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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.
Lots of people drop out of IT. Mostly the people who have the best common sense.
IT has too many aspy losers, people who can't do the right thing, and people who don't work in their own best interest. It's a dumping ground for the filth of humanity who others at some point have perceived that they would best work with computers instead of people.
This leaves people like me that are in it for the challenge of complexity and those who can't do anything else.
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.
Posted by male IT worker, never seen a competent woman in IT.
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?
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...
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.
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.
Thing is I'm not sure if it would be funny or insightful :D
Quantum Physics a.k.a. sub-molecular statistics
Stripping!!!
Where?
Each place I've worked at in the last ten years might as well have been in Saudi Arabia.
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.
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
What are women?
You can't handle the truth.
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
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
What were they doing out of the kitchen in the first place? I shouldn't have to say "sudo" to get a sandwich made.
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 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.
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.
Men who function more typically socially will treat women differently.
They treat other men differently as well.
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?
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/
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
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.?
Woman need to be at home, popping out and raising the babies, the males of whom will then go on to do their stuff in IT. Keep 'em barefoot, fatish, and at home, is what God intended for them. Otherwise, the women wouldn't be popping the babies, we mailes would.
"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.
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.
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.***
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.
http://www.martynemko.com/articles/men-as-beasts-burden_id1228
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
All the titties I see can dispense milk. They are like a pair of erect penis'en that I have to contend with when she expects me to give suck while I stab her womb with Lucky-Finger 21.
"Rapid Ambulation" is perfectly harmonized in it's use at a workplace, where it concerns to carry abbetting conduct quickly to another. I distinctly heard a similar use of this term in Oakland CALIFORNIA when after I beat-down this nigger kid for not spit-shining my shoes whereas he said with a bloody-nose "Bring dem'Amberlamps." I think he might've been a french-nigger seeing how he's fancilfully using those apostrophe's in his slurs. Wish those foreigners would've go back to France where they came from.
I'm not pretending to be somthing I'm not. I'm being someone that I am: I know my language, like I know this Unix System. Suck it, bitch.
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.
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.
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