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.'"

Comments

We need put the IT back in

[antifoidulus]

clIToris!

Re:Don't forget..

[mungtor]

It's not a point of pride, in most cases it's a point of fact. If you aren't willing to put in the hours there are plenty of others who are. Whether they are on the "burnout track" is completely immaterial to the company which is now getting 70 hours a week for the the same salary as 40 hours. Maybe you are so talented that you have never been out of work, but not everybody else is as lucky.

Women generally leave IT because they aren't really geared for it. No matter how politically incorrect it is to say, women are not as good at analytical tasks as men. However, women are much better at jobs which require interpersonal communications or anything with an element of empathy. The two sexes are pretty much hard wired for different tasks (testosterone levels in early development seem to contribute greatly), so just let people do what they are good at. Nobody bemoans the lack of male nurses or secretaries. People who study thing like this should stop trying to cram square pegs into round holes and worry about something important for a change.

Re:Stereotypes

[DDLKermit007]

Amen brother! At least women have the option in the Western world! I'm in Japan atm, and you either spend most of our life after work hanging out with the boss, and colleagues, or never go anywhere. Now while I have a job that doesn't require that, women would be dicked if the world was even close to how it is here. Hell I dunno how the men that do it make it happen. If I had a kid i couldn't bring myself to devote that much time to work. Even if it did involve going to a strip club or getting wasted!

Re:Been there, seen that...

[pthor1231]

I'm not sure I follow exactly what point you are trying to make. Are you saying that men should should go against their lifelong conditioning to better allow women to work in the office environment? But wouldn't this create the same problem as the current situation, simply with the roles reversed?

Re:My wife's experience

[Sycraft-fu]

While I can't speak for women, or for men in general, I can say that I know I'm like this. I cannot STAND little kids, they just annoy the shit out of me. Especially crying, that drives me up the wall. As such, I'd make an extremely poor daycare worker. This doesn't mean that a daycare facility should have to help me cope with the job, it means I shouldn't take that job (and indeed haven't).

I do think we need to do some realistic assessment of situations like this. Different people are good at different jobs. It may be for personal reasons, maybe cultural, maybe gender, whatever. Point is that not everyone can be good at everything and we need to accept that. So while we need to work diligently to make sure that workplaces treat people fairly based on merit and not on superficial characteristics, we do need to accept that we may not achieve perfect parity in all jobs and that's ok.

what will the feminists screech about next.

[timmarhy]

We take their freedom and force women to be house wives, they screech, we give them freedom to work anywhere they like and when women exercise that right and pick their fields, they screech. why the fuck does this ALWAYS need to be the white mans fault somehow? maybe women just don't like IT?? did these geniuses ever think of that? From experience i've found there's just as many women in HOBBY groups as at work (in IT) meaning it's all about womens choice and interest in IT.

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.