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Girls Go Geek Again
nessus42 writes "Computer science has always been a male-dominated field, right? Wrong. In 1987, 42% of the software developers in America were women. And 34% of the systems analysts in America were women. Women had started to flock to computer science in the mid-1960s, during the early days of computing, when men were already dominating other technical professions but had yet to dominate the world of computing. For about two decades, the percentages of women who earned Computer Science degrees rose steadily, peaking at 37% in 1984.... And then the women left. In droves. ...it looks like women are now returning to computer science."
Its been a total sausage fest in I/T for the last 20 years. We need more women so we can act uncomfortable and awkward in what we consider our native surroundings.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
and then get me a beer :)
It's always had majority men, but 58-42 is very different from the roughly 80-20 split that it has now. It's sort of like the difference between pediatric medicine (currently about 55-45 in favor of women) and nursing (95-5 in favor of women).
In the cases where you have a gender in an extreme minority, you often get silly social reactions around them. For instance, male geeks who stay in all-male environments might not get used to treating women professionally rather than drooling over them or harassing them. Similarly, some female nurses (particularly older female nurses) have been known to mistreat male nurses because they think there is something wrong with the men.
I am officially gone from
Boo hoo. I'd feel a lot worse about this if it wasn't being overtly done in the opposite direction in other industries. Who is complaining about the over representation of women and the active discrimination against men and masculinity in the health services industry eh? I once applied for a job at a hospital, and even though it was an IT support position they still ran me through a personality test. Apparently I failed it because I valued truth over compassion and was more inclined toward introspection than socialization. Clearly that invalidated my adequacy as candidate. Most ironically, while the test said something to the effect that the questions should be answered as honestly as possible, when the interviewer saw that I had 'failed' their test for suitability in their monolith, she asked if I wanted to change things. I said straight up that the test said it wanted the most honest answers possible, so if I changed anything I would either have been lying before or lying now, and what purpose would either serve? They didn't even value their own nonsense. They just want people to fit in or get out.
So yeah, I'll be more sympathetic when I see people trying to change unjust systems in both directions. Until then it's just sexist hypocrisy.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
So they selected anti-social people who at the same time were highly social in joining fraternal organizations? Sounds perfectly and utterly non-contradictory.
Even though this was a small sample, as Joel mentioned lets look at the numbers:
Made it to resume review: Female - 75.68%, Male - 72.05%
Made it to the coding stage: Female - 28.38%, Male - 26.49%
Made it to phone interview: Female - 0.054%, Male - 0.099%
In person interview: Female - 0.041%, Male - 0.0565%
Received an offer: Female - 0.041%, Male - 0.0194%
Official Hire: Female - 0.014%, Male - Male - 0.013%
Even though this was a small sample, is there anything we can derive from this? The last stat to me doesn't matter as much, even though the numbers were for all intensive purposes the same percentage, even though there were 8 times more male applicants.
If we were to break down the stages the women had better percentages up to the phone interview. Does this show or should this show that the males did better at the coding assignment? If we can agree that that is what happened then the whole "boys play with computers more, tinker, etc etc" might have 'some' truth to it. Before the phone interview the females led by nearly 2%. By the time the phone interview came around, the males had gained that 2% but additional ground on top of the that.
However 100% of those females that made it to the in person interview made it to the offer stage while the men lost the ground that they gained during the coding stage. Does this mean perhaps that the males had poorer social skills to cause some doubt in their ability to do the work or perhaps be a good fit? Did the women wear low tops?(i am not suggesting the Joel and his interviewers are biased regarding to this, but i am just babbling there).
Would be interesting to see what others think or perhaps what Joel thinks of the numbers after he printed them(assuming that he wasnt keeping track as things progressed through the entire process.