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Women Dropping Out of IT
Women's eNews has an interesting look at women in tech, with numbers showing that women are bailing out of the IT field at a rapid pace. "Technology jobs are predicted to grow at a faster rate than all other jobs in the professional sector, up to 22% over the next decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compensation is also good. In 2008, women in tech made an average salary of $70,370. ... But women's stake in that rosy outlook is questionable. For starters, men's pay during the same time period was $80,357. A study by the National Center for Women and Information Technology ... also finds that women are leaving computer careers in staggering numbers. 'Fifty-six percent of women in technology companies leave their organizations at the mid-level point, 10-20 years in their careers,' said Catherine Ashcraft, the senior research scientist who authored the report. In 2008, women held only 25% of all professional IT-related jobs, down from 36% in 1991, according to the group's report, 'Women in IT: The Facts.'"
They're smarter than the men.
Since the women leaving the IT field are bringing down the percentage of women in the IT field, of which there have been many stories on about on Slashdot saying this must increase, they're working against the raising of women in the IT field. Therefore, they must be sexist.
In 2008, women in tech made an average salary of $70,370...men's pay during the same time period was $80,357....
Fifty-six percent of women in technology companies leave their organizations at the mid-level point, 10-20 years in their careers
I couldn't tell, I mean I was covered in women when I started this field, and now its a sausage fest.
Could it possibly be that women drop out of these jobs 10-20 years into their careers to have children? Could this also explain the difference in "average" salary if their careers have a break or work shorter weeks?
also a dumping ground for narcissistic assholes apparently.
we've heard this busslhit before and nobodys buying any of it.
The terms are being used interchangeably here. The bloom is off the rose on IT careers, certainly (in the US, at least), and not just for women. And the number/type of pure IT careers is imploding, I'm sure (once upon a time there were "webmasters" who were counted as IT guys). But capital "T" Technology as a whole? The highly technical careers that use computers and software as tools? I'm not convinced.
Fewer woman programmers and server room jockeys, OK. But fewer woman technology workers and technicians? Not so sure. Sounds like stats being massaged to prove a point for somebody...
Besides there is a GREAT reason why the women make 70k while the men make 80k. Men don't take maternity leave and men don't take sick leave because their kids have the sniffles. Add up the costs for all the extra leave women take and all the work that they don't get done when on leave and it can easily explain the pay difference. No discussion about the gender difference of pay rates is honest without considering things like maternity leave. I really don't care if that offends anyone, it is simply fact and if the truth offends you then you have problems you cannot blame on me.
By "aspy losers" do you refer to Asperger's syndrome? I haven't seen very much of this in IT. I don't think that everyone who lacks social skills has some kind of medical disease and even if I did, I am not qualified to diagnose it as I am not a doctor. It may be a lot more common among programmers than among sysadmins and front-line support folks who must deal with others on a regular basis.
I will say I am rather skilled in IT myself yet do not work in the field. My friends have asked me why, as though they picture some big-time salary and prestige like what any other profession requiring that much specialized knowledge would receive. I explained to them it is nothing like that, you are treated more like the janitor of the computer systems and are likely to be the whipping boy when things beyond your control go wrong. Example, the execs want to purchase a system but you advise against it because that system is known for frequent crashes. They purchase it anyway and now it's your fault that they have problems when they went against your advice. All authority structures are full of this kind of blatant hypocrisy. What's different about IT is that you are likely to get the blame no matter what, possibly because you are seen as an expense and not as a bread-winner like the sales team.
because of the way we are treated in general.
Men talk over us or around us.
If I'm speaking most men will just interrupt and talk right over as if I'm not even in the room.
And if I'm competent, which I am, I'm seen as a threat and treated as "the enemy"..
The pay is lower and we have to put more nonsense than we should.
Bottom line: we are treated with disrespect and disdain. In general. It's the old "Women should be seen but not heard" problem.
I dropped out of the IT world a few years ago because of the afore mentioned reasons.
A common theme with woman sysadmin that have left the field is that they are tired of the environment. Tired of the macho attitudes. Tired of the put-downs. Tired of having to prove that they are tough enough to be part of the group.
Not quite sexual harassment, but alpha geek males who have something to prove and not enough social skills.
And it is not that they can't compete in this environment. It is more that they get tired of same old sh*t over and over again. They move out of the field into a more supportive environment.
I wish us guys would get our heads out of our backsides. I enjoy working with women. They bring a gentler feel to the group. But I am sure I will get flamed saying that IT is not sexist, that there is no problem and women need to get a thicker skin. And that my friends is exactly the problem.
... and humorless cuntwads, or so it would seem.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I tire of articles that insidiously imply that lack of equality must be due to irrational discrimination. I guess the authors haven't figured out that the white straight male isn't the only societal cross-section that can self-select a career. ..or maybe they're just blowhard leftwingers with sand in their vaginas/manginas. If so, they can join their rightwing blowhards in the tenth level.
Stevie Wonder's never seen very many guys with white sticks.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Thing is I'm not sure if it would be funny or insightful :D
Quantum Physics a.k.a. sub-molecular statistics
Where?
Each place I've worked at in the last ten years might as well have been in Saudi Arabia.
I never thought that I would live to see the Platonic ideal of horseshit, but here it is.
Every few months we are hearing this: women are not going to IT, there are fewer women than men in IT, women are moving out of IT etc.etc.etc., and this probably applies to engineering just as well, though I am not sure.
OK, can we have all the women drop out of IT already so that we can switch the stories to something more positive, like: "Another Woman Joined an IT Shop This Month!"
It's just depressing to hear the same thing over and over, obviously we have overabundance of wiener in this profession and it's not going to change, that's how things are, this is a lonely profession, often self-absorbed, requires sacrifice of many things in life for sure, like being a totally normal sociable person. In TFA it says that women are getting 'special treatment' - getting tasks that are impossible to solve, that often their roles are diminished to that of a secretary during a meeting, whatever.
Seriously, I haven't seen this kind of treatment of women in any of the shops I worked in, but I am not one so maybe it was happening and I just didn't notice it, beats me. It says that a women with 10 to 20 years of experience is getting a salary that is about 11% smaller of a comparable male worker, again, who knows, we don't normally share our salary data among each other, right?
Maybe it is time for women to start their own women oriented IT shops and just go that way.
You can't handle the truth.
After the dot com era ended and massive offshoring of jobs to India became commonplace, the bloom was off on IT as a career. People don't believe the recent spate of magazine pieces proclaiming IT as one of the hot fields to get into... maybe it looks good today (relatively speaking), but things change quickly.
Now that the bloom is off, the old gender related differences reassert themselves. As a generalization, women like working with people, whereas men have more appreciation or tolerance with working with machines and systems. A lot of the coordinator and project manager type roles that woman would feel more comfortable in, have been casualties of the general belt tightening over the last 10 years.
And BTW, women appreciate working in office environments were people dress nicely, not with stuff pulled off the rack from Old Navy and the Gap.
I hate women in the workplace >_>
Too much drama, too many workplace affairs, then they try to file suit against me for staring at the cleavage through their low cut tops. Freaking trolls.
Getting the insulation off of cat 5? Seems like a narrow career.
Next time, RTFA. The figure is specifically adjusted for "comparable experience", just to factor out time off for maternity leave and childcare. Paying women less for comparable experience is pure sexism.
But there's a nice unexamined assumption in your post: Why the fuck aren't the men taking parental leave or caring for the children?
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I call BS. I'm a divorced/remarried male and I have almost equal time with my kids fortunately. I do take off when they have sniffles. I did it when I was still with my first wife...way more than she did(when you consider her time off was not with the kids and a whole other story). I encourage my employees to take time when they need it for family. It makes for a more loyal employee generally. I also encourage working from home. It's a great resource to rely on when some application needs a mod by COB on the day they are off.
Maybe it's just my experience, but I have gathered that a higher percentage of women seem to ignore objective data if their "intuition" suggests otherwise. Fewer women have a "scientific method" approach to problem solving, and instead prefer a heuristic method (existential ideas about the world aside), or even "trial and error".*
Fields like IT, engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, etc require a more objective and rational approach to solving for unknowns. Statistically, this problem-solving method appears to be a field where women are lacking.
How does this make sense with the rest of the news?
There was just an article in The Atlantic called "The End Of Men" about how fewer men and more women are going for higher education as well as getting the better paying jobs?
What is the deal with the article saying that IT jobs and good paying ones are growing? For years on IT sites anxiety producing stories of outsourcing are standard fare
Define "comparable experience". There is a vast difference in talent and ability between people who work in IT, and none of that can be reflected in any objective metrics.
What are women?
You can't handle the truth.
70000 dollars? 80? I can hardly get a job for 35000. I'm certified and experienced, have good references and a well written resume. am I the only one who thinks these numbers are artificially inflated?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Time spent on the job at the same tasks. It doesn't matter if X and Y are vastly different productively at an individual level, if you have a sufficient sample size.
Unless you're sure that women are, on average, less productive than men in IT.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
This is a simple biological fact: women have babies. Due to this, women are far more likely to drop out of their careers than are men. They are not forced to do so, they choose to. This is the cause (and the only cause) of the alleged wage disparity. In short, this article is absolutely meaningless.
Do they want us to teach women geek culture? Do they want to teach geeks how to dress well and play football? Do they want to give a special scholarship to women that get into IT? An scholarship that poor women need more and will use in a career that they like?
Other relevant facts: Women are also more likely to work part-time; a type of position that pays less. They're also more likely to leave work for raising children.
Contrary to popular belief, your own personal 'musk' actually repels women.
The number of female IT professionals in the UK is falling, according to the British Computer Society, despite similar or superior academic scores and recruitment in the sector as a whole having risen in the same timeframe. The lack of flexibility offered by employers is blamed.
"It's a free market world," said Ubuntu Linux developer Hiram Nerdboy. "It's about competence and getting the job done. Working sixteen hours a day on a project you really love is par for the course. That we're all eighteen to twenty-five is from the accelerated Internet-based learning of the new generation, not exploitation of young workers who don't know any better."
Over a third of women in IT had complained of sexism up to sexual harassment at work. "It's women who just don't have social skills," said Nerdboy. "They object to the guys freely choosing to all go down the strip club after work. They're just not team players."
Open source projects have worse figures than industry, with male to female ratios approaching fifty-to-one. Many women cite gross sexism on mailing lists and IRC. "In my experience, women just don't have a working sense of humour and can't take a joke. My girlfriend thought it was funny! Even leaving helpful comments on their blogs didn't work. 'Political correctness' is no exaggeration. Anyway, I met my girlfriend online!"
"...," said his girlfriend, RealDoll Ada.
"And it's not like you can get the applicants," added Nerdboy. "We can hardly get any girls to apply for a job here. They're obviously naturally not good enough geeks. It must be evolutionary. We need more pink computers."
Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth explained that "this stuff is difficult to explain to girls" and thought they'd have gotten the hint when he called 8.04 "Hairy Hardon." "Worrying about sexism in open source just detracts from the battle for Linux. So we've put the tits back into the default desktop. And arses."
Crime-fighting geek Shuttleworth, who dresses as a billiionaire playboy by night, swore that plenty of women liked him lots and that he obviously wasn't unable to get laid or anything, having gotten seriously rich in the dot-com era, not to mention having gone into space. "Chicks dig that stuff. Trust me, I've met lots of girls. More than five!"
Canonical Community Manager Jono Bacon echoed this sentiment on his blog. "We just don't understand how come women are 15% of all computer programmers but only 1% of open source programmers. It must be a bit complicated for them. That's why I've written this spontaneous blog post, completely unrelated to anything my boss may or may not have said, on all the fantastically talented women in free software, even if none of them seem to work much on Ubuntu any more. Also, I'm absolutely confident that saying I'm in a computer geek heavy metal band will get me lots of chicks too, even if their pretty little heads can't understand Linux."
A special women's edition of Ubuntu 10.10 will be released on a bright pink CD. "It doubles as a makeup mirror!" said Shuttleworth.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
There's a lot of jobs on the coasts, where costs are higher and annual wages compensate for this.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Funnily enough, I'm just reading super-freakonimcs and the authors mentioned a few things about the general male-female wage gap, which confirmed things in my personal experience.
All the research done shows women are are more likely to leave the workforce earlier than men or downshift in thier careers. Even the summary says that.
Basically, most of the factors that affect the pay gap are things done by choice.
On a personal level even a small amount observation will show that most women don't make as much money as men becuase they really don't want to.
When any of my male acquaintances are looking for a job thier first question is always "How can I get a job that pays more money."
With my female acquaintances when they are looking for a job the first comment is almost always "I want to know if i will like it there."
Men value money more on average while women value work environment and quality. Men are more likely to ask for a raise than women. And men are more likely to quit becuase they didn't get the raise while women are more likely to quit becuase they don't like the environment.
All this naturally leads to the conclusion that men will make more money than women but women will enjoy thier jobs more than men.
Can any of you say this isn't true in your own personal experience?
Quantum Physics a.k.a. sub-molecular statistics
... is what I learned from democrats:
This is clearly sexual discrimination with no need to probe into why there are differences. We must immediately pass a low mandating a $10k raise for all females in IT, spend $500M overhauling universities to make computer science more appealing, and change entrance standards to require 70% of all students to be female.
Then, at last, we'll have eliminated sexism!
I never thought that I would live to see the Platonic ideal of horseshit, but here it is.
I know you are a woman because you are bitching about this instead of disputing it and showing why your viewpoint makes more sense. You want to change minds and be respected, try articulating your views.
Agreed. I'm billing $18/hour for 30-50 hours a week.
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.
In a 20 year career as a software developer:
1. I haven't met any programmers suffering from Asperger's Syndrom (I assume this is what "aspy" means, correct me if I'm wrong)
2. I haven't known any "sneering arrogant IT guys". The IT guys I've met have been normal, helpful human beings.
3. I have seen some harsh emails, but not often and nothing like the venom you describe
4. I can't recall any "phallic compensation gadget consumerists", but perhaps I'm not looking hard enough...
5. I haven't met any "constantly helpful types who insult while trying to rescue"
6. I have seen some teenage male type usage of naked women pictures, but that's been quite rare. Do you think that teenage male types only exist in the tech industry?
Do you think that "boys clubs" are more prevalent in the tech industry than other industries? The problems that you cite probably exist in most companies to one degree or another.
I didn't RTFA but doesn't "comparable experience" generally refer to what one has done, like job history and edushmashion, and not what one is currently doing...?
That's just the lie they repeat for our benefit, it doesn't matter to doctors if you live or die (malpractice insurance), and they don't care (not emotionally invested) because they couldn't do the job if they cared
Yes, it does. The point of the comparison is that, for X and Y, if they have the same schooling and the same number of years at the same job (and controlling for other factors like geography), you'd expect them to receive approximately the same compensation. But when you break it out between men and women, you find that women with comparable experience get paid about 12% less than men.
Individual comparisons can vary widely, but with a statistically sound sample size, you can reliably distinguish between factors like geography or gender.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
The main reason for this might be that a lot of IT seem to be specializing their people on narrow professions. There's less need for women, who are excellent multitaskers.
Jeeze. I don't compare salaries with my coworkers so I have no idea what they're making. I look for a good job that I'll enjoy and salary that provides adequate compensation. I've had the chance to work at $70,000 jobs and turned them down. Back in 2004 I was making lower 6 figures in the DC area. I bailed on the hectic area and work environment even though I liked the challenge. We moved to the midwest and had to take a cut in pay because the cost of living is lower. Life's much better now and while it took a few years, I'm back in 6 figures again. But not by taking a $70k job. I thought I deserved more than that so declined the offer and waited in the hell that is IBM for another year and got the much higher paying job that's a bicycle ride from home.
You're responsible for your salary. Perhaps applicants aren't understanding what they're worth on the job market. Maybe they're trying to get in the door in order to get out of a toxic company and undervaluing their abilities.
How's the salary compared in different job markets? How about between races? Is an African American generally making less than Caucasians? Hell, are Indians in the US making less than Caucasians? How about age? Is there a breakdown between the ages with similar experience?
When I applied to my current job, the salary was advertised at a certain number. But before making the job offer, HR asked if I would take $3,000 less. Because of IBM and the salary was closer to what I wanted, I went ahead and accepted even though it was similar to what I was getting at IBM. So if HR made that suggestion to me, I'm sure they'd make the same suggestion to other applicants. And if two applications are equally qualified but one will take $3,000 less, then what are the chances the offer will be made to one who'll accept less? With less women in IT, there's less of a chance of one going the same job as a man. If you're taking less then yea, on average one group of people will make less than another.
As to the rest of the article, as an IT professional with 30 years of experience, I honestly don't recall any woman in a sysadmin type position being disrespected in that manner. Anecdotal of course as it's just my experience and IT is a pretty broad field.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
And that isn't a sexist comment. I've seen quite a few women work 5-10 years in IT, get to about age 30 and then start having kids, after which point they leave to become a stay at home mom or scale back to part time hours. And of the women that do stay full time after having a few kids, they tend to really relegate computers to something they do no more than eight hours a day, and then that's it. Based on my observations (and this may be a stereotype, but I think it's true), the cause of this is that their husbands do WAY less of the childrearing work than the women. So they don't have the time to put in extra hours studying for certifications or trying to gte extra education. Obviously, that's not the case with every woman, but I've seen it happen a lot.
I think these factors are probably pretty good explanations for the statistics we all see. The lower pay on average is probably because the women are younger and less experienced on average as a work force (since a lot of women do leave to be moms instead of conituing on at about age 30), and they are more likely to work part time, which also reduces pay. And with less time available to study, they may be less likely to advance into the higher paying jobs, further increasing the salary gap. I don't think there's any blatant discrimination going on... I just think it's the reality of which gender is most affected by children during the mid-career period.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Men traditionally dominate fields of math, science, and engineering.
This isn't really new.
Why? Is it nature or nurture? Are Womens brains wired to be less logical? Or is it that math isn't pushed as much as reading?
Those are the core questions. Women failing at IT is a symptom.
When studying something like this, there's well-developed statistical methods for controlling for all the disparate factors, like geography and gender and relative sample participation and such. Reporting that women make less than men on average comes after controlling for all the variety of factors and ensuring a sufficient sample size for statistical validity. In other words, when they report "women make less than men", it's after factoring out all the things you mention.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I hired at least 300 people into IT and technology related jobs over 3 decades. About 98% of the men negotiated a higher salary with me while the remaining 2% had taken another job as of when I made an offer. Absolutely none of the women I offered jobs to ever negotiated the salary. The vast majority took the job with the offered salary and the rest just said "no, thank you!".
When I've mentioned this in a group the women often say that its true, that they've rarely negotiated a salary while the men look at them like they have 14 heads.
1. I recently taught an upper-level undergraduate math course with an exceptionally bright female math major and an above-average male math major. For a while, they both did less work than they ought to have (and knew it -- they both had advanced Senioritis); but in the end, the male kicked in to a higher gear and earned a high B. The female did some triage just before the end and earned a low B. This, and similar situations, has made me wonder if females by-and-large react differently to work-related stress than males, i.e., the male will allow the pressure to motivate him, while the female will attempt to escape. If this is true (and I freely admit it may not be), the opposite may occur domestically. Personally, I'd rather spend a 12-hour day "at the office" than spend eight cooking, washing, cleaning, child wrangling, etc.
2. My wife worked at a company that was, indeed, sexist. There were multiple instances of this, although it was mostly irritating rather than soul-destroying. At one point when we were discussing whether she should move on, I asked what she wanted. "To be treated as one guy treats another", she replied. I responded, "Machiavelli wrote a book on how guys should treat each other 'in the workplace'. Is that really what you want?" That turned the lightbulb on. In the end, she made the correct call and left, but she was no longer suffering from the effects of wearing rose-tinted glasses. I would not be surprised (although, again, I could be flat out wrong about this) if one reason for what's being reported in TFA is that women just don't enjoy working in a social setting where male rules of interaction dominate. I can't say that I blame them at times. But the male perspective has its advantages -- I've worked with female professors who are unable to distinguish between students who should go forward and students who should be encouraged to change their major. This is especially an issue when a bad student is an elementary education major.
Has anyone else had similar experiences?
I didn't RTFA but doesn't "comparable experience" generally refer to what one has done, like job history and edushmashion, and not what one is currently doing...and not what one is currently doing...and not what one is currently doing...?
What were they doing out of the kitchen in the first place? I shouldn't have to say "sudo" to get a sandwich made.
Did I fail to address you point in my comment above? I said, yes, it does refer to job history and education.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Paying women less for comparable experience is pure sexism.
I think in general the sexism is from women. You generally get paid more if you demand more, and men are more daring enough to ask for more salary.
For example, I had been out of work for a year and got an interview with a company that needed somebody right away with my skills. They offered me about a 10% increase, but I asked for much more and ended up getting a 50% increase from what I had been making the year before. I gambled a sure thing and ended up scoring big. But I could have also been out of work for another year.
I just don't think women in general have the same mix of ego and risk taking to ever get paid as much as men in a free labor market.
The study compares "comparable experience", meaning that it controls for things like leaving to have babies or take care of children, or differential promotion rates between genders, or geography and whatnot. Saying "women leave to have babies!" does not address the wage disparity.
One item noted below that would seem to also address it is that men try to negotiate salaries far more often than women, a phenomena seen in many other fields.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Women are so brilliant they invented the wheel, electricity and space rockets. Moreover, in modern times, unleashed, they founded companies like Youtube and Twitter. Men are just dump and give up easily, and then blame it on the culture of the company they work for.
The author of TFA should have RTFS(tudy). From page 19 of the PDF:
In 2008, technical women earned an average salary of $70,370.21
Over the same time period, men’s salaries averaged $80,357. Consequently,
the gender gap widened to 12.43 percent, a slight increase from 11.9 percent
the previous year and nearly a 3 percent increase from 2006 when the gap was
at 9.7 percent.
The good news is that this gap disappears when controlling for comparable levels
of experience, education, and job title. While this is encouraging news for
women who manage to advance in their careers, it does not account for the
barriers and biases that prevent many women from advancing to these levels.
Failure to follow this advice may result in non-deterministic behavior.
Comparable experience is meaningless. I know people (men and women) who have been working at the same job for as many years as people far, far more competent than they are.
Pay rate comparisons are just something people do who have an agenda, because it's almost possible to normalize them.
Time spent on the job is not a meaningful comparison. As an example, let's compare Michael Jordan his first year playing pro basketball and some old timer middle of the road professional players who had been playing for a decade.
The thing you're neglecting is talent and a natural predilection for technology.
The fact is that blatant sexism exists in the industry.
It was there 15 years ago when I was brought in as an outside consultant - during all-coders meetings the guys would spend all their time in pissing contests. I finally went to Isabelle after one meeting and said "look, you and I both know they're full of it, and that your work is much better than theirs. Speak up - I'll back you all the way!" She felt she couldn't because she knew the guys would resent a woman being right.
The next gig - same thing. Watch out for the prima donnas - the guys. Can't bruise their egos. One in particular - Peter - "be careful because if he feels threatened he'll stop eating and he'll mope and make life miserable for everyone again."
Another gig - "Women don't have what it takes to be real programmers." Really?
Another gig - The men outnumbered the women 7 to 1 ... the testosterone was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Men - the after-interview discussion would revolve around whether they could do the job, how their white-board presentation went, their answers to questions. Women - "nice tits - does she have a boyfriend?"
Nothing has changed. If a woman expresses herself the same way a man does, "Stop PMSing". Don't put up with the sexist remarks or unwelcome advances? "You're a lesbian." Act HALF the prima donna that a guy does, "You're just a woman - stop being such a princess." If you're a woman, you opinion counts for less, you'll be second-guessed, paid less, and if you don't accept it you're such a c*nt. And if you DO get along with your boss, everyone else will automatically assume you're having some sort of an affair and that's why you have the job you do. White-board presentations? If after a year the men still only know what you look like from the neck down, why would you expect them to suddenly put their attention elsewhere?
If you don't believe it, videotape the next meeting, then watch the tape.
It's not just IT - I was in another office, and the woman who OWNS the company was talking to a guy-friend who's known her for years. We were talking about marketing, and discussing what people first notice about other people. She believed that men noticed the smile or the eyes. He agreed - "Absolutely!". I said "Absolutely NOT!" I put my clipboard between their faces, and asked "okay, so what color are her eyes?" He guessed - wrong ... That relationship went downhill after that ...
It's not just in IT - but you'd think that people would be a bit more intelligent in IT than elsewhere. They're not.
The few jobs in IT that can not be offshored are being taken over by guest workers. Since almost all guest workers are men, almost everybody in IT is male.
I doubt US IT jobs are growing, the BLS is using old statistics, or just plain BS. But even if IT jobs are growing, those jobs are not going to US workers. US tech companies are laying off US workers in droves, and hiring guest workers to take the place of the US workers.
Practically all US tech companies have announced huge layoffs in that last two years. The same companies are offshoring IT jobs, and hiring H1Bs, and lobbying congress to raise H1B caps.
It doesn't address competency. I don't know if you've noticed this inconvenient fact, but traditionally over the last 30+ years (well, forever) men have been socialized to be interested in science and technology. Why do you think it was men who have driven computing since its inception? There are always a few women people like to trumpet, but pointing to one or two counter-examples doesn't erase the fact that the vast, vast, vast majority of technology has been driven by men.
So why would you expect that by and large women would be as effective in IT as men, on average? It's a supposition with no rational backing, neither data nor reason can prop it up. In fact, looking at past data one would expect men to be more of a driving force in technology than women.
There are exceptions, of course, and women whose technical abilities are prodigious. They're just far more rare than men with similar abilities. Women tend to be interested in other things, and have other areas where they're more adept.
Fifty-six percent of women in technology companies leave their organizations at the mid-level point, 10-20 years in their careers
At Google, you're old and gray at 40. [June 22]
It is something the geek has been known to give a positive spin:
3. Microsoft's senior leadership is middle-aging. Older folks with families and kids don't have the same priorities as younger employees -- and they're not as hungry workaholics.
The average Microsoft employee is 38 years old, according to the company's self-published corporate data. Only 15.9 percent of employees are under 30. By comparison, Google employees' average age is somewhere under 30. The company doesn't publicly release average age, presumably because of an age-discrimination lawsuit. According to the last publicly available data, less than 2 percent of Googlers were over 40. For Microsoft: 40.7 percent.
Most employees are young, fresh from college and have fewer family obligations and other distractions from work. The corporate culture encourages employees to work long hours and provides services that support the work ethic. Googlers can quickly advance up the management chain, and they can look forward to healthy compensation-for-results rewards.
The most innovative thinkers are at the top of the decision-making tree rather than being at the bottom (under much older managers). Five reasons why Microsoft can't compete (and Steve Ballmer isn't one of them) [June 22]
I work for a non-IT company with a small IT department. We have one woman on our team.
Here are some things that I have noticed.
Completing a Task:
When one of the guys gets a task, we jump into it immediately and release something quickly (even if it doesn't work).
When the woman on our team gets a task, she thinks about it, asks for some help, comes up with a solution, and eventually releases it in perfect working order.
One would think that the woman is doing things the right way, a working solution that takes 2-3 times longer to produce will always beat out a nonworking one.
Unfortunately, others may see her as being slow and inefficient. In addition, one of the cardinal sins in IT is asking for help, once you do that you are seen as weak and unintelligent.
Team Socialization:
On a slow day, all of the IT guys will somehow converge into someones office and talk about random stuff, sometimes work related, sometimes not.
Rarely does the woman on our team join in unless we somehow managed to converge within her office, in which case she usually stays quiet unless asked for input.
I am not exactly sure why this occurs, but it is hurting her career as socialization within the team is one of the easiest ways to gain recognition and respect.
Performance Review Time:
Come performance review time all of the guys are on high alert.
We do PR engineering, damage control, boasting, extra work, and anything else needed to get a good appraisal from upper management.
The woman on our team simply continues on with her normal routine, sometimes asking one of us in private whether it's that time of the year.
Who do you think gets a better raise?
Personally, I think if you want to succeed in IT you have to be aggressive (taking control of each situation) and relatively thick skinned (ignoring egomaniacal VPs without losing sleep).
You have to be able to socialize with people within your team and outside, while at the same time not losing self dependency.
I am not sure if women want to work in that kind of environment.
Nope, it's just you ;)
But seriously, 70-80K sound about right, depending on what branch of IT you're in and where you are located. For a helpdesk worker, ya, probably not. But, for a sysadmin, experienced programmer, DBA, or network admin, 70-80K is common, with many earning more. Even in the midwest that number sounds about right.
I have no idea what you are billing for, but, you might be selling yourself short. Try upping your rate for a new customer and see what will fly!
Why do you think it was men who have driven computing since its inception?
Because at the time computing developed, women were systematically excluded from having real jobs and real professions. There were, mostly, only men around to drive computing, so of course it's men who would be driving it.
So why would you expect that by and large women would be as effective in IT as men, on average?
Because in other fields where women have been represented significantly, they've usually demonstrated that, on average, there's little if any difference between them. In law, medicine and accounting, three fields of similar rigor in terms of rational thinking to IT, there are lots of women, and no one seriously argues that they aren't as effective as men.
The better question is why you assume that women would be different from men in ways that are professionally significant in IT, given that women have clearly demonstrated over the last fifty years that they're as capable of men when allowed into the field?
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
You normalize them with a sufficient sample size. Of course there'll be variation in compensation between two people in the same field with comparable experience. If you have 10,000 such individuals, then the variability in competence averages out.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Men who function more typically socially will treat women differently.
They treat other men differently as well.
I think a rational argument can be made that most women, are, on average, less productive than men in IT. Now, whether or not this can be empirically derived is an open question, since even defining metrics for productivity is an awfully hard thing to do in a field that is more like an art than a science (imagine trying to compare productivity of the LA philharmonic 2nd bassoon to the 2nd bassoon of the New York philharmonic).
I certainly wouldn't accept that time spent on the job at the same tasks is a meaningful metric, and I wouldn't take as a null hypothesis that men and women are on average, just as productive as each other in IT. imagine taking as a null hypothesis that men and women are on average, just as tall as each other, and then asserting that there must be a universal malnutrition of women that causes them to be shorter than men.
I think neurology has shown the significant difference, on average, between men and women and the corpus callosum, and this difference can make a huge difference in aptitude and predilection to success in IT. This isn't to say that there aren't women who outshine many men, and many men who are completely pathetic and untalented, but making an assertion that it is sexism, not sex differences, that can account for average pay disparities, is simply unsupportable.
The thing you're neglecting is talent and a natural predilection for technology.
Which is, of course, far more abundant among men, right?
Variability in compensation between individuals due to differing ability is normalized with a sufficiently large sample size. Comparing Michael Jordan in his prime to a benchwarmer nearing retirement is, I agree, meaningless. But taking the average compensation across the NBA can tell you something worthwhile.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I don't think anyone seriously argues that in individual cases, women can succeed and exceed in any field of endeavor. But I don't think one can blithely assert that women and men are of equal aptitude, on average, in any given profession. Would you, for example, argue that men, on average, are equally as effective as women in say, elementary school teaching, nursing or mothering children?
Would you happen to know what the percentages of women in law, medicine and accounting are, and what the average pay differences are in those professions?
Reading the supporting material !?!?!? What are you, some kinda scienceguy? How are we to make irrational arguments when you keep bringing up the facts?
- - good find
What could it tell us worthwhile? If we split NBA players by religion, do you think any differential would tell us something important about their religion? Or if we split NBA players by the first letter of their middle name, would any differential there tell us anything?
I guess I'm always suspect of trying to derive causality out of observational studies rather than double blind ones.
OK, let's assume you're right.
Your assumption: Women are being discriminated against, because we know they are as good as men in general.
My assumption: Men are better in IT and/or are better at negotiating salaries.
Your assumption flies in the fact of a multitude of evidence. Mine simply looks at the facts.
It is unreasonable to demand a well-formed answer to an unbacked assertion.
If I say "men get paid more than women because women have seven eyes", the proper recourse is not to present evidence that very few women have seven eyes and that anyway people with seven eyes should not be paid less than people with two eyes. There are assertions that deserve summary dismissal, and saying "men don't take sick leave because their kids have the sniffles [while women do]" is made-up horseshit.
Woman's first step is take the classes perhaps in high school? Do the teachers stop women from doing that? Not likely. Next step might be post-secondary if you have the grades and money. Do the colleges/universities say "You're a woman you cant go in IT!" ? Not likely. Next step might be industry certifications. Does prometric/comptia/microsoft say "NO you're a woman you cant" ? Not likely. Still nothing in their way. Do employers discriminate? Not likely. So really there's nothing stopping them from going into IT. It must be either lack of interest or lack of incentives. Lack of interest is never going to be fixed. Incentives are possible; but doesnt mean you lose women over it... unless other fields are giving women incentives and that's where the women are going. Which is exactly what's happening. My city's university offers free tuition PLUS addition $1000 to women who take engineering. Why in the world would women turn that down?
You seem to ignore your eyes and instead have some fairy tale view of reality that we are all basically the same. Sorry, most real computer nerds tend to be men, and they have been since they were little kids.
You're seeing the result of the socialization women received 20+ years ago. Men now have a leg up technically, and they are paid more because of this, not because of evil sexism.
Maybe things will change in a few generations, but I doubt it. Have you seen Bratz toys or the TV shows they still show little girls?
I think neurology has shown the significant difference, on average, between men and women and the corpus callosum, and this difference can make a huge difference in aptitude and predilection to success in IT.
Two problems with your thoughtful comment.
First, the fields of law, medicine, and accounting all have significant and growing representation of women in them, and no apparent disparity in aptitude between the genders. On the contrary, we have a very clear recent history of barriers to female participation in those professions being removed, and women concurrently growing as a proportion of professionals. I would describe those three fields as having at least the same requirement for intellectual rigor and critical thinking as IT.
Second, it's not at all clear the demonstrable neurological differences translate all the way up the stack to differences in aptitude in IT. By analogy, the fact that men have better spatial reasoning abilities than women doesn't translate to women getting lost more when driving--men and women compensate for the deficiencies and exploit their strengths in different ways to achieve the same results. Presumably a neurological difference that prevents women from excelling in IT as a group would also be visible in other comparably intellectual fields (like law, medicine, or accounting), but we don't see that in those fields.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Perhaps they want to return to their position as a MOM instead of buying the feminist agenda that they don't need a man, can do anything a man can do, should work, bla bla bla. Hey, if a woman wants to work, fine, but, I bet a lot of them would rather stay at home taking care of the house & kids, than work, THEN come home & take care of the house & kids. I know a lot of married couples that found it was CHEAPER in the long run to just have one parent working. So they don't live in a 500,000 dollar house & have 2 brand new cars, but they sure seem a hell of a lot happier doing the TRADITIONAL thing of the man working and the woman staying home taking care of children/house.
and add this observation: women don't need to make as much as men, because they can rely on men to bring home most of the money, and if the man doesn't like it they can divorce and use alimony and child support to supplement their income.
It's like the old joke: why do husbands die before their wives? Because they want to.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
But I don't think one can blithely assert that women and men are of equal aptitude, on average, in any given profession.
I can and do. Given our history of institutional and social sexism, I think Occam's Razor tells me that the obvious reason for women to be under-represented and underpaid in the workforce is sexism. You're the one working from the assumption that they're different in ways that are professionally significant.
Would you, for example, argue that men, on average, are equally as effective as women in say, elementary school teaching, nursing or mothering children?
I see no reason to think that's not the case, independent of the same circumstantial problems that keep them out. That's not to say that the methods would be identical or the virtues the same, but I see no reason to think that ultimately, a man on average cannot be as effective as an average woman at traditionally female dominated roles.
Here's the thing: You're pointing to very low-level differences in brain structure to explain very complex phenomena that are undoubtedly the result of many different factors. I'm sceptical that such small differences have such an undifferentiated effect at the other end of the spectrum. It's not that I deny they have an effect, it's that I find it difficult to believe that the difference persists so cleanly up the stack, as it were.
Would you happen to know what the percentages of women in law, medicine and accounting are, and what the average pay differences are in those professions?
I'm most familiar with the example of female doctors, where women are now 30% of the doctors currently working and receive comparable pay.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Unless you're sure that women are, on average, less productive than men in IT.
What if that's actually the fact? You have two disjoint groups and the sum/average/whatever statistical measure of one of them is less than the other - is there anything wrong with that? It's actually mathematically very unlikely that the two disjoint groups are perfectly equal.
It CAN still happen that women are treated unfairly, btw. It can happen that women, as a group and averaged out, are less productive by 2% but are underpaid by 13%; it can happen that women are more productive by 2% but are underpaid by 13%; it can happen that women are less productive by 50% but are only underpaid (compared to men) by 13%; etc. Sensational arguments like "are you sure they're less productive..." are actually nothing more than feel-good hot air that avoids looking at the real problem - what is actually causing the difference and is the difference fair? You know, you can perfectly have a different between pays and yet it's still perfectly fair. So, why are you so sure the current difference isn't fair, for women as a whole group (i.e. anecdotal evidence is meaningless)?
If you took the average salary of the NBA and then split them out by east and west, and found that east is paid more on average than west, would you conclude that players in the west are better, or have some natural difference that makes them superior and hence worth greater compensation?
No, you'd conclude that the western owners are a bunch of cheap bastards.
If you split them out by religion and found that Muslim players are paid less (assuming sufficient statistical sampling), would you assume that Muslims are somehow worse at basketball, or would you think that there's probably some bigotry going on there?
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
The point about negotiating salaries is a good one, because it's widely demonstrated that women don't negotiate as often or as hard as men do. But that doesn't fully explain the differences.
Your assumption flies in the fact of a multitude of evidence. Mine simply looks at the facts.
Your anecdata is not facts. My assumption is based on widespread evidence of women in fields like law, medicine and accounting (fields of similar intellectual demands as IT), who participate in far greater numbers and whose income gap has been steadily closing.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Some people make loads of money and need to push other products/reality out of their vicinity.
Women, in my experience, are far more attached to reality than men, they are kinda scaredy cats.
Captcha: "imbecile". It reads:
Prove yourself
[imbecile]
8-/
I'm a decently-paid male programmer who is in the middle of transition to becoming a woman. I also was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.
I wonder what this sort of thing means for me... >.<
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
So, why are you so sure the current difference isn't fair, for women as a whole group (i.e. anecdotal evidence is meaningless)?
First, because we have a long and sexist history of unfairly excluding women from most professions. Occam's Razor suggesst that this obvious cause is sufficient to explain the disparity.
Second, as you yourself observe, possible actual differences do not necessarily justify existing differences. A 2% disparity in ability does not justify a 13% disparity in compensation based on ability. I don't think it's impossible that real differences exists that would show up as disparities in participation numbers between the sexes. I think that we can't really discover that until we've basically eliminated the much more obvious cause of institutional and social sexism.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Nobody thinks that this is because this is the time that mom is needed at home to take the kids out on the regular day to day stuff. school, work, sports, friends, etc.?
Law, medicine, and accounting are not similar fields. If you're in IT, you know this. Very rarely do you find a guy who dressed up as a lawyer and did mock trials every weekend as a kid. Or got out the ledgers and added up numbers. Or did anything but play "doctor" by dressing up and checking out his neighbor's naughty bits.
Many of today's generation of nerds were tinkering with technology on a real level soon after they were walking. They invested time in practical applications that are now helping them be better, stronger, faster nerds.
Unfortunately, women (typically) don't have this advantage. They're Johnny..Joanna Come Lately's to the field. This doesn't lend itself to standing out among your peers.
In other words, let's normalize for _real_ experience. The only problem is you can't as it's impossible to measure.
>
But there's a nice unexamined assumption in your post: Why the fuck aren't the men taking parental leave or caring for the children?
I'll take this one: men don't because
1) it's not really allowed in men's job contracts because of today's social/legal norms
2) men (at least our kind) are in IT precisely because computers run in an easily controllable environment... where specific incremental results are predictable based on our fix toolset and experience.
On the other hand, babies are chaotic and non-programmable, have no tech support, and are also an expensive "piece of hardware" that comes with no manuals, tech support or warranties of any kind. I would venture saying that it's as high maintenance as you could get. Ever. It's already hard enough
"But there's a nice unexamined assumption in your post: Why the fuck aren't the men taking parental leave or caring for the children?"
Well, some of us are. At my current position at least 3 top male engineers have taken time off to care for their wives and newborn children.
This is well regarded and considered a given for women, but there is still palpable prejudice against men doing the same.
In my particular case, I even got a direct ridiculing, sneering comment from a female co-worker,
along the lines of "you must be the next winner of the most dedicated father of the year award".
This kind of sexism against men, specially in highly technical disciplines goes often "unnoticed" by the same
journalists who relentlessly lament how "poorly" women fare in the workplace.
Many of today's generation of nerds were tinkering with technology on a real level soon after they were walking.
You have many quaint stereotypes.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I think Occam's Razor tells me that the obvious reason for women to be under-represented and underpaid in the workforce is sexism.
Really, b/c Occam's razor tells me the reason you believe that is you were spoon fed sexism as a cause, and sought out evidence to back your belief. And how does one manage to accout/correct for child care since a significant portion of the female population leaves the work force to have babies(something only they can do)?
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Studies (the one's I have seen were not specific to IT) have shown that women tend to work fewer hours a week than men in the same field. Additionally, those same or similar studies have shown that women often trade increases in salary for other perks (such as flexible schedules). Those same studies point out other problems with the standard reports you hear about woman's pay being less than that of men.
"Comparable experience" generally means similar education and similar number of years in the field, not "works the same number of hours".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Because the boss says, "sure take all the time you want, don't forget to clean out your desk". Even in a state with laws allowing/protecting maternity leave, it doesn't apply to men. Other oddities in the world of women: if a woman cries abuse, the man is guilty no matter what happened, or even if proved innocent in a court of law. If a woman is pregnant the father has no legal standing in anything, period. On and on, cry me a f***ing river. The fact is there are still occupations where women shouldn't be allowed.
if their husband is making a good salary. I have seen quite a few leave where I work and all were able to do so because they could live off their husbands salary. Most even made a point of it. There were a few who left for pregnancy and not come back, even those who were adamant that a child would not keep them from work. It does seem to be cultural that women can more take off and rely on their husbands salary than the reverse. I guess that goes to show men all haven't matured enough to play second to their wives. At least I don't remember any guy who quit using his wife as a means of support.
It certainly is an industry full of presumptuous jerks. People who while they made end up at the top of IT they will never be at the top of the company and they seem to over compensate.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The article says no such thing. The difference between the 80k and 70k values is 12.5% but it says that the difference between people after 15 years with comparable experience is 11%. Even that 11% doesn't include education, skill level, time worked per week, of even their specific job description. All of these massively effect pay, and all of which benefit men in this case because women for the most part do not seek out graduate level education nor do they choose to work 80+ hours a week like many men in the IT field that I know.
It's just how capitalism works. If woman working for less pay, why pay them more? After the woman with less pay leaves, they have to replace her with a man for more pay. But they saved some money.
It's the same system why we produce everything in China. Why pay them more if they work for a minimum wage and the people over here buy the stuff that was produced basically by children and slaves?
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
70000 dollars? 80? I can hardly get a job for 35000.
I'm certified and experienced, have good references and a well written resume. am I the only one who thinks these numbers are artificially inflated?
"IT" covers a really broad range. Help Desk, programing, testing, networking, security, architecture, system administration, backup and recovery, DBA, R&D, management and many other catagories are considered IT. A range for all of IT is too general. Location also makes a lot of difference. If you look at some of the more focused salary surveys you'll still find a wide range.
Don't pay too much attention to salary surveys. Look for interesting gigs that will improve your skills.
Occam's razor tells me the reason you believe that is you were spoon fed sexism as a cause, and sought out evidence to back your belief.
You'd be wrong about the spoon-fed bit, and what does it matter anyway if the evidence is valid?
And how does one manage to accout/correct for child care since a significant portion of the female population leaves the work force to have babies(something only they can do)?
By adjusting your study about pay disparity for "comparable experience". In other, a woman who has 15 years in IT over 20 years gets put into the 15 year bucket, not the 20 year bucket. It's a bit more sophisticated than that, but I think the idea is clear.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
No wonder you are unemployed.
Take the 7 year old boy that was executed by the Taliban in Afghanistan some weeks ago for being a "spy". The mere fact that we're in America lulls us into thinking of "entitlement". We wind up taking for granted the things we do have vs. the things we don't.
As Cheryl Crow sang, "It's wanting what you've got." What you are eluding to is social engineering by the government ("forced" - your word not mine) which doesn't work. Go join the Taliban.
But wait - Veterenarians are noticing something interesting: Males work very, very long hours - sometimes 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM and have a huge client base. Women, on the other hand, tend to work very short hours because they combine their careers with child-reasing. As a result, it can take 4-5 female to produce the same work as one male in the field. Also, inherently, salaries are much, much different.
So, rather than screaming sexist or gender inequality, let's look at how women have been able to have a life balance that is, possibly, better than men's.
The IT field is particularly nasty if you want to balance your home and work life. As so many of you know, tending a server farm or managing a transaction-intensive web site can mean hours and hours of work at any time of the day or night. It's not a wonder that women have seen the light about what amounts to a shit job (regardless of the pay).
*** Don't be dull.***
I am not sure why you continue perpetuating this outright lie. The report that women make less than men statistically can only come when you don't include any controls.
http://www.iwf.org/news/show/20889.html
So in a study BY a woman for a women's group says you are wrong and even back in 1985 the numbers were 98%. I have seen plenty of recent studies that show at the entry level women make more than men with similar education and experience.
You are wrong and you are lying to people.
15 years having just missed the past 5 is much different from 15 and going strong, atleast from the employers perspective.
We've done these pathetic statistics before.
These pay gaps have nothing to do with equal jobs receiving different pay. They have to do with an average of all employees of a gender at every level.
All this really means is that on average more women are working at a lower level than men, which is evidenced by their leaving the work force earlier in their lives.
There is zero evidence that equal jobs are not receiving equal pay because of gender differences.
IT is also a broad field which encompasses things like low-level tech support lines, which often attract part timers and in my experience in my youth these often attracted part time moms and other women the various call centers I worked in were heavily slanted towards women and would skew the results of any survey.
And really, so what if women are leaving IT? Let people do what they want. We don't have to create some artificial perfect representation of every facet of society in every job sector. That isn't equality. Equality is that they have the opportunity, not that they are forced to take it.
they combine their careers with child-reasing
I think you meant child-razing.
... that working alongside male geeks didn't actually make them more attractive.
because on average, male IT workers are single more often than their female counterparts. /captain obvious
Presumably because men typically have higher paying jobs, so it makes more sense to keep them more secure. Vicious cycles are vicious.
(Different AC, by the way)
Society does not WANT men taking care of the children. it's not in our nature to do it in a good way many times...
Woman sees a child about to burn their hand on the stove... 'Don't do that honey, you'll get hurt'.
Man sees a child about to burn their hand on the stove.... Well, they'll learn not do that again.
Kids need both methods. But the female way should be the majority... it just works out better in the long run for the species.
{shrug> This is all just more of the women learning how the world really works together. They got their equal rights for equal pay and equal work.. And now they largely don't like it. they wanted the equal rewards but not the equal risks and job stress and everything that goes along with it. Really they just added to their own workload as they are now expected to have a job AND take care of the kids.. You sure don't want men doing all the parenting and being in charge of having/raising kids... The species would die out.
Further intresting reading you might check out... http://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-bubble.html
Troll? perhaps... i have my own views... and they include a serious game change once virtual sex gets to be even 50% as good as real sex.... ^^
http://www.martynemko.com/articles/men-as-beasts-burden_id1228
Enough anecdotes form a trend. I suspect that if it were followed through that it would not play into your mangina-like worldview.
Seriously, I'm 42, started when I was 13 (electronics and computers, hello Vic-20 and Heathkit) and put myself through a EE and math double major via the GI Bill.
I suspect many slashdot males have followed a similar path.
Don't fuck with us son, we'll ass-rape you until your ears bleed. There be wolves here, and you're the poodle.
Your e-peen is awesomely huge.
I don't doubt that you're like many geeks here. I don't see what difference that makes when IT is a vastly wider profession than the readership of /.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
---->Why the fuck aren't the men taking parental leave or caring for the children?
Because we lack titties. I'll deal with them when they get old enough to be uppity. In a way most of the ladies generally can't do.
We have different roles, broadly speaking.
I think Occam's Razor tells me that the obvious reason for women to be under-represented and underpaid in the workforce is sexism.
I didn't realize that Occam's Razor can now be used to justify a belief in a mass scale global conspiracy. For women to be underpaid based purely on a social bias that is vehemently denied by all those accused, then you would have to believe the mass conspiracy theory (In locations and times when women really were being oppressed there was no question about it, it is very clearly documented). On the other hand the idea that the specific Women in the work force are not expressing the same level of talent as the men in the work force, is a far easier to explain answer to wage disparity. But they again I happen to be knowledgeable enough to know what Occam's Razor actually is, so maybe I'm statistical outlier.
You're pointing to very low-level differences in brain structure to explain very complex phenomena that are undoubtedly the result of many different factors.
These are very significant differences in brain structure, not something that can just be tossed aside because it doesn't fit the equality world view. Men have nearly 10% more brain mass on average, and 33% more synapses of cerebral cortex. Men have 6 times the Grey Matter and 1/10th the white matter as women. If this is not a significant and contributing factor, then I'm not sure what is. And this is when looking at averages, which doesn't come close to looking at the top end since Men and women have a different statistical curve, with Men having a more flat curve (more men are on the very high and very low end than women you tend to closer more toward the average).
That's not to say that the methods would be identical or the virtues the same, but I see no reason to think that ultimately, a man on average cannot be as effective as an average woman at traditionally female dominated roles.
When talking about the physical differences between men and women there is rarely an argument. Men are on average and by and large at the high end, notably stronger and faster than Women. Women are without a doubt better fit for child birth and infant care (women can actually feed a child without additional technological help, which would be a little difficult for a man). These we take as a given, and rarely is their an argument that women are just as strong, but they are being help back by a global conspiracy. But try stand up for the statistically apparent assertion that Men are better suited for work involving technical, mathematic or spacial skills and people will come out of the word work to make the most absurd claims.
Why the fuck aren't the men taking parental leave or caring for the children?
Because women are generally better than men at caring about children.
I mean, how often do you see a girl suddely go "oh, look at the cute baby!!!", while the guys shrug? This isn't to say that all men and women are like that, but overall, the proportions seem pretty clear.
First, the fields of law, medicine, and accounting all have significant and growing representation of women in them, and no apparent disparity in aptitude between the genders.
You can not compare law, medicine ad accounting to a technical or engineering field. The practice of Law is primary a social skill, and using those social skills to express a specific interpretation of things derived from rote learning. Medicine is not a single field, as there is a big difference between the technician that does the sampling and analysis of a medical case, and the Dr. that has to interface with the patient. Good Drs. tend toward greater social skills than technical skills, and know how to rely upon, and chose, very skilled technicians. Accounting is basic math and rote learning. If you can add both positive and negative numbers and are able to memorize a set of rules, all be it a large set of rules, you can do accounting. Now being an "accountant" is really a sales position first and an accounting position last.
By analogy, the fact that men have better spatial reasoning abilities than women doesn't translate to women getting lost more when driving--men and women compensate for the deficiencies and exploit their strengths in different ways to achieve the same results.
Sure and it doesn't translate into men having better oral hygiene, or men being better at anything else that has very little to do with spatial reasoning. But oddly enough it does add to our understanding of why men are better race car drivers, but that would actually have more to do with spatial reasoning than reading street signs and maps, and being willing to ask for directions.
Your comparisons and analogies have been fatally flawed through out this entire topic. You seem to really believe in what you are trying to express. If you happen to be right then I hope you find a much better way of showing it because so far you have been somewhere in left field.
Well, depends on what kind of task you do. IT can be a pretty good field to balance home and work, e.g. you can work from home and have flexible hours. That's great when you need to take care of a sick child, have a doctor's appointment in the middle of the afternoon, etc.
But women work in nursing and teaching, both of which are renowned for their screwed-up cultures. Nurses are known for "eating their young." Politics and bullying abounds. Passive-aggressive is still aggressive. I work for nurses and I'm related to teachers, and I can tell you that these female-dominated fields have cultures just as malignant as anything in IT. I know *female* nurses who, when you ask why they hate nursing, say "women!" Don't think it's all milk and honey elsewhere.
A 2% disparity in ability does not justify a 13% disparity in compensation based on ability.
How can you say this is not justified. You look at such narrow statistics and expect to be able to make such a claim. If you have a job that will require 100 people and there are 100 men and 60 women able to do the job and the men are 2% more productive than the women, why would you pay any women at all? if you higher 99 men you would then have to higher 2 women to get the amount of productivity you need. To keep the total cost the same then you would need to pay the women 50% of what you pay the men (unless you think it's fair that the men get shafted because of your poor decision to higher less skilled workers). If you happen to higher all 60 women you would still need to higher 46 men which is 6% more total workforce that you would have needed higher just men. So if you ask me, and it can be proven that women are 2% less skilled than men at a specific job, I would say those women should be counting there blessing that they even have a job, let alone getting paid almost as much as their more skilled counter parts.
Sorry for incorrect use of the word higher when I obviously meant hire. Though the pedantic men on this sight might disagree, it's probably just due to the male brains limited verbal skills in comparison to the equivalent female.
Women and Men should think twice before spending years attaining a degree to work in IT. IT is a moving target and its always someone's subjective opinion if a job is being performed well or not. A "profession" is a field where the person has control over their time, methodology, tools, etc. IT people have none of this and are damned to an adversarial relationship with their masters. Don't screw yourself. All of the development and programming work has been transferred to Asia or will be. Don't waste a degree and all its meaning on a fucked up job. Be a real professional or at least a blue collar worker whose work has some respect, standing, and standards.
By "certified" you mean, you don't have university education, right?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
This story tries to impress us with its "IT-is-not-for-girls" spin. But honestly, you would need a lot more data to draw such a conclusion. For instance, what is the current ratio of men leaving the IT profession in general and in the middle of their career in special? There might not even be a significant difference... /people are leaving the industry? As far as I know, parts of the IT market are shrinking due to Offshoring and on-going automation, so a lot of simpler IT jobs are simply vanishing right now. So the loss of those jobs might also contribute to the observation of women leaving the industry.
Moreover, what kind of women
Unfortunately, TFA does not provide more information to put the numbers in the right context...
These sort of news articles always annoy the the bloody hell out of me. People choose the jobs in which they have an interest, they don't get influenced so much by sexism or barriers in the workforce.
It's always certain types of industry areas that people are complaining about, IT, engineering, management and finance areas are common. You never hear about the general lack of females in certain areas such as construction, plumbing or electrical services. Sure, these are blue-collar positions, but they're better paid and have better benefits than many white collar jobs and in some cases definitely have better hours.
You certainly don't hear about the lack of males in certain other industries, such as Nursing and Teaching. There are pretty major institutional and social factors preventing males from joining these occupations, and its not just the generally poor pay. But, nothing.
I'm a teacher. I'm a teacher because I'm interested in continuing to learn, and teaching is one of the few occupations where you can continue to learn and for it to be a part of your day to day job. In the last term, I learnt about some really interesting mathematics and have incorporated it into my teaching. But the occupation isn't exactly the most welcoming to males.
Several years ago, I sat in a university classroom for my final teaching methodology class, and the female guest lecturer walked in, saw two males (myself and another guy) among the twenty-five students of the class and said "I don't know why you two are here, everyone knows girls are better at working with children". Turning the tables, she would have been fired within minutes if she were a guy saying the same sort of thing in an engineering classroom.
The whole industry is, in fact, oriented towards females. If you walk into any classroom up to grade 4 (because male teachers tend to get given the older grade 5 and 6 classes in primary schools), then you're likely to see flowers and cute dolls more than anything else. The students are likely to be outside "dancing", because that's an important part of the PE curriculum in many schools now. It's pretty hard for a male student in these circumstances as well, let alone a male teacher who is expected to subscribe to and support this ideology.
Will this ever change? Probably not. At least in my workplace its a bit more balanced and mainly because teachers have noticed that our male students can do better when they're provided with a more balanced approach.
But I do the job because I'm interested in it, regardless of the sexism. Just like other male teachers do the job because they're interested in it, and just like females in IT do the job because they're interested in it. Doing things about the unwelcoming workplaces would certainly be welcome, but it won't do much to actually change the balance.
Bwah-hah-hah. Parental leave for men? Dream on. Welcome to America.
It's just how capitalism works. If woman working for less pay, why pay them more?
Conversely, if you could get the same work out of a woman for less money, why would anyone ever hire a man?
Is it more than the man? See, there's still inequality which makes the males more "reliable".
A sibling poster mentioned that men in the US get FMLA (up to 12 weeks of leave) for a new child. Except, of course, that that leave is unpaid. If both parents are out of work for 3 months, it's unlikely that their savings will sustain them. Remember, here I'm talking about Americans, who's credit card debt normally exceeds their savings by a significant multiple. Most can't be out of work for more than 3-4 weeks of unpaid leave without serious financial impact, and most have very little leave saved up - the typical young worker gets 15 days of total leave annually, including sick and vacation. Just going to the doctor with your wife will eat up 3-4 days of that. It's a double whammy if both parents work and their lifestyle is based on that double income. Most Americans will max their credit on cars and housing, and end up with 40-50% of their income committed to debt service.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
My favorite quote from that article is this: "If women truly did earn less for doing exactly the same job as a man, any non-sexist CEO could thrash his competition by hiring only women, thus saving 25% on employee salaries relative to his competitors." I've often wondered about that myself.
Generally, working in IT sucks. Long hours, ignorant managers, on-call, rotating shift work, and low appreciation by management are all in the mix. Most people in IT love the tech, love the money, or both. Men are willing to put up with more shit, that is all.
In some ways, I would say this shows that women are smarter than men.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Many people in IT, men and women, are in it for the money, just like in any other work. Maybe they like it as a job, but if they could earn more in another field, they wouldn't be in IT.
But there is a subset of IT workers, mostly men, who work in IT because it is fundamentally interesting to them. When they go home each evening, they switch their home computer on and continue to work on IT projects free of charge, because they enjoy it. They spend their time discussing IT matters with their friends, spend a hugely disproportionate amount of their free time working alone, installing software, testing it out, writing code, making things work, for not other reason than they enjoy it.
On the other hand, most IT workers are not willing to sacrifice such a large proportion of their lives in that way. For them it's just a job.
Most women don't get involved in OSS because most of them have not overwhelming interest in it. It is in the interests of the few who do find it interesting, to exaggerate the notion of a macho culture, and sexist behaviour, because acceptance of that argument improves the opportunities for them. After all, if we all believe that person A has been held back because of their colour or gender, we are more likely to give them a helping hand, or clear a path for them.
I have had female IT managers and worked with female programmers and admins. I don't recall any who had the job undeservedly or anyone else complaining about having women colleagues. If anything, the men mostly went out of their way to avoid any hint of misunderstanding. But I do remember that it was the men who sometimes stayed behind late at night to get the job done while the women (and most of the other men) went home to their families. Occasional instances when a woman has stayed behind to complete a job, or rare instances of a person often staying behind to do the same, is no proof that this generalisation is mistaken.
There are plenty of OSS projects run by individuals or small groups. Those projects got off the ground because one or two people had an idea and worked to make it happen. Where are the OSS projects started and led by women?
If you want to argue with me about this, at least avoid putting words into my mouth. I am not saying women are less capable then men, or that no women are driven by their interest in IT. I am just suggesting that the fascination with IT which drives those involved in OSS and IT in general is found mainly in men, and that the majority of people (men and women) working in IT are in it for the money rather than because it is their hobby.
That is the main reason why in some companies the IT workers are mostly female (although not true across the industry) while the Linux kernel team and almost every other OSS project has relatively few.
Apart from the rare instances of a small workplace where some crackpot macho fool is running the place, there is no bar. Women are mainly in IT because it's a job. Many more men are in it because it is their obsession.
There is no reason why the same percentage of women and men should be represented in any particular industry. It might just be that most women in general are simply not particularly interested in IT. In my long life, the number of discouraging comments made by women when technological discussions have started, tends to support that notion.
But it is in the interest of those women who are in IT to promote the myth that they are somehow being held back by nasty macho men.
If that argument sticks well enough, it could ease their own career path and they could find themselves, as an individual, having more opportunities than their colleagues might expect. It also 'legitimises' their own rampant sexism.
Sure there are male, macho, sexist managers, but there are also, female, man hating commentators whose sophistry, it seems to me, goes largely unchallenged for fear of being accused of sexism.
I don't care whether my colleagues are all black, white, male or female so long as they can do the job. It makes no difference to me what proportion of each group is represented because I know that the relative proportion is not an indication of sexism or racism - though it could be a symptom of it. There are plenty of other reasons why the numbers might not match, and no reason to suppose that there is something wrong, just because they don't.
This number matching seems to me like a new kind of astrology. Seeing something significant in a mismatch of numbers for no logical reason.
By "aspy losers" do you refer to Asperger's syndrome?
I think he means people who use ASP.
Well, I've certainly read (many times, over several years now) that there has been a collectively discovery by women that IT-related fields are less sociable than they might need in order to be satisfied with their career. What numbers and fields this reduces, too, I understand not well at all.
I have low-grade Asperger's. You might notice I'm a little weird and do things in a roundabout way sometimes. You're probably not going to pin me on Asperger's when you see me in IT though. I'm a little awkward socially for the mere reason I don't have much experience with normal social interaction - I've spent most of my life in front of a computer, and I simply lack the bullshit tolerance for smalltalk. I don't lack social skills though. You bet I can kick your ass and make you like it if I'm your manager. Or moderate disputes in meeting. Or express my ideas and concerns clearly and in a diplomatic way. Or contribute productively to planning and design.
The "Aspy" stereotype is bullshit. Like most stereotypes.
Just fyi.
If you can't take the heat, get your ass back in the kitchen.
It's in their very nature. Men would not be born if it wasn't for women.
If they're dropping out of something technical...so be it, won't make the world go under.
I say - good riddance. They're not as passionate about IT as men are.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
At my company we have a higher percentage of women in management than we do in software development. And half of our female developers are Asian. I know is this is small sample statistics, but doesn't this suggest that there could be cultural factors involved in the male/female disparity than just assuming that the disparity is caused by bigoted males?
The more simple and absolute the statement or claim, and the more depth of character and background information, then the more accurate it is in resolving disputes or balancing of interests from a feud.
You say potato, but I think that's a vague and flowery way of saying that you are a fag that enjoys someone stringing potatoes on a rope and having a girl stuff them up your ass only to slowly pull them out while giving you a handjob.
And don't try to claim I'm Irish, because potatoes aren't natural in Ireland. Potatos are from Poland.
That conclusion would be just as unfounded as asserting that West is naturally better than East, or that people with middle names that are less than five letters are naturally better than people with middle names that are five letters or more. You've found a correlation, not causality.
Observational studies simply cannot determine causality, and any number of conclusions could be made from the observations, neither of them particularly more worthy than another.
Occam's Razor can also tell you that the obvious reason for women to be under-represented in certain workplaces is due to natural differences between the sexes.
Of course. Professions require varying degrees of brain types, and differences in brain type can certainly be professionally significant. Assuming that both men and women exhibit "professional neutrality" in any profession is an assumption, not a given.
Having XX chromosomes versus XY chromosomes is not a circumstantial problem, it is a factual reality. Men and women are different in the brain, period. Asserting otherwise is to ignore the scientific evidence. Ignoring what we know about male/female brain differences leaves out a major piece of information.
I'm not asserting that the difference is a clean one, but it is a significant one, and must factor into the differences we see between men and women in various professions. To think otherwise is to be willfully ignorant.
I wonder how that breaks down into various specialties...or is that a statistic for just general practitioners? I would imagine it possible that doctoring, as a nurturing and also authoritarian profession, may have complexities that neutralize sex differences in a way that doesn't happen in IT. Of course, having only 30% participation may indicate that there are simply better filters, and only the rare woman is able to get into the profession, and because of the high filter, competes on par with her male counterparts, on average.
How about this for a theory - maybe women are underpaid in IT because the incompetent women aren't filtered out as effectively as they are in the case of doctors, therefore bringing down the average. Our attempts to get 50/50 representation, by including women that aren't as competent, may in fact be what causes the statistical artifact of pay differential.
That's assuming that law, medicine and accounting are comparably intellectual fields, which I'd argue is probably not the case.
IT is not just about "intellectual rigor" and "critical thinking", which both could be defined to encompass both left and right brain types of processes. To me IT is, at its heart, simply much more "left-brain" -> analytical, anti-social, and thoroughly unforgiving. Even my attempt at trying to describe it is probably pathetic, but the point I'm trying to make is that you simply cannot assert that the same proclivities towards law will mean you're good at IT, or medicine, or accounting.
Here's my question, though -> would we assert that there is a problem of sexism in the field of elementary school teaching, with men being under represented? If not, why not?
You know, I'd rather not have some male vet on the tail end of a fourteen hour day looking after my cat. I'll take a female vet working short hours.
Proof that women ARE actually smarter than men.
IT jobs suck. I've been a systems and network administrator. It really, really sucks. The job is an endless list of problems that everybody expects you to solve instantly. Nobody realizes that the number of pieces of technology that you mastered outnumbers their marketing/managing/accounting skills 10:1 and are more complex. You're viewed as nothing but a cost; nobody attributes any profit to you. They always think their technology ideas are better than yours. You get labeled as anti-social and unfriendly because you wind up living isolated at night fixing trouble calls that woke you up. "Oh, you know about computers... Can you take a look at mine?" is acceptable but "Oh, you know accounting... can you do my taxes for me this year?" is not.
So yeah. Women are proving they're smarter than men by avoiding all this anguish and lack of appreciation.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
KLOC/day.
[retires to a safe distance & covers ears]
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sample size is king. If a wide range of studies keep coming up with the same result then it's very unlikely that the it's only due to chance, particularly if there's a credible mechanism to link cause and effect.
Now the cause might not be the one it appears to be, but that's a different issue.
You appear to have taken "correlation does not prove causality" (correct) and interpreted it as "correlation disproves causality" (tripe).
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I had a buddy take unpaid leave after the birth of his daughter. He ran into trouble with our managers soon after. From the outside of the situation looking in, it sure looked like they had it out for him as soon as he took family leave.
He left the company while the getting was still good.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
maybe they ask HR departments? or use income tax data? or credit reports? there are many ways to get unbiased data rather then just asking the person.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
With as much off-shoring that's going on. Who WOULDN'T bail out of the IT industry?!?
how many of them had a choice? I took a job once, and it ment a $15k pay cut, because I was $50,000 in dept and it was the first offer I had got in nearly a year. I didn't dare ask for more money, I couldn't take the risk. Had I had another offer or two in my pocket I could have afforded to be choosy... but every interview I had been to previously, well, you could see their eyes glaze over when they saw that I was young and had a wedding ring (I honestly was about to start leaving it at home, just to have a better chance at getting any offer). Young and married = kids, and no employer wants that. It was getting to the point where I was just going to flat out tell every interviewer that I was never going to have kids (the truth) just so they would consider me.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
I've been around the industry for more than twenty years. There is NO sexism where I have worked. When it comes to management, there had been reverse sexism, but that seems to have passed, partly because there are so few women in the industry.
As for why more women are dropping out? I don't know the reasons why, but good for them. I might be about to drop out (or be kicked out) myself. Part of me can hardly wait for it to happen.
Best regards.
A) ...and how many men are leaving? I would say many are getting out on both sides. I know when I started it seemed like the way to go and a good path. Now I am not so sure.
B) ...10 years into their IT life, Women may commonly, you know have these things called children. Sometimes they have more than one. Sometimes they might decide that raising some kids might be a more fulfilling job than their current soul crushing IT job. Just sayin'... Commonly Men really don't have this option. I would say that more than makes up for any statistical variation if their was any.
Men don't take maternity leave and men don't take sick leave because their kids have the sniffles.
Statements like this prove the point that sexism still rules.
+1 hilarious.
Sorry, most real computer nerds tend to be men, and they have been since they were little kids.
You're seeing the result of the socialization women received 20+ years ago. Men now have a leg up technically, and they are paid more because of this,not because of evil sexism.
What qualifies as "evil sexism" if not your own statement about how men have a leg up? The "socialization women received 20+ years ago" is a great example of sexism.
One of the great Unix sys admins at my last employer decided to quit and go back to hair dressing. Can't say as I totally blame her with all the benefits that go along, you set your hours and rates, define who you will work with and work regular hours for about the same pay in the end.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
The article was not so specific on what "comparable experience" includes. I'm not so sure that it adjusts for maternity leave and child care. I did not see anything in the article mentioning compensating for women with families, and I have no faith in the reporters' abilities to interpret statistics correctly. I have previously seen statistics showing that single women who have no children make within 98% of their male counterparts. That is an insignificant difference. What is significant is that starting a family continues to have a profound downward effect on a woman's career.
"Conversely, if you could get the same work out of too or three raghead's for less money, why would anyone ever hire an American?"
- FTFY.