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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.
One calm, level headed discussion about the disparity of genders in the world of computer science where everyone agrees on the solution with no emotions, personal anecdotes, gender studies, centuries of suffrage, accusations, cherry picked statistics, flamebait quotes from message boards, reverse sexism or chauvinistic undertones trumpeted.
Yep, this one sounds like it might be even as tame as your average climategate discussion.
My work here is dung.
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.
I've been taking my 18 year old to tour colleges as he will be pursuing chemical engineering. Engineering starting salaries across the board (chemical, civil, mechanical, and electrical) are between $50 and $70k.
The solution for many comp sci students is to double major comp sci with one of the above "demand" areas, pass the professional engineering exam, and then the money issue is a non issue. Computer skills are now part and parcel of every engineering profession, so getting paid well to do what you love (if you love computers) should not be difficult.
The challenge for people hell-bent on starting their careers as programmers (as opposed to computer engineers) seems to be that starting programmers are not worth as much.
[By the way, the number of girls on his engineering tours seem to be between 10% and 20%. In other words, nothing there is changing. My son's solution to the ratio issue is to attend a large university where there are more female students overall.]
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
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.
As a 49 yo grandmother, feminist, and C programmer for 20+ years I feel highly qualified to comment on this. The answer is that in my experience merit alone has been the only factor.
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.
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.
I am a girl. Being on call all day and all night / programming until mentally exhausted / etc. is not something I am willing to do. So yeah, I'm going into teaching. EVEN THOUGH I AM A GEEK. Thanks for telling me what the working conditions were in the field, Slashdot - you made the decision that much simpler.
Note: I was 13 when I wrote most of this. Take with several grains of salt.
I think you'd be surprised at the amount of tail male nurses pull.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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."
Programmer 84k http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=programmer&l1=new+york
Garbage man 77k http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=garbage+man&l1=new+york
But the garbage man gets overtime and probably union benefits.
>better social prestige.
Only here.
No, men just not that interested in being nurses, unless they're gay.
bullshit.
I've got a lot of family members who work various positions in local hospitals, and my sister just went through a medical lab assistant course, and agrees with what I'm saying here.
Saying that men aren't interested is BS, because they're high paying jobs and you spend every class surrounded by ladies. it sounds like a great scam. But when you get there, everyone thinks you're 'just precious' and you end up being the damn bouncer and guy who picks up heavy things in an emergency room, which isn't exactly a job with good promotion potential.
There are a lot of guys who want a stable well paying job with fairly low risk and nice stat holidays. A lot more of them would be getting into the field if there wasn't such a social stigma.
Just don't piss her off Mr Bobbit.
Fortunately their is a comment on the blog that has some interesting insight...
http://www.itworld.com/tictacns
Not enough Women in Tech
I believe this may be the article that MSNBC was referring to:
http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/article.asp?articleID=54341
"It was brought to my attention in an ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) newsletter.
My opinion is that Tech is a tool, a means to get from point A to point B, like a car. I think women want to be the travelers, using Tech to achieve their goals and using the auto industry analogy, they generally do not want to be the mechanics. When we hear about tech, we usually hear about the techies/mechanics, we do not hear about the many other skills that the tech industry requires to thrive and people tend to not pursue things they are not aware of."
That.
Prior to the tech inovations of computers and the internet, we had cars and trains as the feets of an earlier generation where the people who were most into building and working on hotrods were men, but many mechanics have ladies who loved their vets and mustangs. People who have fascination with trains have mostly seemed to come from men as well, though many woman use them as a means of transportation and wouldn't think twice about hopping on a trolly, light rail or subway, though they don't care about how it works, just that it does. To some degree this affects many sciences...
Perhaps this says somethign more about differences between men and women...
Ave Molech Setting
Too many misters, Not enough sisters
Too much time on, too many hands
Not enough ladies, too many mans
Karma: Non-Heinous
Right. That's why I've caught VP's having meetings in men's rooms, to avoid the presence of female members of staff, and why the engineer in my workgroup who got the sex change was _amazed_ at the number of times "she" was both hit on, and technologically ignored, after her transformation.
No, I wouldn't find that surprising at all. After all, women in computing certainly have a large selection of men to choose from (if that's their gender of preference). Of course, some will say it's quantity over quality...
Or as the saying goes... the odds are good but the goods are odd :)
Actually from what I've seen, it's the rigor of the academic program that tends to drive away female students (i.e. they're not capable in either math/logic, or programming, or both). And I'm saying this as a female computer science undergraduate observing my fellow peers. I'm not in it for the money; I'm in this field because (a) I like computer science and (b) I'm good at it.
Being driven away from a field purely because of the fact that it's "too geeky" is too generic of an excuse to explain this disparity. For all we know, this disparity occurs for the same reason that nursing has a similar but opposite gender mismatch (as mentioned by countless commentors above me). I am sure personal background and skills have a lot of say in this (both parents were in engineering programs).
I have known way too many girls who display this superiority complex yet have absolutely no idea what they are doing.
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
More like people should stop trying to make the whole world average. If a particular field has more men in it, who cares?
This just in, there are more female babysitters than males. Oh no, we have a babysitter gender gap!
Why does everything on the planet have to be "fair" in a way that's really not fair at all because it's actually just a contrived view of how "things should be" in some fantasy? And a better question, when are going to stand up to such nonsense and reject the whole premise that the world should be a statistical average reflecting a cross-section of all society?
And that's exactly it. Women dont WANT to go into the field, because they dont generally LIKE it.
It's the feminists who are making excuses. On the other hand, I think the majority of women, dont give a damn there are less women "in computing".
and those who do, get a job in the field. Simple, but "un-politically correct".
Oh, the horror.
"Must.. deploy... PC.. mind-reajustment.. field..."
Yes, there are some trashy insensitive guys in CS. but there are in EVERY OTHER field too!
So just get over the fact that there are more guys in computing than women. and go complain about something else. Like how maybe elementary school education is dominated by women.
yes, the pay is poor. But if anyone thinks making the pay equal to the average CS job, would magically even out the numbers.. they're nuts.
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?
How often does this have to be said? Yes, there are more men than women in IT. Why is that? Um, because?
Disclaimer - I'm a woman and I've worked in the IT field for almost 20 years.
Yes, I've found that in general IT is a boy's club. I'm used to being the only woman in the group. And I'm used to the crap that I have to put up with being the only woman. I've been ignored, talked over, dismissed (well, they tried that), and generally excluded. It happens. Grow a pair.
No one is going to go out of their way to make women feel all warm and cozy. So you can't use traditional female tactics to carve out your place. And unfortunately that's what most women fall back on when faced with a difficult situation.
My way of making things tolerable is to take my place on the totem pole relatively early on. I watch the personalities and, sad to say, make the weakest one my bitch. Once I do that then I'm on my way to acceptance. It's how they play, it's how I have to play. YMMV
I've mentored women in IT and it isn't pretty. But if they learn a few tricks they can at least stay long enough to find out if they like the work and can work in the environment.
Indeed. You want to look at the last place institutional discrimination is tolerated by society, go ask a man in a 'working with young children' profession.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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.
Right. That's why I've caught VP's having meetings in men's rooms,
And the VPs at my company have meetings in the women's room. Ok, so you're VPs are jackasses, learn to deal. Some people are douche bags, that doesn't mean the entire world is out to keep women from IT jobs. There were 6 women in my electrical engineering class, out of 35 total. None of the guys in class made fun of them any more or less than anyone else. Everyone got railed on for setting of the fire alarm, everyone got applause for finishing that damned transistor radio. What it seems like is that some people are too afraid to try and break through the "societal walls" that say they shouldn't be in certain occupations. Get over what everyone else thinks about you and just do what you want. And guess what, if more men want to do IT than women that's not societies fault, it's just the way it is.
And before you spout off about how men don't have to deal with this, try being a man and telling your boss that you need to take a month off because you're having a child. Maybe it takes some guts, but if you go in and tell them your taking the month off (and not asking for it) then you'll probably get it. And who knows, people might respect you more for making your own decisions.
The government is hardly "shipping in the foreigners". Their normal involvement consists of forcibly keeping said foreigners out, which works directly against the market economy by maintaining artificially high prices for labor. On occasion, when they deign to notice a shortage of certain skills, they reduce their interference in the market economy and graciously permit a few more well-qualified foreigners to immigrate.
I'd be the first to admit that their policy as a whole favors certain influential individuals—e.g. shareholders of large corporations—over others, but the solution to that inequality consistent with our market economy is not to further block immigration by refusing H1-Bs, but rather to remove the requirement for H1-Bs entirely, permitting free and open immigration. Naturally this would require that the current welfare system to be significantly reduced in scope, if not eliminated entirely; otherwise the existing citizens would be forced to subsidize the new immigrants' "benefits", a most unjust circumstance. Any nation with open borders, as ours was intended to be, must insist that individuals pay their own way (not counting private, voluntary support, e.g. charity).
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
When I graduated CS, 75% of the students graduating were male. The CS program has all kinds of incentives, grants, scholarships, programs, and other things to try and get more female students. They consider it a "problem" that needs fixing that its slanted.
Right in front of me was the nursing graduates. 97% female. They have no such programs for males, and nobody considers this a "problem". They consider it a choice of men to not go into nursing.
Oddly, nobody questions that, while people constantly question women in CS. Go around ask them. I work with lots of women all the time, none of them want to be programmers. They're doing what they actually want to do, which is something else.
This isn't a real problem. This is stats not lining up in a way some people think they should, so they create a problem out of it.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
That's no joke. My church was having a father's weekend camp-out, and they asked me if I could attend to help take care of some of the children of single moms. I like to work with children so of course I went. While we were there someone told my pastor that they were concerned that I might be a pedophile for no other reason than the simple fact that I was there. And I was there with dozens of other fathers. Seriously? Unbelievable.
People really need to read up on sexual abuse, (and other forms of child abuse) because it really is a serious problem. But unfounded paranoia about men is not the solution to the problem. If you are are curious about what can be done to prevent abuse, the BSA has some good guidelines (http://olc.scouting.org/info/ypt.html). The only thing I have a problem with is their instructions to contact responsible individuals at the BSA before contacting child protective services. That is obviously intended primarily to maintain a clean image for the BSA, and it's disgraceful that they've suggested/recommended it.
It's the feminists who are making excuses
I'm not sure I agree with your whole post, but I have to give you props for this quote here. I'm a women in computer engineering and honestly, the place I feel the most uncomfortable is around so-called feminists. In university I avoided the women's center like the plague because every time I went in there with my eng books or wearing an engineering sweater or anything I always got the LOOK and a lecture about how I was just as bad as all the rest of those engineers and why are our songs so disgusting and blah blah blah.
There's sort of a delicious irony about someone claiming they are this huge feminist and then going into women's studies, the MOST un-evenly gender balanced and stereotypically female subject available and then having the gall to give me shit for singing stupid songs and drinking too much beer. You want to fix the gender balance in computer engineering? Well, the computer is right over there, stop doing stupid sociology studies and learn to code.
...no two people are not on fire.
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.
Females tend to help each other to feel good.
Go ahead and take this with a grain of salt, since this is only one person's experience.
Here is the timeline of my experience in basic training in the air force (not too long ago):
-Put your bag down! Pick your bag up! (equal response)
-Goddammit you need ta march with yer feet hitting the same beat HUP TWO TREE FOR (women win by miles)
-You need ta help your bunkmate get 'is SHIT TOGETHER! (men win by a landslide, as the sister flight is already getting into micropolitics)
-I want your shirts aligned to the micrometer and I want your marching to be in step to the yottasecond! (by this time, the women are falling into factions)
-Graduation is tomorrow, don't f*&^ing embarrass me! (and by now, the women have split into camps while the men have unified)
I agree with what you said up until about 3 weeks into a project. After that, the men catch up on the unified front level and the women fall behind because of the clique thing. I'm not going to say that one side is better since both genders have their strengths, but ask any drill instructor: Women hate each other by the end of boot, and men create life-long bonds. That's generalization but one that fits 90%+ of the people I've known.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Ditto what Bolthole said. There are female soldiers, sailors, police, electricians, you name it. A programmer has the advantage that they can mostly remain anonymous, if they don't want their bodies and/or personalities put on public display. Anything a man can do, a woman can do, with VERY few exceptions, and often enough, better. That is, IF they just decide to do it.
Truck driving, for instance. It's a tough job, it takes you into some dangerous places, and it is dangerous in and of itself. Women have been driving for YEARS - and fleet controllers will readily tell you that they LIKE women drivers. Their equipment requires much less maintenance than male drivers, and they tend to get into fewer accidents.
Female cops have an advantage over their male counterparts. I got into an altercation in Chicago years ago. This lady cop was trying to calm me down, and put her hand on my upper arm, and chatted away. Some DUDE putting his hands on me would have made me more defensive - but when SHE did that, I started realizing how attractive she was, and LISTENED to her. Sexist? Yeah - but it works, and she knew how to make it work.
Ehhh. Whatever a person wants to do, they just need to get off their ass, and DO IT!!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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.
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.)