Slashdot Mirror
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".
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'
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.
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...
"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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.).
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.
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
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.
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.
Here's a hint: Very few people actually want to work in mines. People do so because it's a living, and only people who are physically able to handle it can and do make a career out of it. My point is that there's a difference between women not working in mines where they're physically predisposed to having a hard time and women not working at a particular desk job because their coworkers are assholes. The former makes sense and cannot be changed and the latter is an unfortunate and unnecessary loss to the economy.
Because the lifting requirement is there for a reason? That's like saying, "Math is hard, and removing math from the curriculum would give us more electrical engineers!" The people you graduate will no longer be qualified electrical engineers. If you can do the job without lifting heavy weights, the requirement shouldn't be there. If you can't do the job without lifting heavy weights, the requirement shouldn't be compromised. I don't know which of those was the case in the changing of the fire department requirements.
The more important question is, should we be concerned that part of the "job requirement" for being a woman in engineering or IT is being treated with disrespect or even outright contempt, or should we just consider it "part of the job" like getting dirty in a coal mine? Yes, there are jobs that have hard physical requirements, and no modifications to the job description will change that. The analogous problem in an air conditioned office building with comfortable chairs is a very solvable one, though. Working with people who have no clue how to treat their coworkers is not an endemic feature of the job the same way hauling rocks is a core part of what a coal miner does. Claiming otherwise is simply giving people a pass for acting inappropriately in the workplace.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
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."
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,
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."
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
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.
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
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.
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.
the unfriendly comments aren't evidence of sexism. its evidence of the anger created by reverse sexism. don't get hung up on the term ok, u know very well what it means. when people feel targeted unfairly they do get angry. women get angry when they think men are out to get them, well guess what, men feel angry and insulted when articles are put out assuming every mans a sexist pig and that women should live their lives and view everything through a prism of assumed sexism. it is pretty progressive as it is, with lax work place environments with people trained as logical thinkers. such people probably don't like to be looked at as assumed bigots. being angry at agendas which breed disharmony brings up the comments and jokes. the evidence is not what you think it is. it is friendly to all that suffer its burdens. many in it are just unfriendly to those who have gender agendas and seek conflict and unfairness for their own side.
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?
My wife is a stay-at-home mom.
I have, by far, the easier job.
What bugs her the most is when some woman that makes her job a higher priority than her children patronizes her and says, "I wish I could stay home with my children." As if financial discipline and and 24/7 parenting are easier than luxury and day care.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
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