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Not Enough Women In Computing, Or Too Many Men?
itwbennett writes "Do geeks really 'drive girls out of computer science,' as the headline of a LiveScience article contends? Blogger Cameron Laird doesn't think so. In fact, 'I don't think "gender issues in computing" is important enough to merit the attention it gets,' says Laird in a recent post. And maybe the problem isn't that there are too few women in computing, but that there are too many men. 'I'm waiting to read the headline: "Women too smart for careers with computers,"' says Laird, 'where another researcher concludes that only "boys" are stupid enough to go into a field that's globally-fungible, where entry-level salaries are declining, and it's common to think that staying up all night for a company-paid pizza is a good deal.'"
I need a job.
"I don't think 'gender issues in computing' is important enough to merit the attention it gets,"
So why are you still talking about it?
It's still a great field with good salary, sane work hours and prospects for advancements. It's just not as compelling as during dot com boom. Women should stop making excuses and go into any good field they like.
Cue the moral outrage for a person promulgating deragatory gender stereotypes.
Wait, it is a woman? Nevermind.
The items he mentions are part of the reason I am trying to get out of IT.
IT workers are getting smaller and smaller salaries, having to compete with H1-Bs and out-of-country workers, have to deal with job scope creep, idiot managers, and expected to give up any semblance of work/life balance just to keep up.
It has gotten to the point where working in IT just isn't worth it because the positions just aren't respected.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Can we get over this whole sexism bullshit already? Who gives a damn if women don't work in IT? If a woman wants to do something in IT, fine. If she doesn't, fine. If you want to look for gender-based discrimination, look elsewhere.
Judging by the women I know personally, these points aren't even part of their criteria for considering careers in IT. You know why most of the women I know don't work in IT? It's simple; they don't find the work interesting or engaging. It's the same reason I'm not a farmer or a journalist. People do the jobs they can do; often what people can do is determined by their natural interests. If women by and large aren't interested in technology, they will not work in IT. It has utterly nothing to do with the global economics of any particular industry.
Does the job pay your bills at an acceptable standard of living?
Are you doing what you are good at?
Are you having fun?
If the answers above are all yes, then who gives a fuck what some researcher thinks.
Odd we don't see many stories about the global shortage in female garbage collectors. Or janitors. And isn't a little bit 90's to go with the whole "Whoah, those powerful women are just too smart to go into computers! Girl powa!". It's not going to get you laid, I promise. Computers are a good field compared to most regardless of declining salaries or anything else.
Women aren't in computers because they tend not to be interested in it. Whether this is socialization or genetics or some mixture is up for debate, and of course there are exceptions but we see the ratio of men to women in computing because men are interested in or gifted in computing at a ratio higher than women.
No, men just not that interested in being nurses, unless they're gay.
Not just that, it works on all levels... Men seem to be more willing to work silly hours for pizza than women. Men are also more inclined to pretty much give up their personal life to go into higher management, whereas women prefer to forego a career in favour of working part-time.
Men and women tend to make different choices; I don't know if it's Nature or Nurture, but smarts or stupidity have very little to do with it.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It’s almost like men and women are... well, different!
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
On those occasions when I've been reviewing resumes for an open job requirement, it's rare for even one in fifty applicants to be female. I don't see anyone trying to keep them out, I just don't see them trying to get in.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
He's absolutely right. Women are too smart for careers in computers. Most intelligent women take a close look at the unrepentantly fucked-up culture that surrounds computing careers, and run like hell.
It's men who are dumb enough to tolerate the aspy-programmer types, the sneering arrogant IT guys, the mailing lists full of flaming personal attacks leveled by closet bullies empowered by semi-anonymity, the phallic-compensating gadget consumerists, constantly "helpful" types who manage to insult while trying to rescue, and the sexually inept who use pinup wallpaper and leer at any woman in eyeshot. Membership in (or at least tolerance of) a repellant boys' club is an almost-mandatory feature of our industry.
Men don't have to be passionate about computers and programming to do well in our field. It's possible to be a day-job geek who never plays video games, doesn't own an iphone, and doesn't read xkcd, yet still thrive in high-tech. They get flamed them for a few newbie questions and they'll just think you're an asshole. But brilliant women who are not passionate about the field are smart enough to tell us all to go fuck ourselves after the first serious flame, because they know nobody should have to put up with that shit.
So yes. Women are in fact generally too smart for careers in computers. He nailed it.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Not this bullshit again. We all know that women can do whatever they want because they are superior to men in every way (except for bad things like starting wars and committing murder, then of course men are superior).
If there are less women in IT than men it is because the women want it that way. I think there were at most 5 women in my entire graduating class that were in the CS program. Most women (and to be fair, most people) just see computers as gadgets and expensive toys and don't really care about how they work on the inside. Again, just being honest here, most men get excited when you ask them about their plasma TV, surround sound, network setup, etc but I've never known any women that could be considered technophiles. I'm sure they exist, it just isn't as common.
Another serious problem I've noticed is that there are not enough women working in construction. Living in Houston, I drive by a lot of construction throughout the city on a daily basis and I have never seen a single woman working at a construction site. Talk about a crisis!
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
...that in the 21st century we'd moved away from this kind of sexist nonsense.
If there aren't as many women in computing ("enough women" is a nonsense term: what's "enough") then it's because women don't want to be in computing.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
The government should work for the good of it's citizens: that *should* be it's sole purpose.
Letting H1-Bs into the country works directly against this, regardless of any (often fraudulent) claim that there is a short-term shortage.
We're supposed to be in a market economy - shortages of skills should result in increasing wages and an increased incentive for employers to train staff. Yet whenever the market begins to move in that direction the government starts shipping in the foreigners: which only benefits the global corporations.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I complain about all of those things. Except one day I was hit by a realization at 4am while trying to get a workstation to function: "Hey, I could be getting paid for this." See a lot of us in IT do it, despite all of our bitching and moaning, because we really do love it. We love computers, we love technology, we love being the go-to-people whenever anything that goes "BEEP!" with flashy lights isn't working quite right. We wish we got more respect, and we wish we were better compensated. But then again, who doesn't? Who ever says, "Man, I just make TOO MUCH money!" I work on call hours, and yes it does suck. However the fact remains that the first thing I do when I get home is sit down at my computer. I'm still up til 2am (or later) working on computers. The only difference between that and being on call is that we don't have the control we normally do. But we're still doing the same work. We do it because we love it, even though we say we hate it. Its just one of those things we love to hate.
If you're going to get scared away by the negative parts, take a hard look at how you spend your time now. If you're working on computers all the time, and you enjoy making them work, fixing them, etc, then don't run away quite so fast. If you're a programmer, the same point stands. I left the comp sci department in college because the professor demanded we be in the lab 80+ hours a week. I thought he was crazy. Thing is, every programmer I've met spends easily 80 hours a week programming. Sometimes more. I see them literally pull 48 hour shifts, stopping only briefly to take catnaps without leaving their chairs. They do it because its their passion and there's nothing else they'd rather be doing. Its not like they're hourly. The prof was just weeding out the people who weren't really cut out for it, and he saved me a lot of time, energy, and frustration. Hell, maybe a trip to the psych ward too. It comes down to this: if its what you love, you learn to take the bad along with the good. Don't let other people warp your perspective.
Women act more based on emotions and feelings than guys do, whereas guys will act on logic and black & white facts
Nope.
I used to think this 40 years ago, which is about when I started my IT career (with 8 years off to teach physics.)
My observation is that in general, men are much much more likely to get emotional in a business setting when there are differences of opinion. The way that they express emotion, from raised voices, blustering, filibustering to even stomping out of the room are somehow found to be socially acceptable. Men are the first to start emoting and are often the only ones. I've found that it is quite rare for a female to express emotion while in a business/professional setting and usually only after extreme provocation. On the other hand, it's almost a matter of course for men, especially those in or seeking to be management.
Is there anyone who is not aware that that raising your voice, shaking your head, pointing fingers, crossing arms etc are expressions of emotional behaviors?
Many women are too smart to bother working, that is what men are for. The world works in such a way that women do not need to work, provided they are attractive to enough males. Women are taught this from an early age - hence why women mature socially years earlier than men (on average). Easily 50% of women are "kept" in this way, unless they choose to work or are really ugly or have other deficiencies according to men. From age 18 - 33 or so, women have tremendous power over men based on appearance alone.
OTOH, males are trained from an early age that if you want a woman (and all that entails), you need to have a high paying job, power or both. The better the job, the better the woman you will likely attract. Better can mean all sorts of things - family, status, beauty, smarter, fertile, cute, famous, etc. There's almost zero chance of a man being "kept" although I'll keep trying.
In a male-dominated world, rage and petulance are not considered emotions. That's why men are "less emotional" than women.
Nope. Nice try though.
Click on the link that the average of 77k is based off of. It is coming from one job, that is that of a "SUPERINTENDENT Nassau County Coop Building." It just happened to have the words "garbage" and "one 'man' job" in the description.
http://www.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=2865f82583fa2637
The problem with people in IT is that they don't know how to say NO.
I do know how, and that has ensured a long career while having a fulfilling life outside work.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"it's just saying a male dominated environment turns off women"
That would have been the situation with most jobs during most of human history.
It is the typical "blame the victim" mentality, putting the onus of improvement on the oppressed part rather than the oppressor. Truly despicable frankly.
Any men worth the name should be doing soul searching instead of trying to find excuses for the unacceptable low amount of women in certain careers.
.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No one is going to go out of their way to make women feel all warm and cozy.
Noone does it for men either. Men generally treat each other like crap, and all men get ignored, talked over, dismissed etc. until they prove themselves. Women often mistake 'equal treatment' for sexism.
To return to the topic, my own personal opinion is that the amount of women in computer science has more to do with cultural reasons than biological ones. My undergraduate mathematics course has a gender ratio of about 50/50, and indeed has for several years. Given that computer science is mathematics, I'm then inclined to believe that there are others factors than biology at play.
I think there are two separate and very distinct questions here:
1. Are women avoiding CS solely (or primarily) for cultural reasons ("conditioning")?
2. Is it something that actually needs fixing?
My answer to #1 would be "yes". My answer to #2 is "not by itself". To expand, any discrimination on any factor in learning and employment should definitely be rooted out, and discriminating on gender is no exception. But voluntary choice (even under "conditioning" by the culture we're all raised in) should be respected. If the latter yields superficially non-politically-correct results, then so be it.
The fact is, more young boys than girls will treat any kind of toy or stick or whatever they can find as a weapon, and more young girls than boys will treat any kind of toy or stick or whatever they can find as a doll, and I think most people who are parents and truly think about it realize that this happened at an extremely young age for their kids. If there is a "nurture" side to how this works, it is exerted very early and in a round-about way.
I don't know how to do paragraphs, so I'll keep this short. Do you think women might fight 'acting' emotional in the business setting to avoid men thinking of them as 'typical' emotional women? Honest question, as a young (21)female in another male-dominated industry (logistics), I've seen a bit of boardroom meetings and agree with your assessment, women tend to be more 'cool' as opposed to the somewhat 'arrogant' males. Note, yes, personal anecdote, this is a generalisation blah blah blah.
Don't kid yourself - that has nothing, or at least very little, to do with being a woman. Techies do that to each other - whether you're a man or a woman, it's how you're treated. Maybe it's because it's male-dominated, but it applies to everyone. Why should I care what someone thinks, unless they've convinced (or forced) me to respect them?
I think it's similar with men in most every field. Guys don't tend to play games, or screw around, with people they don't respect. Respect is something to be earned, and not granted by default - short of basic human respect. Guys tend to take no heed of people they don't respect.
Why should it be any different? If anyone - regardless of gender - wants anyone to care about their opinion, why shouldn't they need to earn the respect of their audience?
In my experience, women are less bothered by the idea of maneuvering through the minefield of everybody's concerns and opinions. Frankly, the thought sickens me and most male acquaintances - so we limit our pool of "everybody" to the people who we respect.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
And as a woman in a computer discipline, I can say:
1) There can be some vicious treatment sometimes, but it's not terribly often. Most of it is a immature junior-high remark, or getting excluded from a group. I have yet to encounter anything physically threatening, though (unlike my last job, which wasn't computing related). I can tell there are some people who don't know how to react to my presence, or get embarrassed if they technically slip on a PC issue. If the intent is well-meant, or if they're generally polite, I don't take offence.
2) It's up to me to deal with it. In general, acting like a professional, keeping your cool, and politely letting people know where your boundaries are goes a long way. Picking your fights helps too - don't get uppity at the smallest thing - everyone, male or female, has pinches at their workplace. Nasty stuff like a company that hires you to do tech work and instead makes you their coffee bitch gets an immediate vote of new job hunting and my feet out the door ASAP. Actually, something like that happened to a coworker, and it was a big factor to me leaving... I'm not about to argue with several members of an old boys' club. What's the point, for any of us, if I stay there?
The summary basically is: crap happens, deal with it. Get a backbone, treat yourself with self-worth, quit acting like a victim, and you won't be as one.
(My favorite incident was a guy who told me I shouldn't go back to school because it would be difficult, and I was approaching 30, so I had better have children while I can because all women want children when they're around 30, and I'll regret it if I don't. This coming from a fat, balding, divorced, childless middle-aged guy. This could have "scarred me for life", but instead I decide to spend time with people other than him. Problem solved. n.b. - Taking a MCSE & CCNA college program starting in January. I guess I had better drop out now, because of some nasty things four people have said to me in the last few years.)
I admit, my data is a little stale - I graduated HS/College in 95/99.
I work at a defense contractor. There's a little bit of sexism that seems to be primarily from older former military types, where I think it's less that I'm a female programmer than I'm a female programmer working on artillery software. And the one time that I overheard a co-worker who got passed over for promotion in favor of me comment that to get his promotion he would have to change his gender.
In college, I was in the first class of women that they admitted. (It was an all engineering and science university.) To placate people, they accepted additional students equal to the number of women so that no one would whine that they could have gotten in, if it weren't for those girls. The most sexism I had to put up with was actually from my Psych prof, of all people. Other than that, I think the divide was more between the merely-geeky-enough-to-go-there and the ubergeek types. Anyway, they opened up their pool of applicants and the average GPA went up quite a bit.
I was very lucky; we had conversations about this in college, given our environment. I knew someone who's own father didn't want her to go to college because "you'll just get married and waste all that learning". We all had to deal with teasing in high school, etc, but it's difficult to tell if it's the same as what other geeks went through, or worse for women. Personal experiences are difficult to compare.
What do you expect? A Harvard president says what you did, more or less, and because he has a penis, he's forced to resign. There's no way to have an honest debate on the subject because of the feminist extremists who crucify anyone that suggests a biological basis. You want women in computers, fine: it's a bad idea with jobs going overseas, but if your plan is thus, you have to start a whole lot earlier.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"