourced are not helpful to women (or men anyway).
So to the women out there, only go into IT if you are really interested (or you get a great offer) - it's not the worst career path but it's not that great a career path for people who aren't that interested.
Go into Law, Management or something else if you're not.
After all look how well Carly Fiorina did - she got a golden handshake for screwing up HP. No IT degree needed- BA in philosophy and medieval history,
MBA in marketing, SM in management.
I think she did very well (for herself) for either being incompetent or not interested in the long term success of HP. Whatever it was I don't think she was really interested in IT.
I would be happy if more women were in IT, but is it really in their interests?
The problem is with a lot of the women, if you ask me. I'm a woman in the IT field and I like hanging with the guys I work with, we can tell off-color jokes and go out to bars together, and we do that sometimes. The problem is when women demand to be treated the same and then are oversensitive to the way men are just being themselves around her. In order to be treated the same as men, you'd have to understand them and think like them. Women are made differently--equally, but differently. And most women should not only be treated as such, but should REALIZE that. Most women do not really want to be treated the way men treat their peers of the same gender, they just don't seem to realize that men have a different 'code of honor'. Women seem to think that men are always respectful to one another and have this very idealized and very wrong idea of what male/male relationships are like, and I'm guessing it's because men act differently around them. As a result, they get offended by the things men say and do when they're just doing what she requested. Yes, wordy, I'm sorry--I'm a woman! ;) but the point is, most women need to be treated a bit differently in order for them to feel comfortable, they just don't realize it. I feel fortunate that, for the most part, I am better friends with men than women, and I understand the way they think and act. I can enjoy being around 'the guys'. (My boyfriend feels fortunate too, LOL.) But I am an exception, not the rule.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
The parent is full of it's fair share of, what I consider, some bashing against females as a backlash to being aware that there are women in your workforce. This bashing is overkill.
Just as a side note; for females who are reading - want to know how to get on with your male collegues - take the piss, have fun, take the piss out of yourself, go out to the pub and drink with the boys - and maybe realise that if you present yourself as an equal rather than a 'weak and frail women' you might actually get included as 'one of the boys'. Socialising is the key.
This is the main problem with your argument. You think these women present themselves as weak and frail. This is bullshit.
Women who actually want to get anywhere in business don't present themselves as weak and frail. Women present themselves as the victims of the exact thinking you present here. That is, in order to get anywhere, they have to be one of the good ol' boys, and not stand on your own merits.
I'm a man, and I personally despise the good ol' boy network, because they value standing together and kissing each other's ass rather than identifying problems. If if politely point out a mistake made by a good ol' boy, the group will stand together and get offended "Did you just call Joe a fuckup?" Get a group of women together, politely identify a mistake to one of them, and they see that it's a mistake, fix it, and move on. I didn't offend anyone if I say it right, and I wasn't trying to point fingers, I just want something fixed. I stand in stark contrast to your woman who hates working with women. On average, I prefer working with women than with men because in my experience they don't bullshit around as much. I have no problem merging into a female dominated culture and I've done it a few times. Perhaps you should take some of your own medicine?
Where I currently work, there are lots of men and women who mix together, go out, have some drinks, and have a good laugh. There are others that sit down at lunch and talk about their kids... both men and women! It's possible and it works! And across these different social groups, again, we judge our job performance based on merit, not the buddy system.
In fact, women usually have to work a lot harder in order to get less pay, because they aren't part of the network. In an ideal world, we can all be buddy buddy, but we also all realize that we should be standing on our own merits, and not relying on some social network to prop us up.
Yes there are millions of women getting on in jobs, and millions more getting the short end of the "male dumb stick" because of jerk offs who have no reason to think the workplace is getting "overfeminized."
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
to leave. I have an engineering degree and am/was good a programming, design, etc. I programed on some open source projects under a male pseudonym so I wouldn't have to be treated like "whoa! a cool geek chick" but as a person. I quit in a large part because of the gender dynamics... you can see in these comments that the men who are appearing to be "supportive" of women in IT are still emphasizing the women who are able to outshine boys, are hot, etc. Even through my degree I felt like 24/7 I had to prove I had a right to be there. Sometimes the gender environment is more than competitive like this, it is hostile and abusive. I could only take it for so long, I quit, I am much happier than I was then. I love tech stuff, I miss it, I still program, I still do little things now and then, I am still good at it, it is just that I don't want to be fighting my whole life.
You can say all the biological determinism (yeah right, men are biologically programmed to be in IT... ugh) stuff you want, the reality is there is a major social bias. Some of it is the whole environment from top to bottom, the solution isn't just to have some postercard companies hiring 20% female workers, it require a much larger shift than that, a shift in people's willingness to engage with a gender analysis. Like, even if you are "a nice guy" or you "support women in IT", maybe you have certain behaviours and ways of organizing/managing/participating that alienate women and you need to address them personally. Maybe you need to criticize your male peers when you are talking in the washroom (er. locker room) What do you expect of your women co-workers? There are lots of men who are completely incompetent in IT but manage to have full financially rewarding careers in it, is that true for women?
I don't know how to bring it about but it requires men from all levels of the workplace to be able to critique themselves and the work environment and be willing to change, not just get all confused when they see the stats. It isn't really a discussion if it's a problem, or why it's a problem. We, as women in tech, are telling you there is a major problem and there are many many eloquent papers/reports/studies/etc. that explain what that problem is and that suggest some strategies to approach it. Men can call us whiners for pointing it out, or they swallow their ego and start trying to address the issues.
bitch bring me my laptop and then go cook me some dinner.
Well you get a funny, but one of the biggest names in women's cosmetics (started by a woman) gets the biggest ratings in being women friendly. And yes I'm certain they have an IT department.
So, the differences between men and woman are only in their physical abilities?
And the reason that women don't want to work the mines, is because of the lifting requirement? And not because the work is grueling, dirty, and hard on the body?
If the lifting requirement is all that is holding them back, why not simply lower it? In much the same way that the physical requirements for women were lowered for women firefighters. I'm sure they'd just flock to it.
But seriously, there are many possible explanations for why different "sexes" (not "genders"). You've got "gender" notions of proper work, explicit sexism, biological suitability, etc. Do you actually believe that the current distribution of the sexes in the workforce is entirely the result of biological predisposition? Maybe you do, and are therefore willing to close the book on this one. That's okay; such premature satisfaction of curiosity has a long, noble history, providing us such excellent rational explanations as Intelligent Design.
Or perhaps you don't believe this is the full explanation. Maybe sex discrimination, gender norms, conscious and unconscious discouragement, all of these things are responsible for---pulling number out of ass--- 27.324% of the sex distribution in the workplace. Does that sound like a good number to you? If so, we can stop studying the problem, stop seeking reform, and relax to the fact that you've figured it all out with your revolutionary "theory of differing suitabilities". You're knighthood is in the mail...
Even if you're right---women are inferior mathematicians, sub-par engineers, shoddy historians, pathetic architects---what do you propose? Is theirs an insurmountable handicap, a congenital defect outside of the reach of modern medicine, education and cognitive science? Do we abandon approximately one half of Earth's population to the choice between unemployment or a genetically predestined career? Let me know... my spouse is finishing her PhD and she wants to know what kind of job she should be looking for.
It could be that women are not 'losing ground' so much as 'wising up' to the fact that a career in IT sucks. You are expected to be God all the time, yet work, paradoxically, ungodlike hours. You are responsible for everything working correctly to the second. If it doesn't, the company stops working and starts bitching. You never have enough time to do excellent quality work, so you settle for what works and just gets you by. You have impossible deadlines set by people who have no idea what it takes because it 'sounds simple.' You work with end users who, by and large, have no idea what they are doing computer wise, couldn't care less, and blame you for having to do difficult things like, umm, reboot. Plus an IT career rarely leads to promotion to the Board Room or excellent salaries. Face it, many times being in IT is like being a Technological Janitor.
It could be that women, even if they are attracted to technology, see what a terrible quality of life is to be had in IT and opt out. Women don't go into IT because they are too smart to fall for it.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I suggest you read Slashdot
who cares if there's not enogh women
maybe there's something to nature
Your coworkers are all geeks without lives, so they're thrilled to stay until midnight for free pizza. Management are the only people who can stand being between geeks, who are socially incoherent, and marketing, who have lied so long truth is an oxymoron to them.
All together, everyone is working to make personal profit by selling ephemera like software, operating systems and hardware. The high profit margin raises the competition and means that He with the least life wins, because those who dedicate themselves entirely to the job are most valued.
A woman who might want to someday be married, have a family, and have some reason for being alive other than going to work where she gets a title and two video screens, is not going to jump at a chance to be in IT no matter how good the money is. (Some men want this too, but show a man a Big Title, a big income and lots of shiny objects, and he becomes a blue jay with a master's degree.)
In this, I think, women have surpassed men in basic reasoning skills.
No two groups or people are equal except in a political sense. Men should look toward their women for wisdom, because left to their own devices, men will create a nightmare IT industry. Given that work hours have increased, but software is still as buggy as ever, I have to say this prophecy has come true.
technical writing / development
I've struggled with gender politics in geek circles for years and it's one of the reasons why I am no longer involved in my local geek groups such as lug, or hold an IT job.
8 02-4.html
I think one perspective that is always overlooked is that sexism is not an isolated problem in IT culture. Other issues such as classism and racism are just as rampant. These problems, sexism, racism, and classism need to exist in order for IT to exist. The oppression is very much locked to the technology itself.
The book "Feminism Confronts Technology" put a lot of things in perspective for me. It has very strong analysis stemming from the historic development of technology leading up to present day IT culture.
The IT culture has been shaped by very obvious military, political, economic, and corporate pressures. Like other power professions, it has necessitated that it's people come from privileged backgrounds so that they can afford to be ignorant of diversity and arrogant towards other people. They need to have a certain level of insensitivity to avoid the harm of their own profession against others.
Equally important is the author's warning against progress. She cites many examples where apparent progress has been made to include women, people of color, economically under-privileged populations, etc. into technology professions. However, the progress made is motivated by power struggles in and surrounding the technology sector, which simply leads to new hierarchies being formed and the same old oppression reappearing under the guise of progress.
Through her criticism, the author suggests various ways of tackling change, and to work towards radically redesigning and shifting technology to benefit, rather than harm people.
Feminism Confronts Technology
by Judy Wajcman
http://www.psupress.psu.edu/books/titles/0-271-00
I am the parent poster.
4 1899nasa-women.html
Everything I wrote is 100% factual.
You could easily lok up each fact on your own if you bothered to try/
But here are merely some references for you to read up on :
Alexander & Hines (2002) gave 44 vervet monkeys of each sex six toys to play with; two male-typical (a toy car and ball), two female-typical (a doll and pot) and two sex-neutral (a book and stuffed animal). Male ververts were more likely than females to engage the car and ball while females were more likely to play with the doll and pot. No difference was found in the neutral toys. Neonatal androgen exposure has been linked to play preferences in rats, rhesus monkeys, vervet monkeys, chimpanzees and human females.
Lawrence H. Summers :
The university president that was fired for highlighting this toy effect also stated that he tried to alter preferences with his own daughters. He also cited as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two trucks in an effort at gender-neutral upbringing. Yet he said she named them "daddy truck" and "baby truck," as if they were dolls. After merely mentioning this FACT in a public speech, as a role as an economist, not president, in January 1995 he was repidly fired in the following weeks. The president was president of HARVARD (Lawrence H. Summers). Angry ignorant woman refused to even discuss the facts and started a protest to get the president fired. The president of Harvard was fired for merely mentioning biological facts.
WWDC conference :
I do not remember the three names, but one was named "chris"(?) and at the time was passing half-male (though wore womens cloths such as blouses), and two were passing as females. But it is true. "chris" in fact attended Mac Hack conferences as a highly skilled hacker. Three transgendered computer hacker-engineers is three more than the zero females that year. A few females headed software companies and were at that WWDC conference, (Linda K, Heide R) but they are not, nor ever were , skilled coders.)
NASA :
Its public knowledge. for the first time ever all three KEY positions of the failed mars missions were female :
Sarah A. Gavit = the mars project manager
Suzanne E. Smrekar, 37, the lead mars scientist
Kari A. Lewis= the mars project's chief engineer
Other females to blame :
Lori B. Garver = Associate Administrator for NASA's Office of Policy and Plans, Executive Secretary of Advisory Council (She does not have an engineering degree!)
NASA is proud to boast 2% female active engineers minimum and that is WAY out of whack with societies norms.
from the female mars leader in a NYT interview :
"Women have really added to the workplace because we do come at things from a different angle," she said.
"For the same reason that cultural diversity works, gender diversity is wonderful, too, especially when you're trying to do something creative."
Also from the female mars leader Gavit:
"The fact that we're women hasn't made a difference," she said. "It's not an issue here. But it's good that young girls see that engineering and technical fields are wide open to women. That's the good thing about saying it's a woman-led team."
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/0
The report in The Guardian (British) December 7th included the following comment: "The total launch and development costs of NASA's lost Mars spacecraft is put at $320 million. A Third of billion wast3ed on gender equality despite IQ.
I am perplexed as to why you doubt my 100% factual post.
If anything in it is outlandish or hard to believe then merely try to disprove it with a fact, or tell me WHICH statement you think is not 100% correct.
I expected female attacks. I made certain I told no lies. My original article is 100% factual in every way. I have no reason to lie or distort facts.
Political Correctness hates facts, but I embrace them.
... but I hear workers in IT also need to be able to deal with that funny TV with the clicky-clicky thing in front of it, and that sort of skill is not exactly disproportionately present in grade school teachers. (Says the ex-grade school teacher, current software engineer.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
lower and middle managers are all females on both sides.
I think they are trying to bum rush them up to management.
The ladies are competent but until we get to 50/50 in upper management, we are not going to have a lot of male promotions apparently.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I work in a somewhat high tech industry. Throughout my career, there haven't been a lot of women in my workplaces. No surprise.
All of them worked like anyone else. They all seemed to be treated just fine. And most of them were management, too... VPs on down to various sorts of middle management.
I've never seen the "glass ceiling." To the contrary, I've seen a disproportionate number of women handing out the orders, when compared to their population. I've never seen a low-ranked woman busting her ass 24 hours a day to be "taken seriously."
I realize this is an anecdote and not data.
Want to be respected? Do a good job and dont cry.
I've seen women cry at work. Clue; once you cry at work no one respects you. You will be forever known as the dumb bitch who cried at work no matter how well you do your job.
Leave your feelings at home and adapt to the particular culture of your environment. If people have to speak in hushed tones around you because you are overly sensitive its not likely they are ever going to bond with you. Dont look to be promoted, or listened to, if people just dont like you.
Hide all insecurities and be a fair adversary. Know what you are doing and know how to explain it.
When a vendor/customer snubs your solution because you are a girl see if you can find a male you trust to back you up. People are jerks, but getting upset/mad and crying/bitching is not going to change that. Keep to task. I've seen men with names that are more commonly applied to women have their solutions snubbed purely because the other party mistook them as female. The change in attitude when the mistake is discovered has always made me laugh.
IT workers are like truck drivers with a different knowledge base. We use filthy language, have filthy minds, and we laugh at things on the internet would make the most vulgar truck driver blush/wince/cry. We wear nicer clothing, sure. But in the end we are pigs. And like truck drivers, we really arent sexist pigs. A woman doesnt really have to try twice as hard to be thought half as good. Dont be an insecure sensitive human resources liability. Be a strong woman who knows what she is doing!
A close friend of mind was a female photographer for a company that took construction photos. She would have to climb on all sorts of beams and such that would make most ppl think twice. Every site was the same. Some guy explaining to her that she was gonna have to climb something scary and her explaining that she'd only done this a few hundred times and that this site wasnt very impressive. She also perfected a look that said 'you are an idiot, STFU!'.
I've seen a guy cry at work also... If you are a guy and cry at work, just quit.
Steven Palmer Peterson
You are WRONG!
Many primates and mammals ahve genetic bias for toy selection. Its not society.
IQ is genetic and above IQ 125 females are scarce.
Also Alexander & Hines (2002) gave 44 vervet monkeys of each sex six toys to play with; two male-typical (a toy car and ball), two female-typical (a doll and pot) and two sex-neutral (a book and stuffed animal). Male ververts were more likely than females to engage the car and ball while females were more likely to play with the doll and pot. No difference was found in the neutral toys. Neonatal androgen exposure has been linked to play preferences in rats, rhesus monkeys, and human females, as well as vervet monkeys. HUMANS.
Because of political correct uneducated people like you, the president of harvard was FIRED for merely mentioning the fact that girls are genetically wired to play with dolls. He also cited as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two trucks in an effort at gender-neutral upbringing. Yet he said she named them "daddy truck" and "baby truck," as if they were dolls.
By raw percentages, the worst advanced coders are female.
Its simple biology. Read the "Bell Curve" for thousands (yes thousands) of reference citations.
The brains are different (lateralization of hemispheres). In fact from over twenty feet away, with over 95% precision anyone can trivially tell if a brain sliced in half sideways is female or male. The difference is truly visible from over twenty feet away.
Females are different. Get over it.
I really didn't used to think that people noticed or cared things like that, but they do. I know that I stand out, so I'd rather stand out in a good way.
... it's true. Harrison Ford was tired, pissed off, and suffering from infirm bowels. He was in no mood to shoot a fight scene and suggested to Spielberg that he "just shoot the sucker."
In case nobody noticed, there was a rather large downturn in the IT industry across the board over the past five years that resulted in many folks who "weren't as serious about IT" or who had other skillsets getting out of their IT careers completely and doing other things.
I'm not surprised at all that a certain percentage of women were on that bubble. I know many women who are excellent coders or database designers and who are serious about their craft, but I also know quite a few women who decided to leave the workforce entirely decided to take up a second replacement career as the result of layoffs.
I knew fewer men who did this -- most of the men I know who were laid off are back in an IT-related capacity somewhere. Most of the women I know who were laid off are doing something else now.
Anecdotal evidence, yes, but I'm sure I'm not alone in having this experience...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Not to discount your views, but $DAUGHTER is doing graduate work in exactly this subject (sociology of gender in the technology workplace) and none of the simple answers seem to hold water. It's a real puzzlement.
OTOH, I'll tell you now that if you contact her (/. DarlingDaughter) she'll be very interested in what you have to tell her.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
....you commenters are missing the point:
"Coping Strategies for Women in IT"
- pretend they're not there unless you have no choice
- don't show fear, they can smell that. Also, they can smell the truth about your personal hygiene.
- whenever they approach your cube, shoot them in the head with some light-caliber office projectile weapon, nerf gun or rubber band, for example. They *love* that.
- stare at their breasts while you talk to them
- don't strike up a friendship; make sure every conversation is tinged with clumsy double-entendres that illustrate your desperation.
- try to leave books lying on your desk like "101 ways to get her to orgasm", she will immediately perceive you as a stud.
- action figures. lots of action figures, preferably anime, *preferably* the really expensive scantily-clad pedophilic Japanime ones.
Try any or all of them, I'm not saying they are GOOD strategies, but they are strategies for coping with women in IT. Pretty certain that most of them will shorten significant the amount of time you spend dealing with women in your IT department, possibly permanently.
-Styopa
My new hobby is going to start with reading through slashdot threads concerning the role of women in IT. Then I'm going to count the posts containing a statement that women are inherently less suitable for IT. This will be followed by counting the number of responses criticizing that statement.
And then I'm going to count the posts containing a statement which claims that people who are good at IT are inherently socially inept. This will be followed by counting the number of responses criticizing that statement.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I work in the IT field (I'm a consultant), and I've yet to see the over, rampant, hostility that you claim exists. More likely, it's the usual inter-office politics that exists in pretty much every office job. But instead of chalking it up the standard office culture, why not cry "sexism"?
Sexism does exist in, and out of, the work environment. But to say that it's the major reason that women aren't in the IT field is absurd. Even more absurd is claiming that the hostility that women feel in the IT field is sexist-driven.
If you really want to get more women in IT put your money where your mouth is: pay them 33% to 100% more than the men, let them work the hours they want to work and don't worry about dress code. At least keep the reverse discrimination honest.
Otherwise STFU and let them compete in the rat-race like the rest of us.
Why is it that these style reports and statistics never seem to state the obvious. Men and women are different, it really is as simple as that. We have different likes and dislikes. I believe the women who truly love the IT field will go for it and stay in it for the long haul. The same goes for the men too. I think because we are different we tend to strive for different goals, It is possible that men and women have different ways of doing things. So tired of hearing this stuff...... enough already!
I am the parent poster and I forgot to add that I enjoy funneling hot tar up my ass with traffic cones.
This is a fact that you could easily look up to verify on your own if you bother to try.
In my world it is your job to prove me wrong - not my job to prove that what I say is true.
That has nothing to do with IT. That's just millions of years of programming checking out the gene pool. THat will happen if you're in any occupation or even just walking in the mall.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
maybe you have certain behaviours and ways of organizing/managing/participating that alienate women and you need to address them personally.
Unless we're told WHICH are those certain behaviors (putting the sexual jokes aside, those are easy to pinpoint), how are we supposed to know how to behave?
So, please, tell us HOW you were treated, and what did men do to make you leave, and WHAT we can do to stop the problem. Think of it as a bug report: We can't replicate the bug! We need more info.
there are many many eloquent papers/reports/studies/etc. that explain what that problem is and that suggest some strategies to approach it.
Excellent! Where can we find those?
Nice tits, by the way.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
So what if females aren't as likely to do engineering as males? We don't need 'strategies for coping'. Thats ridiculous. Its equivalent to saying we need 'strategies for coping' because most of our workforce is black or some other equally insulting comment.
... You're not just representing yourself; you're representing [females] with a capital F.'"
All that stuff about 'lockerroom mentality' is by and large bullcrap. In nearly 30 years of software development I've worked in many different software dev. shops in many differnet countries and never seen any place that isn't appropriately professional and even overly anal about gender equality. In fact in most cases actually females tend to get an easier ride because companies tend to err on the side of positive discrimination, and also geek men (including managers) are pushovers when faced with a female.
>> "As one member of a small group, you feel you have no right to be mediocre
Well gee... welcome to the business world. Having to work hard and deserve your place has nothing to do with gender. Women are now realising the grass isn't greener on the other side, and are now starting to realise what men have been silently putting up with for years.
there's often a tendency to remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say.
That's a quality I think more people should aspire to.
A modern day witchhunt.
If women want to be treated as equals, well then, they had better be ready to be treated as equals. Which means when a man teases you about your hair or your breath or whatever you had better act like a grown woman and not a little girl crying to your mommy. Women have NO idea how much abuse we men put eachother through. And they have even less of a clue as to why we do it. Sometimes it is out of competitiveness, aggression, insecurity, and sometimes it is just plain funny to mess with someone. This is how we form social order at work and life in general. This is not something we have been taught...it is how we have been made. Boys wrestle and girls play nice. I cant believe people are still debating about this shit. Yes, men and women are different. DUH. Do we misunderstand eachother from time to time? YES. Is that OK? YES. Do you need to run to HR everytime someone says something to you that YOU find offensive even though you may not have really understood what they were saying or implying? NO. You idiots. NO. Look ladies, right or wrong the world is still run by men. I for one would welcome a world run by women. I doubt they could do any worse and I am sure there would be MUCH less viloence. BUT, if you ladies cannot show the men at your company that you can play with the big boys then you will NEVER make it. Sorry. Please do not mistake my post as condoning harassment or telling women to look the other way when it happens, that is stupid. What I want to see in the workplace are more women like my mom. She takes NO shit, from ANYONE. But she is not a b&*ch about it. She can take a shot, return fire, and then move forward as though nothing has happened. Even if she pretends that it doesn't bother her she still gains more respect from her male counterparts. Think she is selling out? Doing something she shouldn't need to to get ahead? Welcome to life as a man. WOman.
"Patience is not a virtue, it's a waste of time."
I am pretty sure IT bosses are not messing with the schedule to keep all the women out.
I mean, would you think the Airforce is conspiring against people that are scared of heights?
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
I know I'm going to regret debating gender with an anonymous coward on Slashdot, but referring to trans women as "transgenderred [sic] males" is just a little too offensive to let pass. There's good evidence to suggest that transsexualism is caused by congenital differences in certain parts of the brain involved with gender identity and sexuality [1] [2]. Essentially, we really are born with female brains. There's also evidence to suggest that a number of anatomical features of our brains shift to opposite-sex proportions during the first few months on hormones [3]. As for your ideas on explaining the sex ratio in technology jobs by men having a wider IQ distribution than women, I just don't think the numbers hold up. While there seems to be some support for men's IQ distribution having a larger standard deviation than women's, it just isn't enough to support your claim that "the chance of a person having an IQ of 125 is eight times more likely for males than females." The idea certainly isn't an implaausible one at extremely high IQ scores; all it would take would be an X-linked trait that sufficiently influences IQ for people with XY chromosomes (mostly masculine-gendered) to have a wider distribution than people with XX chromosomes (mostly feminine-gendered), and XY people *do* have a wider range of variation on a lot of different traits, probably because of a mechanism like this. The problem is that the effect would be just too small to make that big a difference; some quick googling turned up at most support for a one or two point difference in standard deviation, and that certainly wouldn't lead to a factor of eight difference at scores as low as 125. A one point difference in male versus female standard deviation of IQ in a population with an overall standard deviation of 16 points leads to men being twice as likely as women to have an IQ over 150, and only one person in a thousand of either sex scores that high. No matter what inflated opinions Slashdotters might have of themselves, I can say very assuredly that the great majority of IT workers do not have 150+ IQs. This sort of theory is probably only useful for explaining sex ratios in elite groups like Nobel prize winners, and I'd be rather skeptical even then of the assumption that the distribution of extremely high IQ scores can be obtained just by extrapolating the distribution for the middle-scoring bulk of the population. [1] A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality [2] Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus. [3] Changing your sex changes your brain: influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure
If women and men are truly equal, then we can stop worrying about parity between the sexes in any given profession. Much like the failed and misguided notion of affirmative action, to keep track of, and actually worry about, the amount of females vs. males in a given profession is disingenuous and misleading.
For instance, how come we aren't worried about a lack of female lion tamers? A lack of asian sports car drivers? A lack of male midwives?
If we are going to be a truly egalitarian society, we need to stop separating people out into groups based on something as silly and inconsequential as what sex organs somebody has. What's next, an article decrying the lack of green-eyed, brown-haired bellhops?
Women: You're not representing anyone but yourself. Men really don't look at one woman and judge your entire sex based on that one person. That is a misconception you have, its all in your head. Get over yourselves. Just do your job to the best of your ability. Same goes for all you "i'm being held back by my race" people. Maybe if you concentrated on your job and improving your skills, and spent less time worrying about abstract concepts like whether you are being viewed as a representative of your demographic, you'd find more people around you concentrate on your job and your skills.
Where are all the albino theatre ticket takers, anyway?!?!
Grrr. Bloody Slashdot made my comment illegible. Re-posted with non-broken formatting:
I know I'm going to regret debating gender with an anonymous coward on Slashdot, but referring to trans women as "transgenderred [sic] males" is just a little too offensive to let pass. There's good evidence to suggest that transsexualism is caused by congenital differences in certain parts of the brain involved with gender identity and sexuality [1] [2]. Essentially, we really are born with female brains. There's also evidence to suggest that a number of anatomical features of our brains shift to opposite-sex proportions during the first few months on hormones [3].
As for your ideas on explaining the sex ratio in technology jobs by men having a wider IQ distribution than women, I just don't think the numbers hold up. While there seems to be some support for men's IQ distribution having a larger standard deviation than women's, it just isn't enough to support your claim that "the chance of a person having an IQ of 125 is eight times more likely for males than females." The idea certainly isn't an implaausible one at extremely high IQ scores; all it would take would be an X-linked trait that sufficiently influences IQ for people with XY chromosomes (mostly masculine-gendered) to have a wider distribution than people with XX chromosomes (mostly feminine-gendered), and XY people *do* have a wider range of variation on a lot of different traits, probably because of a mechanism like this.
The problem is that the effect would be just too small to make that big a difference; some quick googling turned up at most support for a one or two point difference in standard deviation, and that certainly wouldn't lead to a factor of eight difference at scores as low as 125. A one point difference in male versus female standard deviation of IQ in a population with an overall standard deviation of 16 points leads to men being twice as likely as women to have an IQ over 150, and only one person in a thousand of either sex scores that high. No matter what inflated opinions Slashdotters might have of themselves, I can say very assuredly that the great majority of IT workers do not have 150+ IQs. This sort of theory is probably only useful for explaining sex ratios in elite groups like Nobel prize winners, and I'd be rather skeptical even then of the assumption that the distribution of extremely high IQ scores can be obtained just by extrapolating the distribution for the middle-scoring bulk of the population.
[1] A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality
[2] Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus
[3] Changing your sex changes your brain: influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure
Here is a little bit of Truth the left doesn't want you to know.
r ds.html
from: http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2007/08/double-standa
Here's some interesting news I read in the Star Tribune. In big cities, it seems that women's paychecks are outpacing men's:
The study by Queens College demographer Andrew A. Beveridge shows that all women from ages 21 to 30 living in New York City and working full time made 117 percent of men's wages, or a median wage of $35,653, and even more in Dallas, 120 percent. Nationwide, that group of women made much less: 89 percent of the average full-time pay for men. The findings were first reported in Gotham Gazette, published online by the Citizens Union Foundation.
The bad news for men?
Though the analysis showed women making strides, it also showed that men were in some ways moving backward. Among all men -- including those with college degrees -- real wages, adjusted for inflation, have declined since 1970. And among full-time workers with advanced degrees, wages for men increased only marginally even as they soared for women. Nationally, men's wages in general declined while women's remained the same.
The article quickly puts a kibosh on the good news for women by stating:
Typically, women have fallen further behind men in earnings as they get older. That is because some women stop working altogether, work only part time or encounter a glass ceiling in promotions and raises.
Well, if you stop working or work only part time, of course you don't make as much money--duh. What I find amusing or ridiculous--take your pick--is that many women's groups think women should make as much as men even if they have a family, don't work or work part-time. This is nothing but a sense of entitlement. And if women are single and working full time in the cities, then decide to have a family and move to small towns and work part-time or not at all, of course their wages will go down. That is called a trade-off, not necessarily discrimination.
If men's wages are declining, is this ever called discrimination? No, of couse not. Does anyone care about the reasons that men's wages declined while women's stayed the same? No, probably not. What I find interesting or perhaps hypocritical is that if women earn more than men, the reasons given are justified--smugly, women are seen as go-getters who have advanced degrees with the gumption to move to the big city to avoid the country bumpkins. But if men earn more, it is often because of rampant gender discrimation and not because of particular circumstances that would cause one to earn more such as working harder and longer hours, going where the opportunities are ripe etc. If women start to pull away from men in the earning department, I wonder if we will see any interest in helping men to increase their earnings? I won't hold my breath.
One thing I really like about IT is the refusal of most geeks to put up with this kind of navel gazing bullshit. People who're always on about "power struggles" and "ignorant of diversity" never make good programmers, because computers aren't likely to be bullied into behaving like the whipped men in their lives.
When I read "I've struggled with gender politics" what I see is "I'm a lousy programmer and people keep treating me like a lousy programmer because I'm a woman."
Actually, I'm only kidding about that. I'm sure you are/were very talented in your field, but you suffered from two things:
- The affirmative action paradox: the effort to bring underrepresented classes of people into a field by lowering standards for them diminishes the true accomplishments of those same underrepresented classes. As a white male, it's clear I'm in the room because I've earned the right to be there. If you're not a white male, well, you have to show why you're in the room if you want people to believe in you.
- The tyranny of diminished expectations. Men are constantly told that we are too hard on women and pushing them out of IT. Well, if you're not being pushed then you are not getting stretch roles, and you are not going to advance your career.
You can't have it both ways, you know.Well, you probably do know. Again, I'm sure you were tops in your field, and yes, I can understand your frustrations. The way I see it, you have two choices:
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I mean, is there any benefit to trying to integrate the IT workplace if it's not working, and women don't seem interested in working there? Maybe it's time to admit its a lost cause.
Two years ago, I decided to get my pointy-haired-boss on and go to business school. I elected to go to the only all-female MBA program in the country. Why? Because the biggest weakness I had was that I did not know how to deal with *women* in the work environment, and my boss was (and still is) a woman.
It's not easy to be in IT regardless of your gender. If you dislike foul language, well, good luck--I've thrown my share of f-bombs around when firmwide printing dies or the HVAC springs a leak and pours water through my servers and switches. Do you hate being around people who are angry? Heaven forbid you ever answer a support call. Do you like a complete night's sleep every night? Well, don't take a job that touches a data center or users who work in different time zones (don't have kids, either).
Because of IT's difficulty, we behave differently. We have a harder edge, but we laugh more as well. The jokes might be off-color or at someone's expense, but without the laugh, there's no pressure valve. Most of us drink fairly heavily, because we don't have much downtime and enjoy the relaxant effect of EtOH. Now, I don't know if we behave differently because we are predominantly male, or if we have different pressures, but most of us do behave this way.
Now add in technology's complexity, and you have a complicated situation. Most folks are in IT because we think (or at least used to think!) that technology is really cool. Not everyone does so. And, frankly, little boys are socialized to think technology=cool much more than little girls are. We are a product of our upbringing to some extent.
So how do I make IT work for women? For anyone? It's a question of alignment. If who you want to be aligns with your work environment, then stay. If something has to change and you can change it, do so and stay. If not, leave your job, or leave the industry, if you have the freedom to do so. If you do not have the freedom? Well, have a drink...
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult. -Whitton
Then I come home (it's 8:50pm now, I'm just in the door) and drink myself into a stupor, whilst blotting out the terrible reality of what my life consists of when I'm not actually working or sleeping, with alcohol, soft drugs, and Slashdot.
I think some people find going to the gym helps, too...
I have worked with many women in IT over my 14 years, and with the exception of *1* they all were inferior in knowledge and skills. I know it is anecdotal and just my experience but it is what it is. I'm not talking about minor deficiencies either, but huge, glaring gaps in knowledge/skills. In college anytime I had a female in my group for a project they tended to have to be carried through. The one skilled one could work circles around anyone I've ever worked with in Unix and scripting. FWIW. (I have no problem with women in IT, and this post is not meant to be negative just my personal experience)
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
I am not an american, so I am just noting my observation, and I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions etc etc.
Most women in america do not know how not to be b*tchy. They have grown up where on an
average men will never say no to them for anything, even if they are act so totally stupid and wrong, just becos if the guy does not open the car door, no favours at night.
So guys keep saying yes for most part for anything that they can allow, and women grow up thinking that they are so always right and they are so special, even if she's just a minimum wage waitress as long as she's okay looking.
So, except such a woman to be a total ass when she's in a discussion where data is to be compared, and decisions to be based on facts. She will resent being told that she might not be right. ofcourse it can only be because she's a woman and the other is a man. Such people will not go far in terms of being appreciated, with their big chips on their shoulders.
see all those ads in tvs where the guy is a bumbling idiot and the woman, with a smug smile and a smirk on her face, is the 'always right'? Some women take that attitude a bit too far and think workplace is like that too.
That's mostly the problem with women and any non-kitty-party profession.
It doesnt matter to me if they are male, female, or somewhere in between. I treat them all with the same respect, unless they are an ass and dont deserve it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Go here for those who hates multiple pages. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
No, it doesn't apply equally both ways, and a lot of it has to do with how we got here.
Back when the world was separated into "men's work" and "women's work", it was so because the general view was that women were not as capable as men. Those things that were classified as "men's work" from hunting to warmaking to running a business to performing surgery to studying math were seen not just as things a man should do, but as things that women were simply incapable of doing as well as a man. Whereas those things that were "women's work" were never seen as things that a man couldn't do. Men could clean and cook and knit they just wouldn't because that was "women's work" and the man should be using his superior capacities for grander pursuits like killing people from the next country over.
So a man going into a woman-dominated field has to fight against the social stigma of going outside their gender-role. A woman not only has to fight the social stigma, they also have to fight the thinking behind that stigma which is that they aren't as capable of doing "manly" things. And if you've read any slashdot threads on this kind of subject before, you can easily see that this way of thinking is alive and well.
There are of course exceptions. I think nursing was one of those areas where men were not just seen as outside their role (they should be the doctor, of course, with the subservient female nurse to assist them), but also as lacking the nurturing and compassionate instincts for the job.
I really couldn't tell you where archaeology falls into this, or why there was a predominance of women. I'm also not saying by any means that you shouldn't try to increase male enrollment or that your SMA organization is ill-conceived. I'm just saying that there is a very real and valid reason why getting women into male-dominated fields is seen as both more important and more challenging than getting men into woman-dominated fields.
The enemies of Democracy are
Facts:
- Women control 60% of the wealth in the USA.
- 56% of college graduates are now women.
- Boys commit suicide at a rate 5 times higher than girls.
- Boys are struggling in school now at a rate twice as high as the so called "girl crises" the media drummed up 15 years ago.
- Boys drop out of school at a rate 3 times higher than girls.
- Title 9 has decimated the athletic programs of boys nationwide. In 38% of cases, half of the boys teams athletic funding was allocated for a girls team - and not one single girl showed up to try out. The resulting lack of funds usually causes the boys program to be discontinued.
- In NYC, unmarried women earn 117% of their male counterparts in the same jobs.
- Men account for 96% of workplace deaths because women are unwilling to do the most dangerous jobs.
- There is at least one, and in most cases multiple female executives at the top levels of 84% of US companies.
- The CEO, CIO, CFO and CTO of Xerox Corp are all female.
- When you account for the fact that women as a whole work fewer hours, work less on weekends, and travel less for work than their male counterparts (78% of business travelers are men, on the weekends it jumps to 96% - the "girls" go home on Friday), they earn as much, and in many cases more than men doing the same jobs.
- When surveyed in 2004 about their choice in major (particularly why they did not choose a "hard science" as a career path), women overwhelmingly responded that they did not want to put in the time, hard work or effort required, instead opting for degrees that would offer them more flexible hours and interpersonal relationships.
And now the big shocker - this news is posted to you by a woman. I'm a REAL feminist and I'm sick and tired of the disgraceful new feminists who think feminism is about entitlement. If you want to work in IT, or any other field then suck it up and do it. Stop complaining and expecting the world to change for you.
We have equal rights - and we didn't get them by whining. We just went out and did the job.
If a man is making more than you it's because:
A. He did a better job of negotiating his beginning salary or raise.
or
B. He works harder, puts in more hours, and sacrifices more than you.
period.
but why do I see a ton of women working in oil change and auto repair shops these days. i can't imagine that these areas have less of a locker-room mentality.
A hand up and a foot on every chest...
Don't get me wrong, but Carly Fiorina has nothing to do with the "Women in IT" topic. Being a CEO doesn't have anything to do with what your company actually does (if you're as large as HP).
"You're not just representing yourself; you're representing [females] with a capital F." ~ Katy Dickinson
That kind of mentality is damaging to anyone's career objectives, personal satisfaction, or mental state in general. You can't approach every task with the attitude "My performance here represents all [insert group]kind!" It's just unrealistic to live your life thinking each action is being used to size up an arbitrary group you may belong to. It's damaging to yourself because every minor failure is perceived as a global failure for all of "your kind", and failures are bound to be far more plentiful than successes, just by definition. You fail a thousand times on the way to every goal, but you only succeed once, when you actually achieve the goal. In this case she's talking about women. Well, women the world over aren't going to be there to congratulate you every time you successfully check-in a working patch or every time you you pitch an idea someone likes. And if you're not getting praise from all the women of the world for everything you do right, it only reasons you shouldn't carry the burden of guilt for all the things you do wrong.
Consider someone like Phil Ivey. He's not working to be a great black poker player, he's just working to be a great poker player. When he had rough years, black people weren't globally down-trodden because of him, so why would he feel like a champion of the black people when he does well? I doubt he does. He probably feels great when he does well, he hones his skills, and he tries to improve his game for completely personal reasons.
It's just not healthy to shoulder the responsibility for half the planet. At most I try to think I'm making things easier for the next person, but not all people everywhere.
Why can't women simply "not like" IT and choose to go into other professions? If that is the case, must we force them to work in IT or something so that the numbers "work out"? I certainly understand that there are some hostile workplace issues sometimes in some places, I'm not sure why this would be indicated in fewer females entering into college on IT paths. I would think hostile work environments would be more indicative of more females changing majors out of IT and/or more females leaving IT once in the workforce.
If numbers must always be 50/50, must we also force males into job areas that are typically dominated by females as well?
Female programmers just all need to dress like Motoko Kusanagi.
Never again will they have to worry about not getting enough attention in meetings.
From the article: It's not unusual to be the only woman at a meeting, she says, and because of that, there's often a tendency to remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say.
Well, then, I say bravo, women! If more people in meetings would shut the hell up until they have something useful to contribute, meetings would not only be much shorter, but more productive. Instead, meetings are often a mishmash of pointless blithering, unrelated tangents, and half-baked bullshit tossed out to give off the illusion of "being involved".
So what she's saying is that women are much more intelligent about this process, and, not feeling the need to prove how big their dicks are, know that it's okay to not fill the meeting with mindless crap, but rather interject only when necessary.
I know that isn't the point she was trying to make, but still.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
No idea about the US, but here in Switzerland even newly built parking garages have "Frauenparkplätze". (Women's Parking Spaces)
They're not usually not bigger than the other parking spaces though there often are "Familienparkplätze" which are actually a lot bigger.
Now, the thing about the Frauenparkplätze is that they're usually better lit, and near the entrance. I don't know, but i think that this is perverse. I'm lazy too, and i don't like dark parking garages either.
Gender is not the issue where I work. The issue is ethnic instead. My co-workers are a bunch of chinks, err, sorry, ethnically diverse people who only speak English when the absolutely have to, and who only communicate outside of their little clique when they absolutely have to.
Gender issues, if any, are minor in comparison.
A lot of this crap about being "predisposed" to one field or another is complete hooey to me. We, as in the slashdot community, should pull our collective heads out of asses and STOP applying our own personal experiences to a large subset of people. SOME women are predisposed to IT Jobs just as SOME men are. Gender, I would wager and heavily, has little or nothing to do with it and social norms has a much larger role.
A woman's brain is just as capable of making an IT-Type decision as a man's brain; let's stop pointing to one individual and going "See, she's can't do it therefore no woman can" we just look stupid.
When I was attending college in the 90's I noticed that there were two types of students in the Information Technology program: 1. The student who loved technology and 2. The student who thought an IT degree would get a good paying job.
The first type, the passionate student, had at least one computer (usually more) in their apartment. They worked on more than just the assignments from school. Some were writing drivers for Linux. Others were developing extra-curricular websites (when it wasn't yet a phenomenon).
The second type usually didn't own a computer. If they did, they only used it to write papers and other basic tasks. They never seemed interested in learning more than just the basic level necessary to pass the classes.
It was easy to tell the two types of students apart. The first group always talked about tech, the second group rarely did.
As a rule, men were more inclined to be in the first group than the second. The opposite was true for the fewer women in the IT program. Many were clearly there for a degree and nothing more.
Some of my best project partners were women. They were as capable and passionate about technology as anyone in the program.
But after the dot-com bust, when the tech job market took a nose-dive, only the passionate ones stayed in the program. As a percentage of their respective population, more women left the IT department than men.
I cannot speak to problems in IT shops outside of school. But I never witnessed or heard complaints that women were deliberately kept out of the IT department. As an observation, it just didn't appeal to women as much as it appealed to men.
Dear Slashdot,
Thank you for taking measures towards solving the issues involving women in IT. The tag "bitches" really promotes equality and fair judgment towards females. I applaud your efforts.
~Bitch
What? Too subtle?
"Even through my degree I felt like 24/7 I had to prove I had a right to be there."
And how is that anyone's fault but yours? Why is anyone else responsible for how you FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL?
"the reality is there is a major social bias."
Yes, against men. We're filthy, stinky, stupid, sexist idiots who go about our day looking for something to shove our penis into, then fall asleep while whatever we just porked makes us a sandwich.
At least, that's what you and society would have us think.
"We, as women in tech"
That's it, if lumping men into a pre-defined idea to make your world view accurate wasn't enough, you have the, well, ovaries I guess, to speak for "women in tech".
Fuck you, you stuck up cunt, you're no one's voice but your own, and your voice hasn't said a fucking thing worth listening to. HOW DARE YOU pretend that your obviously biased view, set in stone and affirmed because you WANT IT TO BE, is in any way representative of anything?
There's nothing insightful or interesting about self fulfilling prophecies, and pretending your "work experience" was anything else is a lie and you know it.
The impressive thing, to me, is all the whiners complaining that there's no such thing as sexism, and why do the damned women have to be so uppity, right between a story tagged "bitches" and "misandry" and comments consisting of misogynist copypasta and "back in the kitchen" jokes. If ever one was to doubt that IT culture is unfriendly toward women, I think the Slashdot response to the article is evidence aplenty.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
This is also EXACTLY the kind of attitude us men show towards each other. Lots of "your mom" jokes.. it's hard not to laugh when an old Wang computer turns up. Joking "quit surfing porn over there!". If anyone says their hand is tired, the proper response is "oh, that's what you did all weekend huh?" And so on
And, it's all funny as hell. Woman, those jokes are not directed at you, that is good nerdly humor.
I am a male worker in a small (~40) IT company. We have three female developers for approximately 30 male devs. I know some female engineers from my school who are in the same situation. All of them said it was very enjoyable to work in these conditions. Granted, sometimes some locker-room jokes fly around, but in their opinion, it is far more enjoyable than the backstabbing rumor culture they have experienced in feminine environments.
I don't think that the environment scares women enough to chose a different career path. I think the answer lies in a more cultural factor. Studies have proved that parents are unconsciously biased in the way they explained something to their kids. They emphasize the emotional aspect when talking to girls "Isn't it beautiful ? Wouldn't you like to have one ?" and the rational aspect when talking to boys "Isn't it beautiful ? Do you understand how it works ?". Making boys more technically inclined. In fact, when you study tastes of secondary school students, girls feel more uncomfortable with science than boys. I am sure most of us remember this trend. Girls are supposed to be more into literature.
You can not act as a colleague, you can act as a parent. Girls aren't naturally repelled by technology, they mainly are because their parents think this is how a normal girl behaves.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Not to fan the flames even more, but aren't these two articles a classic stereotypically example of the problem? Man not being sympathetic and not listening (or in this case reading), and woman screaming at him for being a thickheaded blind idiot for not understand what is in fact, a very logical argument?
And yet, the grandparent has a +5 and the parent only a +3. Oh the bitter irony.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
To add my own anecdotal evidence, I will speak of my workplace.
We're not IT, though we have a few on staff for the IT part that's necessary of any corporation and particularly ours. We're a microchip design company. RFIC's and signal processors. Half if not more of the *designers* here are women. Granted they all started their careers in engineering in the 70's-80's but that doesn't change the fact that they all like their jobs and are very good at it.
My previous job was at another semiconductor company but had very few women engineers. In fact, all of the electrical guys were male. Only a couple of the mechanical engineers were female.
The difference between these two work environments is stark. At my previous job, we were a skeleton crew given unrealistic deadlines, impossible budgets and expected to perform miracles. Yes, at the end, when our system worked (and by work, I mean is flying in a bunch of airplanes without any reported failures), we all felt pride in a job well done and forgot about the nights in the lab trying to track down what was causing signal attenuation. Oh, and we had to manage our own Solaris design network. No IT support because the company's IT didn't "work with Linux".
At my current work environment, we have state-of-the-art tools, a full IT support team that maintains our Red Hat design network as well as our multi-million-dollar-per-seat EDA tools, a panel of experts of everything from logic design to VLSI, and, most importantly, a company policy that lets all the working moms (and dads) do 30hrs/wk if they wanted to at reduced pay.
I can't imagine work places like my current one are very numerous in the tech fields. This, I would imagine, is especially true of the IT field. Perhaps we shouldn't be worrying about the decline of women in IT but rather, why there isn't a decline of men in IT. Are we all truly that thick-headed?
Everyone, get this through your heads.
1) Women and Men are NOT equal.
2) Women accel at some things, and Men accel at other things. This is true when we speak in averages.
3) The entire freaking point of "equal rights", is that while average differences do exist, that does not indicate the qualifications or ability of any individual, be it male or female.
So, when ever a woman tries to "speak for Females everywhere", she's absolutely nuts. The same, of course, is true of men doing the same for their sex. Each woman is an individual, with individual capabilities. Some women, although a much smaller percentage of women than men, accel at technical jobs.
This is because, *gasp*, women have different brains then men. Surprisingly, a pair of tits isn't all that differs a woman from a man.
So, to all you ladies in the audience, just be yourself. Don't try to speak for women everywhere. Don't hold back, just be YOU. Excel with the gifts you have.
Frankly, if everyone of every ethnic background and physical sex just did this, most silly problems would eventually vanish.
a) Could it be that there's a drop in grads since no one is making good money compared to the en vogue hot-subjects of MBAs, financial planner, or attorney?
Along with observation a) Could it be that current female IT professionals are having children and leaving the workforce, likely not to come back due to the stress of an IT job? I know of 3 females that have left IT to have a family and after having a child, now are looking at other industries for work.
Speaking as a woman trying to get into the IT field (I am intending to take the A+ Certification exam in a couple weeks), I just don't see what the problem is, at least not yet. People are people are people. Look at race: I don't even look at someone and register "That person is black" or "That person is Asian", it's just "Person. Gawdy clothes." and the like. Maybe I've been lucky in that I haven't run into alot of discrimination, or maybe I'm just naive and the world will smack me good when I apply for my first tech job. But honestly, I expect more out of the geek world. It's been my experience that in general, the geeks are more intelligent, more open minded, and less prone to the whole discrimination thing. I've loved computers my whole life, since I first sat infront of one when I was like 5 (1990). I'm good with computers naturally, I think like them and understand how to work with them, and more than that, I just ENJOY working with computers. Because of that, I am really good working in this field. Does the fact that I have breasts make me less likely to do the job well? Hell no. If you want to tell that, pull apart my brain, because what's in the bra certainly won't tell you. -- Embrace your fellow geek, whoever they may be! Well, unless it's Dilbert. Now THERE'S a disturbed personality, you know just the other day.......
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. - Krishnamurti
... it's what you're leaving out in your conclusions.
The monkeys offer no insight into ability, merely predisposition to certain activities. Furthermore, we are talking about statistics, not whether any female is capable of certain things.
The president of Harvard had had run-ins with the humanities faculty before, and was controversial all-around. Furthermore, he was not fired, he resigned (technical, yes, but makes a world of difference).
With regards to the WWDC attendees, you're again making the mistake of equating attendance with capability. Are you arguing that because there were no females attending as hackers, that no females can be competent hackers?
What does the female management of The Failed Mars Mission have to do with its failure? Are you implying that the first all female team is responsible for Nasa's first failure? First Mars failure? What? In this example, you're merely yelling "look! vaginas! failures!"
No one's doubting your examples. The problem is that none of your examples have any impact on showing whether females can be competent in highly technical areas. All you've shown is that you're an insecure bigot who has issues dealing with successful women.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Your linear vs circular and big picture vs detail claims are spurious.
Could just be me, of course, but it almost feels like women would like show everyone that they are being discriminated. It's almost as if they get some power trip out of knowing that they are the few, the proud, the women of IT who put up with crude men and complete scum bags.
"When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself." ~ Jack Gurney
Until society looses it's gender (AND racial) sterotypes, things will never change. Articles that point out the obvious are just perpetuating the stereotype.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
So, what do you plan to do about the countless times where disrespect that is framed in terms of #2 is really a disguise for #1?
You're talking as if people's motivations and attitudes were transparent. They're not so, not even to themselves.
Are you adequate?
Pft. I like going with the tactic I used to use to prove I was female online. Threaten castration in new and unusual and increasingly creative ways. See how hard you can make 'em wince. Heehee. I'm not exactly a "girly" girl anyway, so I tend to fit into the locker-room thing just fine.
Considering the shown fact that IQ scores can be improved by practice, and practice of IQ tests alone, I think your assertion that IQ is genetic is a load of crap. IQ tests are a bastardization of a set of tests originally used to help identify kids with learning difficulties, they were never intentioned or designed for the measurement of intelligence and as a result tend to do it badly.
The rest of your post appears to also be based on similar fallacy. If the girls are outdoing you at work perhaps you should face the fact that they're better than you at your job and quit trying to make yourself feel better by posting this tripe.
how about the people who write these crap about "needing" more women in IT shut the fuck up and just let people make their own choices. Women have all the protection and all the oppertunity they need to become very successful in IT, all they need to supply is the effort and talent.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
As a male in IT and having worked in both all-male and mixed environments (obviously not in all female environments), the effect of having a woman on the team on many guys' mouths is refreshing. I prefer to work in a more professional environment; sure there are times to kick back, too, but at least cut the locker room humor the rest of the time. Having women on a team means things are more professional, you get different feedback and ideas, and, I think, in the end, more gets done.
As for holding your tongue in meetings, I think if more people held their tongue until they had an important idea, meetings might go more smoothly (sessions specifically for brainstorming excepted). You shouldn't withhold a question or idea for fear of looking stupid (asking "dumb" questions often wards off disaster), but you should listen as much or more than you speak.
One thing that women sometimes misunderstand is that men and women (generally) make decisions different ways. Men often vet an idea by attacking it, picking at it, kicking the tires, and trying to find what is wrong with it. This does not mean they will not accept the idea in the end. Women (generally) discuss ideas and focus (more) on the positive points of alternatives. When a man attacks their idea, they often feel personally attacked. I would bewilder my ex when, for an important decision, I thoroughly dismembered one of her ideas, then solidly agreed to it: different ways of thinking.
Women also (tend to) learn new skills differently. When a guy says "Come on, this is easy." they generally mean, "this is within your reach, with a little more work, you'll have it". What a woman often hears is "This is simple. Why don't you get it?" Communication problems like this can blow all out of proportion.
There is a book called "The Iron Rose" which is a woman's guide to sword fighting (my wife fights and I used to) which really goes into a lot of these details and how women get along in male-dominated circles. It's well worth reading as a guy as well.
Some IT departments do not want Women in important positions for one, possibly, valid argument: Women can and will bare children. A medium company sized company I worked for in the past would not hire a young, vibrant female IT person that I wanted due to the possibility of her getting pregnant. Their point is that if I spend $$$ training this person on my special needs and equipment and then you leave for 3-6 months to have a child, how am I going to train a person to do their job? They may have unique skills that no one else in the company has and if you outsource the position, you risk your secure data - along with that person not knowing your equipment and software. I don't want to sound sexist, but If my budget as a small to medium business did not permit a back up person to be trained, then what is a hiring manager going to do?
I'm very surprised by the comments on the board. I always expect to see a few comments along the lines of IQ differentials, reverse discrimination, and other nonsense, but the number today is shocking. I certainly hope none of them are by managers.
Forget about the fact of basic fairness, that women in the field tell you that there is a bias, that the numbers of women are appallingly low in some fields, that women, on average, outperform men in a wide number of essential skills in good IT: as an issue of being competitive in industry, not taking advantage of a diverse workforce is cutting your throat. If every member of your team comes from the same background, thinks along the same lines, works the same way, the odds are that you are missing something. It may not bite you today, or tomorrow, but it will bite you. If any of you are managers, consider whether cloning your best worker (or yourself) is really such a good idea.
Having people that don't fit into a particular male culture is a good thing for business. For non-managers, learn to deal with it.
Having been a male in IT at all levels, I have seen some shocking examples of harassment/discrimination. It happens. Not everyday, but it is most certainly there. On one of my first jobs where I lead a small team, there was a female tech in a neighboring group. She was well educated, intelligent, outgoing, and skilled. In meetings, she would be asked to get coffee or make copies. Her co-workers would be assigned technical tasks, she would be asked to design a coffee mug. She ended up mostly doing document work and I stole her when I could to work on my project, but essentially her life was a living hell. Finally she left, and as I heard, ended up making substantially more elsewhere.
I have overheard snipes that made *me* want to kill, let alone the target.
Expecting women to run errands and be domestic servants is a recurring theme. Vocal comments on appearance is another. Fashion is a double-edged sword. People suggest here that women can dress conservatively and they won't get ogled; In some shops they won't go anywhere either. Women are expected to be attractive and social. If they dress 'tight' they are unfriendly and not team players. Again, it depends on the shop and the management. On the other hand, as a manager, I have had trouble with how to handle a female subordinate who is not dressed appropriately. This can be troublesome with either gender, but with women the terrain seems strewn with land mines: at what point do they take it as a personal comment? I once had a programmer who wore skirts slit to her armpits. I ended up having another exec, a woman, approach her.
Reality:
IT sucks, because of the customers, and because of the non IT, non-geek upper management with no relevant experience that don't have a clue. Geeks, are socialy inept because they are ostracized by society in school, and early life until they learn to deal with people more then computers. This goes for female and male geeks. Females through conditioning by their families and peers are much more dependent on not being a social outcast during school, and early career so are less likely to be those "geek females". Non-geek females and geek males are just as bad at bridging the "geek, non-geek" gap as male geeks and male jocks. Geek females, which are perfectly fine and normal females... have no problem. Therefore the majority of females are not going to be attracted to be the geek slaves of pencil pushing bafoons and be forced to deal with the social ramifications of "associating with those spock-eared, geek kids". Hence way lower turnout for female geeks in the workplace. Because IT is synonymous with geek, you cant be a pencil pushing tard and be good at computers, because you are just another jock...
Fantasy:
Computers are hard to learn, blah blah blah... women don't like hard math blah blah blah... its bull, it has no actual effect on whether a women joins the field or not.
Summary:
With the advent of social networking and geek and internet popularity on the rise, you will see more females inclined to make the choice of being a career geek, or "IT professional". It may even become the norm, because being a non-geek or computer illiterate may carry much more stigma, in the near future, then being computer literate.
Also define IT? every other dell support tech is female. Ever tour dells campus's? Tons of females, there doing everything from running training programs, to building the machines themselves, to going out on calls to fix computers, to helping companies plan their IT infrastructure.
Perhaps in programmer sweat shops women are smart enough to realize that the evil retarded CEO's that don't know how to program but call the shots are stupid, and leave. Perhaps men are more inclined to masochistic behavior in order to "prove they can program, prove that they have the endurance, and prove that they are those retarded IT superhero's they are stereotyped to be".
Don't get me wrong, but you totally miss my point. Women (and men) might as well be in more lucrative fields today. All the people encouraging those women to go into IT are doing a disservice to them.
:) ).
:).
As I said: Carly Fiorina didn't have a single IT degree, didn't do any IT, all she did was "Slash & Burn CEOing", and it got her far.
There is no point encouraging women to go to IT or stay in IT, it's not the best thing out there. Women should get out of IT if they aren't really interested, there are plenty of other fields where you can be _mediocre_ and do well (or even be incompetent and do well).
A lot of men (and a few women) are in IT _despite_ all the minuses because they are interested.
Now if you (male or female) were in a 3rd world developing country (like me), then sure go into IT, because you can easily undercut the "rich people in the West" and it's more comfortable than farming and pays better than assembly line work. But even women here prefer other jobs, and even here there ARE other jobs.
Remember: a LOT of IT jobs can be done elsewhere (other than those that require local physical presence). So if you're in a rich country only go into IT if you're interested - because you need to be interested to be at least in the top 10%, where people will pay your rates because you ARE BETTER, magnitudes better than random crap in Elbonia (or here
I can confidently say that I'm a lot better in IT stuff than some half-interested person in the USA, and more than 50% cheaper. I bet I even spell better
Your use of scare quotes is confusing. Since they imply the falseness of what's quoted, it comes out like this:
I completely agree with this statement! For the most part, everyone I work/went to school with is/was very nice and well-meaning, but I'm always the only [transsexual] in the group. I always feel the pressure to do well and do [things that seem harder] because I can. I was pressured in college to take all the most difficult classes because [I] wanted a girl in the class...Women are being outpaced by men in the car mechanic industry, the aircraft repair industry, the office equipment repair industry, the appliance repair industry... Let's face it, women and men are different. This is my 3rd career in my life. I started out of high school in the Air Force working on aircraft on the flight line, and the men outnumbered the women about 20:1. The women in the field where either more tom-boy than girly-girl, or they found another job and got out really quick. After that, I worked my way through college repairing office equipment. In those years, I only met one female tech, and she could probably take most guys I've known in a fair fight. On the flip side of the coin, women outnumber men about 20:1 in the childcare, teaching, and nursing industries. Biological, or sociological, women tend to want to take care of people, and men tend to want to fix things. The IT industry is all about fixing equipment when it breaks, and there is really little to no human interaction in the role, it just doesn't suit women. Instead of trying to change the leopard's spots, why don't they just accept the way the leopard is, and let it hunt!?
My software never has bugs.
It just develops random features.
Is there something wrong with the word 'Women'? Why is it that in any discussion of womens' issues, women are referred to (by men and women) as 'Females'. This is like nails on a chalkboard to me. The only acceptable use of females as a noun is in biology. Female what? Penguins?
You forgot the key assumptions to this argument: that childrearing is a task that should rest primarily on the shoulders of women, as uncompensated labor. What the women's groups in question that you criticize really think is that the burden of bringing up children should be born by men and women equally.
Are you adequate?
Hmm, great question. Lemme re-read my comment.
*re-reads*
Ah, ok, I can answer now: no.
Are you adequate?
Did anyone else read the title as "Copulating Strategies for Women in IT" ? I, for one, was very excited until I actually read the summary.
If Negroes and Caucasians are truly equal, then we can stop worrying about the ability to vote in any given town. Much like the failed and misguided notion of Reconstruction, to keep track of, and actually worry about, the amount of black vs. white people able to vote in a given town is disingenuous and misleading.
Sometimes, an extra effort really is required.
Not having women around makes our working environment a pretty dull one. I don't even bother to shower or shave anymore. And the usual dialogs here remind me of the first scene of Reservoir Dogs.
Well, at least, there's no employment problems in IT.
that maybe most women just DON'T WANT to work in IT?
I keep saying "they", but I mean "we", because I'm one of them. We're not very mature. We're socially inept outside of our specialized domain. But that's okay, because we're in the IT shop surrounded by people in our specialized domain, isolated from everybody else, stuck in a positive feedback loop with mostly guys.
My advice to any woman who's going to spend time around IT guys is: treat them like fifteen year old boys. Seriously -- it's tenth grade, and your class is on a field trip and you're stuck in a rented van with seven tenth grade boys. We can go back and forth all day about how they should behave, about how things should be, but that's how it actually is.
You can probably come up with a pretty good coping strategy based on this, but since you're immersing yourself in a foreign culture, knowing a little about the locals and their quaint little folkways is probably your best bet. Here some basic pointers, take 'em or leave 'em:
- Don't try to be liked. You'll come across as a doormat. The way to be liked is to know your shit.
- If somebody's being a butthead, call him a butthead. Actually say "butthead" out loud, preferably with a little snort.
- Don't be insulted if somebody calls you a butthead. In fact, be flattered. Unless a guy is actually starting a fight, he won't talk to you that way unless he actually feels comfortable around you -- sees you as a peer, in other words. The best response to a dig is "Yeah, yeah, fuck you."
- If two guys in earshot are talking sexist, or just being loud and disruptive, yell "Hey, stop being assholes" in their direction.
- Guys get really really touchy about their abilities and think unsolicited advice is a slam on them personally--and for whatever reason it's even more hurtful coming from a woman. Never offer unsolicited technical advice. Wait for a cue. Preface the advice with "yeah, the same thing happened to me last week. Took me forever to figure out."
- Guys hardly ever understand subtle hints or pick up on emotional cues. If something's bugging you, for fuck's sake say it, because they'll never figure it out on their own.
- If you want something, say so. This includes things like second monitors, or raises.
- You gotta be a little thick-skinned. If you're having a thin-skinned day, use your work as an excuse to socially withdraw. If someone continues to annoy you, "not right now" is usually all you need to say.
- A great way to get rid of somebody who's annoying you is to ask them a technical question they're going to have to look up the answer to, or better yet do some sort of experiment.
It's a different culture, yes. Pretend you've moved to France or something. You can complain all day about how fucked up the French are, or you can get the hang of it and really have a lot of fun.Needless to say, not all shops are like this. Some of them are courteous, enlightened, civilized places to work. If you find one, or currently work in one, congratulations, because by "some" I actually mean "probably three in the whole wide world."
This is not my sandwich.
If you don't act like a sexist pig, then that article clearly isn't about you, now is it?
But the problem is that, I would suppose, even if you don't act like that, you almost certainly remain silent when other people do, thus giving your tacit consent to that sort of conduct.
The rest of your comment is repeating what the rest of the comments say: you don't see what the bitches are so uppity about, why can't they just shut up, why do they hate men so much, and so on. Have you been reading the posts from women here? (Given the atmosphere, it's surprising that any bother to post.) It's remarkably insensitive of you to, when confronted with evidence that the IT workplace is unfriendly to women, start whining that your tender, tender fee-fees have been bruised, and that women--who are dealing with actual trouble in the workplace--apologize to you for daring to rock your overprivileged boat.
Look, you're comparing people who have undergone real hardship at work with the tears you're shedding over having to (gasp, horror) hear about it. Doesn't that strike you as at least a little inequitable?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/11/bofh_2005_ episode_5/
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
The mods that wanted to mod down my original post couldn't do it, so they came after my other posts to get at my karma.
What a bunch of losers.
Why should anyone - male or female - get special treatment because they have children?
Look, if you have to take more than 12 days a year off to take care of a sick child outside your normal sick/personal time, don't complain when you get fired so the company can hire someone who doesn't.
Having children is a choice. You aren't entitled to special treatment for having them.
That said, well, we're human beings. We have children and we care about them more than our jobs. Most bosses - especially those who have children - know this, and cut their employees slack on their kids' behalf. Other employees curb their bitterness that you're not in the office because you're caring for your terminally ill children because they know they'd do the same thing for their kids if they were in your shoes.
PCM2's sense of entitlement is disturbing. LIFE ISN'T FAIR. You work for a business, that business makes money. That business doesn't need to, and shouldn't, give a shit, pry, ask about, care about, or worry about what happens to you or anyone related to you or part of your family when you're not in the office. They hire an employee who they expect to show up, do the job, and get paid. If you don't show up for any reason, whether it be kids or hell freezing over, expect to get fired. The company sure as shit shouldn't be paying for a baby sitter. If your kids prevent you from doing your job, quit your job or put your kid up for adoption.
Since 99.9% of women find what I just said to be cold-hearted, cruel, unreasonable, and unthinkable, they can't compete at the same level as men, because men are easily capable of feeling this way.
But Hitler? Come on.
As I understand it, alpha dogs come in two different varieties: leader and aggressive. The aggressive ones spend their life reestablishing who is top dog. The leaders are more like "Stop fighting, we're on a mission here! Come on, focus!". The best bosses I've had have been women with leadership skills. They focus on the mission and build concensus. And they're smart enough to know when to say "We've got enough input; here's what we're gonna do." The aggressive bosses... well, I don't stick around long when those assholes are sinking the company. What really pains me is that it should not just be women who can show strength in non-aggression. Guys can do that too. Come on guys, get a clue.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
If only there were more women in IT, it would make my day so much more enjoyable overall. Ultimately, a bad IT person is a bad IT person and they will only get so far before there is nowhere to hide anyway.
When I hear the gossiping conversations that the women have in certain other departments during coffee breaks and the subjects they get into, it makes me feel sad there aren't more women in my department. There's so much more colour and richness of social interaction that you just don't get with other male colleagues. When I visit my head office from time-to-time, the problem gets worse - it's like a working men's club on some floors and not in a good way.
Why should any male IT guy complain if a gorgeous woman joins the IT department? Surely it's the best of both worlds for most men -- a female that speaks in IT and looks good doing it! I wouldn't mind so much if I had to do the heavy lifting in the server room, it happens in every other working arena anyway.
Why should any male IT guy complain if a georgeous woman joins the IT department? Surely it's the best of both worlds for most men -- a female that speaks in IT and looks good doing it! I wouldn't mind so much if I had to do the heavy lifting in the server room, it happens in every other working arena anyway.
Are you suggesting that job stress is contributing to the nations obesity epidemic?
Oh... "fate". Never mind. [signed] Emily Lentilla
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
I have been a programmer (NOT a lousy one!) for about 11 years now, and am a woman. I am not so arrogant as to call myself a "guru" or whatever (because there is always someone else out there to learn something from), but I certainly feel that I am a good programmer - and so do all of my clients - many of whom have been with me since my start into programming - although I think my code & applications prove that point more than me just saying so - I feel my work speaks volumes for itself. HOWEVER, regardless of how good a programmer I am, I absolutely have been the vicitim of gender politics, quite often throughout my career, and most recently just in this past month on at least two seperate occasions by tech-Y's (males)!! While both of these recent situations have not actually happened inside of the office atmosphere, or with people that I work with on a daily basis, other incidents certainly have been in office or co-worker situations.
I was out at a bar, with two other tech-Y's, sitting having a drink after we ate... A guy came up and started talking to us, and while we were talking, he mentioned that he was a computer programmer. I leaned forward and replied that all (3) of us were also "computer people" - myself & my boyfriend being programmers, and my other friend is a network guy... When I mentioned the programming part, he immediately asked specifically what I did... When I gave him my reply - he LAUGHED AT ME - and said "oh - I'm sorry!!", and then moved on to ask my boyfriend what he programmed in... My boyfriend gave him pretty much the same exact response as I did - and to my utter amazement, he was like "oh wow - that's cool!"...
UMMMMM - How is it that he feels sorry for me and laughs at me, yet a guy tells him he does the same exact thing like 2 seconds later, and all the sudden it's "wow" & "cool"??!!!! That seems to me to be another excellent example of the kind of gender BS that DOES affect the IT industry.... That guy has no freaking idea what my level of expertise is (and neither do you) - yet he still treated me like I was someone to feel sorry for or be laughed at, just because I'm female... and funnily enough, I've got about 6 years more experience than my boyfriend in the industry - I was actually the one who got my boyfriend programming by mentoring & teaching him - so I really feel this guy's reaction to me was pretty degrading & couldn't understand how it could have changed so radically when he got the same answer from a guy...
In another situation recently, a customer was having issues reaching our server network, and it was due to their own ISP's network having some issues... I was attemping to speak with some guy over the phone at the ISP about the problem, he first asked me if he could speak with someone technical - I replied that I was the tech person, that I was the correct person to be speaking with... I tried to start explaining that there seemed to be an issue within their network, but the guy started telling me that there was no problem in their network, and that our own servers were down (they certainly were not - I am 110% positive of this)... I was trying to explain what was being returned with the trace routes that I had just run from multiple networks back to them and that each showed problems within their network - however in the middle of this conversation, the guy starting YELLLING at the top of his voice on the phone to me to "get your tech people on this because you don't know what your talking about and your servers are down", and then basically hung up on me... All this after I ALREADY told him that our servers were CERTAINLY not down and that I WAS the tech person, I defenitely felt that his rudeness to me was based on the fact that in his mind, I was just a stupid girl who had no clue, and I couldn't know what I was talking about - I mean how dare I say there was a problem in his network!!?? I MUST be wrong!!
While neither of these people made any direct mention of their disdain for me as being because I was a female, I do
wow, thanx for your response. For a moment there I thought I was the only girl left on slashdot. Seriously, I think there are too many bigots here and it's time to start a new site, more friendly to women.
I work in a product development organization for a medium-size ($500M in yearly revenue) company. We generally have few females except in one organization--tech pubs. In that organization, women outnumber men (at least) two to one. Remarkably, while it's the smallest separate organization in product development, it's also the meanest and pettiest.
They are unbelievably nasty to each other with hurt feelings for no good reason occurring daily. I'd love to say they're a single dysfunctional example but I've seen similar things at two other companies as well.