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The Shortage of Women In IT
CIStud writes "The IT industry is hurting for women. Currently only 11% of IT companies are owned by women. The Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contract program requires 5% of all IT jobs to go to female-owned integration companies, but there must be at least 2 female bidders. There are so few female bidders that women-owned IT firms are ineligible for the contracts. From the article: 'Wendy Frank, founder of Accell Security Inc. in Birdsboro, Pa., wishes she had more competitors.
It's not often you hear any integrator say that, but in Frank's case, she has good reason.
The current Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contract program authorizes five percent of Federal prime and subcontracts to be set aside for WOSBs. While that might sound fair on the surface, in order to invoke the money set aside for this program, the contracting officer at an agency has to have a reasonable expectation that two or more WOSBs will submit offers for the job.
“We could not participate in the government’s Women-Owned Small Business program unless there was another female competitor,” says Frank. “Procurement officers required that at least two women-owned small businesses compete for the contracts, even in the IT field, where women-owned businesses are underrepresented.”'"
There is no âoeshortageâ of women in IT since in fact there is no quota nor any particular class of IT job that specifically requires women, and so likewise IT is not âoehurtingâ for women.
Now, perhaps it can be said that few women want to go into IT, or perhaps there actually is a bias against women in IT, but this âoeshortageâ and âoehurtingâ bullshit is hyperbole.
Unless Iâ(TM)ve just been unaware of the all-nude Swedish lesbian IT shopsâ¦
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
They shouldn't have made the glass ceiling out of that stuff they use for ipad screens..
"The IT industry is hurting for women.
The IT industry is no more "hurting" for women than the coal mining industry or the forestry industry or the alaskan crab fishing industry. There are more men than women in the IT business. There are more women than men other lines of work. So what?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This is a shortage of female BUSINESS OWNERS not a shortage of female technical staff. There IS a shortage of female technical staff - but it has no affect on government contracts.
If you think you need them, you have not been to Mars !!
I take offense at the notion there is a "shortage" of anyone by race, gender, or sexual orientation in IT- or anywhere else.
If you want to stop division and hatred the first step is to stop pretended some people need assistance and others do not. Let people be hired based on their own abilities and they will rise to the challenge - as individuals, not part of some arbitrarily defined group of "victims".
The great thing about IT especially is that it is VERY open to anyone working, probably a lot mores than many other more established professions. If women want to work there, they can and will. There's nothing more we can do as a society to try and convince women to work in IT - so let go the notion that we need some percentage of women and just keep accepting whoever wants to work.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The government shouldn't be practicing race or sex discrimination in awarding contracts. Can the bidder do the job? Do they have the lowest bid? That's what matters, and that's what the taxpayers deserve to get for their money.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That implies that women are somehow "special", and more useful to the industry than others. I doubt it.
Just like the topic... nothing to see here.... move along.
Only the government will set artificial quotas restricting its ability to do business and then complain that reality doesn't match the world they are trying to force on the rest of us. Why do people think men shouldn't be able to find jobs that pay enough to support their families? IT is one of the last places we can do that!
Women who are smart enough to work in IT often have the social skills necessary to excel in better paying, more prestigious lines of work. Compare and contrast with the misanthropes most of us in IT are/work with.
The whole system of "veteran-owned" and "women-owned" businesses getting special privileges is a farce. I know of some companies that appoint veterans to certain positions just so they can be veteran owned. Or the veteran may have nothing to do with the company any longer. I know a company that is "woman-owned" because the owner put his wife on the board so he could get special privileges when bidding on government contracts.
(*puts out a large neon sign saying "HUMOR" and the dons his flame-retardant suit*)
Put the data centers in the kitchen?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
1 - start another company
2 - have both companies submit bids for the contracts.
3 - profit.
"The Shortage of Women In IT"
How tall do they need to be?
waaa waaaa I want to get my subsidized female privilege without the veneer of competition
Are remale-owned IT firms PREVENTED from bidding on work the same as a male-owned company?
The quote above would want me to believe that female-owned are olny eligible for 5% of federal gov't contracts, and unless two female-owned companies offer competing bids for that same 5% of work, neither can win any of that 5% of the contract.
Ken
1. IT is a meritocracy, you are awarded contracts or jobs based upon proven performance. To give a contract to a company specifically based on the gender of the owner is bad business. Gov't spending out money the wrong way, yet again. 2. Why is it a 'problem' when specific gender is not highly represented in a specific industry? Nothing against women in IT, I have and do work with many women in IT who are stand out performers and are extrememly intelligent. I just don't think we should be granting contracts based specifically upon the gender of the submitter.
Talk about crybabies. Sheesh.
She complains about a phenomenon that is caused by women (since studies for over 20 years have repeatedly and consistently shown that women simply tend not to choose to go into STEM careers in the first place), then uses that as a springboard to further complain that she doesn't get enough Federal assistance for women!
I mean, come on! It's one thing to discuss the issue of "not enough women in IT" (which has been discussed to death already), and quite another to so blatantly whine about it.
That damn white man...
He's responsible for everything.
They are - they are only allowed to compete with other female-owned companies and they can only work on 5% of any federal government contract - they are, in the eyes of the original poster anyways, special, in a short bus kinda way..
Ken
I noticed there is a huge shortage of men in careers such as "porn actress".
Hurting for Women? Why should there be equality? You don't see the nursing, real estate, and marketing fields "hurting for men" to join.
Additionally, I've only really noticed a lack of women in commercial IT work. If you look at the public sector and defense industry, it is really quite a diverse work environment. In my team of 40, it's 15 women. Not hurting at all. I hope they stay out of the commercial side and stick to the public sector more. Women are kicking ass in this field and I would rather them helping secure our nation than lining someone's pockets with profits.
But, instead, we focus on one segment of one industry. We push federal laws to force diversity in it, which *surprise* has back-fired and hurt the actual minorities who work in the field.
It's definitely not one gender being more likely to prefer X profession. THERE AREN'T ENOUGH MALE HAIR STYLISTS OH GOD SEXIST PIGS
one possible explanation
There is a shortage, in the United States, of white American-born female engineers, except in biological and medical fields. This has been true for many decades, except for brief period during the dot-com era where every college graduate seemed to spend a couple years working for a short-lived startup or web applications consulting outfit.
...kindergarten teachers. There's not enough fat red heads in sky diving. There's not enough Mexicans in Singapore. The letter 'a' is too recurrent in the English language. There are not enough left handed bi-lingualists. There are not enough...
Everything in the world must be precisely balanced and equitable in every measurable attribute or it is an act of outright discrimination.
article and change IT to "social care" positions and female to "male" and get away with it. Day care centres and nursing are predominant staffed by females so one could say those types of services are hurting themselves with e disconnect with about half of the population..
There is a "shortage" of:
women
small business
owners
qualified for the government contracts
who are bidding on them.
So what is stopping one of the existing women (small business blah blah blah) from getting one of the other women she knows from forming a small business (or branching off of her existing business) to get a slice of the GUARANTEED government contracts?
Alice owns Alice, LLC.
Alice employs Betty, Carl, Doug and Ed.
So Alice helps Betty form Betty, LLC and take Ed to bid against Alice. Ka-CHING! Lucrative government contracts for both of them!
IT is "hurting" for women. So is professional football. There should be more female professional football players in the NFL. Currently, there are... none. The reasons for this are, I think, the same as for why there are so few women in IT. They're just not built for it, or they don't want to do it.
Maybe if IT had cheerleaders there would be more women in IT.
Gooooo... iTeam!
Nothing against women in IT, I have and do work with many women in IT who are stand out performers and are extrememly intelligent. I just don't think we should be granting contracts based specifically upon the gender of the submitter.
I'm not saying you did anything wrong, I'd likely have done the same. But that you felt the need to "defend" your opinion in such a way I would say is also a problem. Or at least a symptom of a greater problem.
Actually, reason there are not more woman owned businesses is because women don't want to be in IT because it's truth is, IT is horrible for family people and women tend to be more family oriented then men.
I would imagine this issue is same for IT Business owners. The late night upgrade failures, the weekend crashes, all that contributes to horrible family life. Until that is solved which I'm not sure is possible, then IT will mostly be men or females with no family.
No sane woman would work in IT anymore. It's a stressful shit profession with no rewards and no respect.
This is clearly a shortage AS DEFINED BY the federal government -- affirmative action run rampant. If only Congress would take two to four years off...
The legislation and the article are about government contracts going to businesses that are OWNED by women.
It may seem odd to but discrimination based on friendships and personal affinities of people in power actually have resulted in unfair and inappropriate financial and economic effects on groups of people who were kept from power, regardless of their merit.
Sorry you never studied history, politics, religion, humanities or sociology or you might understand that.
Women shoudln't be discriminated against nor should they be 'encouraged' at the expense of qualified men solely due to gender. The people who (probably) helped create WOSB in the first place are the discriminators when they say stupid shit like "women bring a special something to $ACTIVITY_X if only men would let them", like the raging hypocrites that they are. Gee, where are these people when the job up for grabs is coal mining or something similarly less 'glamorous'?
In the case of IT, it's just one of those examples where most men are more interested in technical matters than most women are. This is ok.
IT is one of the most anti-merit, old boy networks there is. Evidence abounds, a good start is looking at the blatant age discrimination.
Another is looking at known instances of government corruption, like the Trailblazer project at NSA. You start looking at the number of military IT contracts, and then look at the gender-stilted nature of the military itself, and you can start to see that the idea that 'merit' is all that matters in IT is not very convincing.
no. not even close. most women just don't care about how the computers in their lives work. they have other priorities. that's fine.
1. big finance
2. the military
these are fields dominated by dudes for various reasons that have nothing to do with 'merit' or 'ability'. its a social anachronism that has somehow survived into the 21st century but will disappear within 50 years or so.
Maybe there aren't more women in IT because women are too smart to work crappy hours for crappy pay, crappy job security and crappy benefits.
"âoeProcurement officers required that..."
I'm a man, who works for a government contractor.
After one lengthy exposure to and engagement with a procurement contract, with Procurement Officers and Contract Officers and etc...
I offered to resign before I would deal with that crap any longer, and I went back to hide in the R&D side of the company. R&D Program Managers and Contract Officers are nowhere near as insane as the people on the procurement side.
The women might be just displaying smart judgment...
When quota system is imposed on anything you will see the effect - end product is almost guaranteed to be inferior
No matter how the quota is applied - by race, gender, nationality, religion or whatever - when quota system is enforced, competition stops
The IT industry is the very last place where quota system should be enforced - too much is riding on the robustness and stability of IT products
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
who gives a shit?
The bill this article is flogging extends set-asides for economically disadvantaged women to all women. It removed caps on the size of contracts which can be subject to those set asides. And it gives authority is to award a sole source contract to a woman owned business if 2 or more woman owned businesses aren't expected to bid.
The article is about a so-called shortage of women-owned IT business. In other words, it says there are too few (according to unknown criteria) female employers, not employees, in the IT industry. Female business-owners are rare in any (or at least most) industries, so if you want to blame a men conspiracy that's fine (although ignorant) but blame all men, not only those who work in IT.
Sorry if I got in the way of your irrational rant against your own gender. Actually, I'm not sorry, fuck you.
The Middle-Class White Guy Game preserve.
Give it a rest, guys. You all keep insisting that intelligence, skills and merit suffice to get ahead in this world. What you don't understand is that this is only true for middle- to upper-class white guys. The rest of the world has to deal with a society full of doors that are closed, NOT open.
Affirmative Action exists for a reason. If you think we don't need it, kindly explain to me why women working the same jobs as men make less money.
I know - you can't.
Affirmative action was created to redress past discrimination. It was based on the theory that if some class of people had been kept out of some profession because of prejudice/racism, you needed to take active steps to increase their numbers until the proportions were reflective of the population.
That wasn't an entirely unreasonable proposition. The reason it doesn't are more subtle than the fact that it constitutes "discrimination". It doesn't work because the assumption that numbers in different professions should be reflective of the composition of the population is not valid. Only one quarter of CS degrees are awarded to women, and blacks are half as likely to receive bachelor degrees as whites. Whatever the reasons for that may be (preference or educational discrimination), you cannot address it with affirmative action at the point where people hit the job market.
The problem with affirmative action is not that it constitutes discrimination of inequality; we "discriminate" in this way all the time when we compensate classes of people for past harm done to them. The problem with affirmative action it is that it doesn't work; it fails to achieve the goals it is supposed to achieve.
I don't care how they're counted.
I'm wondering (if the facts in TFA are really factual) why this hasn't happened.
If anything, it should lead to MORE "women owned" small businesses forming that are really owned and run by men with the woman being nothing more than a paper figurehead.
Technically, the GP is correct. Just like every other field for which this comes up -- if men didn't exist, IT would totally be dominated by women. Or possibly cats. My cat is certainly more interested in what I'm typing than my wife is but my experience is strictly anecdotal.
Just sayin'--
I had a friend who owned an electric company. He refused to make bids based on his minority status (Black) because he figured Minority-owned businesses would be given about 10% of the Federal and State funded jobs. He wanted as much as he could get, not just 10%. His philosophy was to compete on MERIT, not Minority.
Maybe,just maybe, there was time when some affirmative action was a good idea. However, I agree with Thomas Sowell that that time is past and reinforces the idea that minority businesses are inferior to other businesses.
Seriously - has anyone surveyed a good cross section of women to ask why they are not interested in IT?
I'm sure there are a couple of women reading this site - could you tell us why you decided to go into IT (assuming you are), and why your friends aren't?
Basically, every time these stories get posted, we get hundreds of comments from guys trying to explain why more women aren't in IT. At no point does anyone ask women directly why they aren't in IT...
So much whining about the lack of women in technical fields... Anybody worked in or seen the HR department of a medium to large company? How about nursing? Psychology? Child care? When are people going to start complaining about how there is a shortage of men in all of the historically woman-dominated fields, and enacting ham-fisted government laws to try to fix it?
I don't reply to ACs
That statement is completely wrong. Women can compete for 100% of the contracts. But there is a special contingent of 5% of the contracts set aside for which _only_ women compete. That's intended to help female owned businesses.
It doesnt matter how short they are, there just isnt enough of them!
So basically she is upset that she has to compete with all the men owned companies instead of using federal money to underbid them because there isn't another female owned business that she could compete with to underbid the male owned companies.
BOO FREAKING HOO.
Vermifax
Logout
Just compete for the contracts as an IT company.
Ignore gender.
Win on your merits.
You'll be able to cash your check,
and have pride at the end of the day no matter if you
are female, male, or other.
As the title says, I'm a comp-sci student in Sweden. We shares classes with students taking a degree in information technology engineering.
Comp-sci and IT are nearly identical except one gives you a "civil engineering" degree (IT) and one gives you a bachelor's degree with a possible master degree later (comp-sci). There are a few girls in the class. All of them in IT and none in comp-sci.
In fact, while the two degrees are, in terms of content, pretty much identical, the group makeup is different. All the really geeky people are in comp-sci. There are a few geeks in IT, but they make up a far smaller part of the total than in comp-sci.
You could say: "Well the girls chose IT because it doesn't have as many geeks" and that could be correct up until you remember that I wrote that we share classes anyway.
I've discussed this with another guy who finished his comp-sci master several years ago, and basically what possible conclusion we reached was that there is no status in comp-sci as it has no actual title. I mean you can probably say "master of computer science" (if you actually take a master), but it doesn't sound as "established" as something like "information technology engineer".
I've noticed though that there is an exception from this possible status seeking. Exchange students. I've met several exchange students who were girls AND studying computer science. All from india or china.
When forced WOSB tendering can't find the right businesses, we should fill that quota by funding female startups. Give preference to women without an education (give them a leg up), those with previous drug addictions or people from racial minority groups under-represented in small business.
It's the only way to sexual equality.
People (Americans in particular) want to discount genetics, pretend that we can all be anything we want to be, that we have no inbuilt limitations.
Of course we know that is false. Most simply it can be seen (and strangely the one area it is accepted) is athletics. Some people have the genes that allows them to become top athletes, the rest don't and that is that. We also see in athletics the difference between men and women, that the genders are not equal at the top, they have areas they are better in.
Well, this carries over to mental, emotional, and other differences as well. Your genetics don't dictate who you are, but they do define some limits on you and also what you might be interested in.
So you are going to see differences in the interest of the genders, even without any societal forces. One interesting example I see is veterinary medicine. Since it has become a field that was acceptable for women to work in (used to be teaching and nursing was all that was considered "ok" for women to be in) it has become very popular for women. The vet office I use is ALL female. All the vets, all the vet techs, all the receptionists, all women. From what I've learned, the heavy amount of women is not an anomaly, it is a field that women have a lot of interest in.
Now why is that? I'm not sure, I've never seen any research on it. Perhaps it is the nurturing aspect that appeals to many women. Whatever the case it certainly isn't something where there's a big push in society to "get women in to veterinary medicine" yet it is happening. It appeals to women, so they go in to it.
None of this is to say that culture and childhood encouragement don't play a part, of course. If a girl is interested in computers but continually told that "girls don't play with computers" that can well change the course of her life. However we have to be open to the idea that just as different individuals have different predispositions, so do the sexes.
We may always see a situation where there are less women interested in IT than men. Frankly I don't think that should be a concern, so long as we make sure it isn't because women are being unfairly forced away from it. I would think it far worse to try and start pressuring women in to careers they don't like all with some misguided idea of "balance".
I guess I feel pretty strongly about this because computers were something I always wanted to do, since as long as I can remember. This wasn't because of my family, mom, dad, grandparents, none of them are technically savvy. However I loved computers and electronics and was fascinated by it from age 3. Clearly it is just one of those things about me, a genetic predisposition. I'm glad I got to follow that, and I wasn't told to do something different because people decided that I should have interests other than that.
you have a point, but the implications are probably toxic to feminist ears.
I do not understand why some people insist to make Man and Woman be equal in everything. Theres not so much Mans in many areas, where Womans are majority, and I never found some womans care about. Except for some countries (or religions) where Womans are forbidden to be womans. Free people (Mans and Womans), choose what they want to do based in their wish and feel.
Contracts, government or any other, are the problem here. Why force the contract go to a company with a woman owner? Why force the contract go to small company? The contract should go to the lowest bidder, who can successfully complete the work. Does that mean the big guys will outbid all the smaller guys? Maybe, but it will force smaller companies that make these bids have to be better than the big guys.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
They know that there's more to life than being forced to stay home on the weekends because you're assigned the duty pager. Also that they enjoy not having to do things like "maintenance windows" at 2am.
There are plenty of female developers/QA engineers out there. Who cares if there isn't enough (how much is enough?) women in IT applying patches, deploying networks, managing storage.
btw: There's also a shortage of women zamboni drivers, male daycare workers and nursery school teachers.
nobody's writing an article about them...
This particular shortage is just a shortage of enough qualifying firms that can bid for a group of set aside contracts; if there were more qualifying firms, the program of setting aside contracts would not be needed.
I'm currently working on a government contract, and the prime contractor is a 'small, minority owned' business. Before that, the prime was a 'small, minority woman owned' business.
I don't think the current one is 'woman owned', but the one before was the president's wife held 51% of the company. (and they got rather litigious when they lost on the re-compete)
But here's the thing -- set asides mean that you're competing in a completely different contest. What I'd much prefer seeing is for them to treat it more like giving a few points to the other side.
I don't know how much it's really worth to them, but they could come up with some sort of a preference system. For example, if we had:
Locally owned: 2%
Woman owned: 1%
Minority owned: 1%
Veteran owned: 1%
Small business: 1%
Then a local, minority woman owned small business would be compared at 5% lower than their bid amount to someone who didn't meet any of those. Of course, I think the rules for 'small business' needs to be tightned up (SBA's definition is *huge*), and I wouldn't mind seeing it being a scale. (you're 51% woman owned? then you qualify for a 0.51% (51% of 1%) advantage)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Im not sure about all of IT, but I have asked two women that where software devs at one point in time at my recent company. Neither one said they liked it at all, and both went in to more management roles (one was a qa lead and the other was my pm). Honestly I got the feeling that it was the constant need to problem solve was their biggest gripe. It is kind of strange now that I think about it, most women I have worked with where in more management type roles. Accountants/Financial officers, Project Managers, Assistants, QA, Customer Agents and Sales. Jobs with more strictly defined rules I guess....I dunno.
My 10 year old female cousin is hanging out with me tonight. She walked into the room to watch a movie as I was reading this. I asked her why some girls may not be interested in IT: "Because they are worried that they might get hurt or get their hands dirty. But I would be ok with the computer stuff: They probably think they are too busy to do it, but really they're not." There ya be.
finally a job with less cries and wines.
Anyone thinking to post here should first go read http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Geek_Feminism_Wiki
IT is one of the worst professions for gender split. Its a fixable problem, but we need to fix the men first. And I say that as a male. Because I'd not ask a mother/daughter/sister to work in a lot of the IT industry as it stands now. There are companies that are much better out there (and I work at one), but they are the exception not the rule.
Slavery was ended in 1865 and yet it wasn't until affirmative action was introduced under Kennedy
Wrong. What happened then was DISCRIMINATION was ended. Affirmative action had nothing to do with it, the ability to use the law against those who discriminated did.
What government discrimination (the true nature of the lie that is "affirmative" action) did was enslave a people by accepting lower standards. It is ironically the ultimate form of racism that proclaims loudly "this group is inferior, we will accept less from them wholly because of race". When less is expected of people, they generally live up to it...
Minorities in a cycle of poverty will never end as long as the government continues to insist they are inferior beings simply because of race.
I myself judge no man or woman by the heritage they have, I fail to see why I should applaud others who seek to do so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've noticed women generally don't have a bromance culture.
Neither do males. I have NEVER seen, or even heard of in real life, of an office that has the "bromance" thing going on the press is hyping. It's a myth meant to make IT people look bad and give the press something to panic about.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So?
All that means is they don't get any special treatment. They can still compete for government contracts with the white males.
If you look at people from almost any perspective, you get a bell curve.
If you separate people into male/female, you get 2 bell curves... but are they the same?
It turns out that the bell curve for women is, comparatively speaking, tall and narrow, while for men it's more squat and spread out.
This means that there is less variation in women than there is for men. There are more women are average height (for women) than there are men of average height (for men). More women of average intelligence than men, and so on.
This also means that there is more variation in men than there is in women. More men are at the upper end of the curve than women, **but at the same time** there are more men on the lower tail than there are women. More men have the highest level of income than women, but at the same time more men are homeless than women.
This is a reflection of basic biology. Because women bear the biological expense of childbirth, they tend to be conservative and take fewer chances. Because men have to compete for women, they tend to take chances in an attempt to succeed.
This is reflected in the bell curves - women have less variation than men. This is why more boys are born than girls - more boys die because they tend to take chances growing up.
So if success in business requires risk, it's no surprise that there are more men than women. It doesn't mean that men are in general better businessmen, because at the same time more men are unsuccessful at business too.
Prejudice against women shouldn't be allowed, of course, but thinking that women are equivalent to men in abilities or temperament and legislating around it is a losing proposition.
Women are equal to men in the eyes of the law. Women can be firefighters so long as they can beat other candidates (both men and women) in the physical endurance trials.
A government quota system doesn't reflect reality.
There is no shortage of women in computing science, just like there is no shortage of women in firefighting departments or the infantry or skilled trades or any of the other male-bias industries. Women have just as much chance of pursuing it as anything else. They are either CHOOSING NOT TO or people are suggesting that we should lower requirements or form a quota system. I've never worked in a computing world where there have been prejudices against women. Hell, the rare time a woman does join a com. sci. group guys go well out of their way to make them feel comfortable, (after they recover from the shock).
I'm a female entering IT. I'm a late bloomer who played around in college and graduated with a useless liberal arts degree with vague thoughts of teacher. Now I know how fun IT is and am really irritated I didn't think about it before.
I had the weirdest conversation with my mother the other day (I moved in with her, alas) and she told me, "Now I wish I had pushed you into science like I did with your brother. I just really thought you'd be married by now."
But I don't think the IT industry is "hurting" for women any more than elementary education is "hurting" for men. They seem to do just fine without us. I hope they let me in for more reasons than my vagina! (But, honestly, I'll take any reason at this point.)
as above
Although I have met more male psychologiest then females though. Child care is a good one. Do you think a 24 year old dude would get the creepy face if he applied for work at a childrens daycare? Im willing to bet he would unless it was to be a grounds kepper or something. To take it to the extreme, there was a guy that sued hooters for not hiring him as a waiter based on his sex. Here. http://www.caller.com/news/2009/jan/13/local-man-sues-hooters-claims-gender-bias-seeks/ From the article: "Just as Southwest Airlines attempted nearly three decades ago with stewardesses, the waiter's position addressed herein is being limited to females by an employer..." the suit states If this happened to a women at any type of business there would be hell to pay for the company. Just sayin.
I've seen more women in power stations, chemical plants, foundaries and mines than I've seen in IT.
That is extremely odd because of examples like this: in 1987 less than 1% of the students enroled in my year of Engineering were women, yet about 52% of those enroled in computer science were women. When I ended up in workplaces with a lot of IT staff there was a lower percentage of women in that role than amoung mining engineers in underground mines located in remote areas! Of course this is not a US example (I'm Australian), but the odd situation of having close to zero of a gender in a role which is really a safe office job is very odd. There are definitely things occuring which are keeping all of those women that are interested out of IT jobs. Whatever happened to those women that studied CS? Most of the women I've met who are working in IT were initially some of those rare engineering students.
Why should we uncourage even more graduates to industries having no future? The amount of work in "IT" is decreasing as solutions are out-of-the-box and complete.
In truth how many women do you know interested in IT? I've known quite a few so they are out there but the ugly truth is the percentage of men to women that show an interest in IT is 10 men for every woman. Just a wild guess but not far off. It's not women being shut out half as much as not that many women pursuing it. It's not like there are large numbers out there unemployed that can't find work. Maybe it's not being encouraged at a young age or women are less inclined but there are simply fewer women interested in pursuing IT careers. I come out of special effects and the same percentages applied. Few shops hesitated to hire women and most would seek them out. Women with any talent found it far easier to find work than men. How many young women did you know that built models or played with stop motion animation? I know lots of men but very few women. Unless young women become more interested in IT don't expect the numbers to change.
"... but the implications are probably toxic to feminist ears."
They are. Believe me. To some feminists, anyway.
There are those who actually pay attention to nearly every study done in this area, which have overwhelmingly concluded that the "shortage" of women in IT is due to the simple fact that women do not choose IT as a career in the first place... I mean, deciding that clear back in high school, not as a college junior and sure as hell not after they enter the workforce.
Then there are those who simply prefer to ignore the facts and treat it like some kind of giant male conspiracy.
I think you can tell which side of that fence I am on.
We are in a brutal project for the last 15 months. Basically underbid by 50% to 100%. We've been forced to work over 150%-- nights -- weekends-- multiple periods where we worked every day for 25-28 days straight without a break. Told we could not call in sick unless we were going the hospital (legal!) and been denied vacation (also legal!)
A lot of men and women are getting grief from their spouses and have left for other positions in equal numbers.
During that time over 10% of the women had babies and after being home six weeks, chose to remain a stay at home mom and not come back.
Some of the women were fairly senior. 10 years experience. Didn't matter. They will not be building up the skills that would get them to the next level.
Not a single man has quit due to a new child.
80-90% of the women stayed.
But over time, this means more men in the IT workforce.
Most men do not have the same option to just quit working and raise the baby while the woman goes back to work. A few do- things are changing- but it is much less common.
Things are starting to get better. All of us who stayed and toughed it out will have experience that would make it easier to get primo jobs now. Some will go on to be managers, directors, and even CIO's.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
No. Women tend to be reared in a way that makes them this way. "Gender roles" and all that. Dolls vs Action Figures.
I know women who are more interested in compilers than anything cute and fuzzy.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Well this summary seems to be talking about two things:
1. The percentage of women in IT in general
2. The percentage of Women Owned Small Businesses in IT
Those are two very different things. I think the percentage of companies owned by women is small to begin with, so one would imagine that the percentage of (1) women owned (2) IT related (3) small businesses would be even smaller, since you are, after all, applying thee different criteria.
As for women in IT, there seem to be plenty from where I stand:
a. I used to work in the IT department for the US Hqtr of a French company. At least three of my bosses over the years were women, and their boss was also a woman. Females were on the help desk, and doing the same type of internal consultant/analyst job as myself, so I am not just talking about the secretaries either.
b. I now work for an IT vendor in Japan, and while there are certainly more males than females, there are still plenty of females. The accounting and HR departments are mostly females, and the consultants are probably around 25% females. I just had lunch with one of them a couple of hours ago. Some of my good (female) friends are IT consultants for other companies too. (And this is in Japan, where it seems 80% of females figure that dressing cute and attracting a rich guy or working in a bar is a better strategy than actually going to college and getting a real job themselves).
"politically correct" stupidity.
Put the company in your wife's name.
Of course when she divorces you after getting tired of 20 years of snoring, she'll take everything. But she was going to get it all anyway...
I've done ~60 interviews so far, that is, the kind where _I_ interview people. The number of female candidates? Two. The number of times I gave a "hire" to female candidates — one. The number of offers extended to female candidates I interviewed — zero (other interviewers disagreed with my "hire"). Truth is, finding great engineers is incredibly hard, and women just apply far less often. That having been said, giving them special treatment in the interviews is unfair, to both them and men. Either you can design and code, or you can't. That doesn't in any way depend on the shape of one's genitals.
Is the NBA hurting for women?
I'm totally for woman in IT and in any work area. But I do not like rules about who to employ or who to give a contract. If woman wants in on the IT market, then compete with all the others like equal, treat her as equal. I for one, wouldn't even ask the question if the company was owned by a woman or not. I would get the one that does the best work for the best money (note: not the same as lowest bidder).
Who could care less, if it's a woman doing the business or not? As long as it gets done.
And, yes I do welcome more womans to get into the IT business, it is a interesting work that is not hard on your body, a perfect work for both men and woman.
"We could not participate in the government’s Women-Owned Small Business program unless there was another female competitor,” -- you can still compete for tenders though, you know as one innovative company against a group of other innovative companies. What is really the issue is you don't want to compete against others... just a small subset. What is really the problem here is that the 'protection racket' only kicks in when there are two or more companies eligible for protection. What ever happend to ROI, competition and most suitable candidate? All this says indirectly is "If you can't beat the boys don't worry dear, we'll make a special playgroud just for you and your girlfriends, no matter how less capable you are. So much for "women doin it for themselves"
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
At my current workplace (where I've been since early 2011), on my very first assignment which required knowledge of Python, my overseer and guide on the project was a girl called Diana, whose Python and use of Linux was so impressive at first I almost got shocked! I went on to learn a couple of things from her, though sooner than later, she had to start learn lots of things from me. Point is, there are some girls who've really picked the love for this craft, but in my opinion, they just don't get as obsessed with the machines, languages, shells etc as we boys do. Eventually (and sadly), I saw this girl get retired from her job as a programmer here, because of issues related to failure to meet the expected load! Girls, please push on... we need an Ada Lovelace every once in a while.
why should she have 5% of the contracts with no bidding process. she could produce a can hanging from the end of a stick with string for five million dollars, and no one would offer more than her solution or bid less. It makes sense for the 5% rule to be invoked only when there are at least two bidders in that group.
Only a tiny percentage of Chinese restaurants are owned by Swedes. Accept this as normal, or spend money trying to convince Swedes to open Chinese restaurants? Equal representation in all fields is not necessarily desirable or even possible outside of places where workers simply go where the government tells them to.
incredibly sexist
Don't give me any sexist rubbish about women being to weak to be lumberjacks.
"When quota system is enforced, competition stops". Really? So when the University of Cambridge starts demanding of colleges that they admit a majority of students from the public sector rather than private education, everybody stops competing for places and entrants are simply admitted on a first come first served basis?
As for "robustness and stability of IT products" - my own anecdotal experience over many years is that woman in IT care more about this than men. It's men who care more about dick-swinging hairy-bottomed posturing over performance and using the latest technology before the bugs are ironed out.
So, let's have some examples, Taco Cowboy - unstable products produced by companies with a large number of women versus stable and robust ones produced by all-male companies? Did Microsoft put all the women on Windows ME? Is Facebook's security department an all women shop? I think we should be told.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
If you describe the project correctly, there will be plenty of safeties built in to guarantee quality, budget and timeline. If your chosen contractor manages to mess it up and still stay within contract terms, you have yourself to blame.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
You're just jealous because you can't get laid with your female colleagues.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
God forbid women have to competed equally with men.
This whole quota thing is disgusting. That we tolerate it shows our lack of morality.
There are not a lot of women in IT or development. It's not a problem. If more women want to get into the industry, they can do it the same way I did or some way that other people have done.
Is there a shortage of male nurses? How about male nannies? Does anyone really give a fuck?
Next.
Sorry to say so, but in general (yes, this is a statistics question, so I'm allowed to answer in statistics) women tend to settle for less, since they tend to use compromise more than conflict to get their way. In other words, most women don't drive a hard bargain when it comes to negotiating contracts. Men are all about defending their territory, bluffing and care less if someones feelings get hurt when making a deal. It's not about skill, it's about appearances. The women in IT that I personally know and are successful either get a break because they have managed to acquire "sponsors" inside the organization they are dealing with, or they kick ass harder and faster than the men in their playing field.
All women out there that want to get ahead in this "male dominated world": Get your goals clear, plan your campaign and go to war. Do not deviate from your goals and do not compromise further than the limits you set in the planning stage. It's okay to lose a few battles, as long as you played by your rules and you can be proud of yourself for trying. It's not about falling, it's about how fast you can get up and continue. You'll win battles soon enough, once you get the hang of it. If you use your "female" social skills to pick up sentiment or acquire sponsors and "male" social skills to beat the competition, you'll bet getting ahead just fine.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
(from http://www.netmagazine.com/interviews/lea-verou-future-css-and-more )
Government contracts should go to the best professionals that ask the lowest price.
That is if you care about who you took the money for it from. Government doesn't because its a bully that takes money by force.
So they waste YOUR money on affirmative action crap.
I'm sorry but you're talking out of your arse. Have you actually done any residential plumbing your tosser? A petite size 0 woman would be just as useless as a plumber. The man can't get there. If the woman can she's petite and doesn't have the muscle to do the job.
My little boy naturally gravitates to guns and violence as toys. My little girl (under 2) to nurturing and hugging and tending to dollies. Both get exposed to almost the same things equally. If there has been any friends or relatives pushing to a particular direction it is not deeply enough ingrained. And the boy would want to shoot and kill things in play no matter how much discouraged. Pretending some of it isn't innate isn't cool or sage wisdom - it's just denial. Girls and boys like different things. Fucking deal with it. It's not wrong. What's wrong is putting barriers in the way or pre-judging someone who has different interests to the norm.
It's something you do despite the environment, not because of it. One puts up with the humans to enjoy the tech.
I can't blame women for not wanting to hang out with a bunch of socially-defective neckbeards while working for PHBs.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
It merit based, rather than having us to give the jobs and contracts to those, who are not pulling their weight in the society, and hence their numbers are lacking. The IT is not hurting for women, neither are the nobel prizes. Women simply have not demonstrated the creativity and intelligence to produce the results in equivelent number sin those fields, and the statistics are the result of that. Is basketball hurting for white men? Maybe we should put a quota that requires at least 40% of the spots on basketball teams to go to white men. Does that sound fair to you? Nop, because we white men simply, on average, do not have the biology to run that fast and to jump that high. Biological organisms are not equivelent, we've diversified, on average, our statistics and aptitudes will be different.
Women are more interested in social (including medical) stuff ? Not so much in engineering ? Ohhh, how bad, bad is that we must set up billion-dollar subsidy programs to --- fight against nature.
Maybe the leftist rubbish should get a hard, proper education such as aeronautical engineering before they want to have a say. Those who graduate can keep talking. The rest - focus on that eat-your-own-shit treatments of your subculture and leave us alone.
"Boy loves it all and is very interested; girl does not want to know. Why is this? "
It is because with all mammals the females have the function of raising the very young cubs/babies. Toddlers feel instinctively more safe with a woman than a man, especially when tired. That is probably because it is impossible to suck milk from a man. And, sucking milk is the defining thing of mammals. So, it is very simple - women are made to be the primary feeders and "upbringers" of kids. They focus on that activity and disregard technology. Makes a lot of sense to me. Men are there to do everything else - to defend the vulnerable females&kids, to hunt and collect for food. And to distribute powerful genes, to the dismay of their "main" woman. The stone age has shaped our g
The root of the problem is that some geek somewhere in the midst of time created the first automated information organizer AKA computer.
The problem here is not that female owned companies are not eligible. It is that there are contracts specifically for female companies.
The government really needs to stop social engineering.
And note there are no programs to get more men into traditionally female enterprises. The door swings only one way.
Why am I paying my taxes to be treated like dog shit?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
That is a valid point. How come we don't hear,'There's a shortage of men in a particular field"?
Wendy Frank, founder of Accell Security Inc. can't win bids as a woman owned business because there is no other woman owned business bidder. That is supposed to invoke an emotional response and a sense that there is a shortage of women. But, that doesn't preclude her from bidding or winning a contract. It simply precludes her from winning it based solely on the fact that it is a woman owned business.
If her bid is the most qualified and best price, she will win. That is somehow unfair? We have got to get past this special interest affirmative action mentality. It's bad for business and it's bad for the country.
Hobbling everyone else for the sake of those few less capable is ludicrous. But, we seem desperate to do just that for fear of affecting their self esteem.
Due to someone blowing up our storage, I worked 15 hours on Saturday and 17 on Sunday. Then I was in and at my desk by 09:00 today to deal with the fallout.
Why would anyone sane want to do that? Regardless of gender ?
Would anyone who has other options in life live this life? I know I wouldn't ...
SDBs == small disadvantaged businesses.
I used to work for such a company. A used car salesmen found about this scam. So he started a computer business, and put it in his wife's name. His wife was also of Mexican heritage - she did not look it, or even speak Spanish.
He would sell computers, or computer equipment, at about 4X retail. After he made the sale, he would buy at retail, and ship the stuff.
He used FOIA to find out about how well government contractors were fulfilling their SMB quotas. And he used that as his pitch. He would threaten to expose companies that below their quotas, and did not buy from him.
As I understand this is not unusual. Lots of SDBs operate like this.
Look, there are women in IT: http://www.ipv6buddy.com
If I did my wife would be using my scrotum for a coinpurse.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why is it that we hear about the shortage of women in IT, in Science, in Math...
But we never hear about the shortage of women in... construction, in trucking, in mechanics, in garbage collectors, etc...
If this was 'equal rights' or 'discrimination' wouldn't all of these fields be equally selected for their bias?
Or what about women in combat? We hear that they are working to remove the rules for front-line service... or for submarine duty (with the pretext that this opens up advancement that is based in service in front-line duties)... but what about selective service, or ensuring equity in front line duties vs just enough to secure a promotion route.
Could this be about ... MONEY.. more then equity?
How long are we (collectively, as a society) going to put up with this BS? 'Selective' equality *is* discrimination. Consider for a moment if the 'goal' is achieved in STEM related fields... but not in construction, mechanics, etc. What is the result of _that_?
And there is this audacity to call any comment that 'we've already given women enough' as a war on women. The whole BC BS. The notion that _birthcontrol_ should be absolutely, entirely, without reservation or qualification _free_; other than say, antibiotics, insulin, dialysis, things that actually save millions of lives every year is insane. But to question it, vs. a $4 copay (this is what commercial prescription plans at walmart, target, rite-aid, etc cost for basic birth-control); is to launch a 'war on women'.
Why waste your life with people who's skewed perceptions and judgments are based solely on an accident of birth?
We're just not that into you.
In highschool there were at least 2 or 3 girls in my class who were better in the math classes than I were. While I thought I did quite well, I know the math subjects came easier for them than for me--they were, if not brilliant, quite sharp--and I've said as much to them a number of times; but despite this, they were sure they weren't interested in things like the sciences, IT, etc. (the reaction was basically "ick").
As far as I could see, nobody discouraged these women from pursuing technical careers, but thinking back I think both the geek factor--this was before geekiness had any sort of chic--and class presentation had a lot to do with the problem: In the math classes, problem solving is largely a solo endeavor. Contrast this with, say, the English literature classes where there were constant discussions about the materials being studied.
There's only so much that can be done about dispelling image and instilling interest. But the problem of solo endeavor can (and should) be changed: There's no reason why math problems can't be solved in a group endeavor; in fact, this would better model and teach students how any non-trivial projects and problems are tackled in the real world.
Will there also be a discussion on the shortage of men in nursing? Or in interior design?
is requiring American companies who compete for federal business have at least 90% US citizens on their payroll. No outsourcing, or H-1Bs.
I had a discussion with my wife recently. We're both computer programmers. I always assumed she went into programming because she had an interest in computers. She told me that she took a computer science class to learn about what I was interested in. It took the department chair and GA weeks to convince her to pursue computer science as a major. She had a natural talent and they couldn't convince her that she was capable of doing it.
Since then, my wife has had to endure criticism from many male coworkers over her ability and had at least one major company tell her they would not hire her as a developer because she is a woman. Things are messed up and I hate quotes, but for lack of a better solution it might be necessary.
No matter where or how it's tried, social engineering results in massive fail. Disregarding merit in favor of some social attribute is nothing new either. It reminds me of those little water-filled sausage balloon toys. Squeeze it and it shoots across the room. The same can be said of business and taxation. If you squeeze, you lose control of it.
The complaint is actually that she cannot take advantage of the set-aside, meaning she has to compete for contracts the normal way. Yet the article (whether it's actually her or the author I cannot tell) spins it to make it sound like so much more...
The vast majority of females are completely uninterested in tech because of how they grow up. NOT because of the industry. If you keep raising your girls to be the mother of the white picket fence nuclear family, then they won't want to be anything else.
The problem is the same as it always was. Our women are raised to be interested in Barbie and MTV.
Stop blaming us and give your children a god damn heathkit instead of parking them in front of the idiot box. There is no underlying misogynistic culture driving women away from the industry. Fashion, pop culture, MTV. THESE are the things driving women away from IT.
End of story.
Citation: the last time you spoke to a female about what version of cyanogen mod your phone is running or your blown 427, or even about what a capacitor does.
It is human nature to go against government edicts. When minimum quotas are imposed resentment is created. The most effective way of protesting those edicts is to make the minimum a maximum. So when the law says that a minimum of 5% of contracts have to be awarded to women owned companies it is easy to see that eventually only 5% will be awarded. The law says it has to be at least 5% so we will make it exactly 5%.
The issue that is actually brought up by quoted article is that there are many contracts to do not fall under WOSB because there are less than two women owned small businesses bidding on them. The writer and a senate bill want this restriction removed. The reason the restriction is there is that if a contract is designated WOSB by the procurement officer then all non WOSB bids are rejected and competition is between only the WSOB firms. If only one WOSB firm bids that there is no competition at all. A woman owned small business should not get a contract just because it is the only one bidding.
From the summary;
From the article: 'Wendy Frank, founder of Accell Security Inc. in Birdsboro, Pa., wishes she had more competitors.
That is not true. She wishes that the two WOSB bidder restriction was gone so that she could get contracts as a sole bidder.
It should say "The shortage of hot women in IT".
It's definitely high time someone did something about it, too.
Looking around my lonely basement office, I can certainly agree with this finding.
This: "This then makes it harder for the competent people in the group, because now they have an extra layer of prejudice against them."
In the context of racial relations, affirmative action has done more to cause racism than anything else the government could have done.
On the IT front: One of the students in my doctoral program was damn proud of being in the program because she was a woman and a hispanic. She knew that she wasn't good enough to be in the program, and this didn't bother her at all. She was up-front that she intended to exploit her double minority status to push her career as far as she could, over the heads of better qualified people.
The other women in the program resented the hell out of her. The other women were bloody good, and they were worried that people would think they were also "token minorities".
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
There's no shortage of fatties.
I have been working in the IT field for 15 years and here are my observations about women in the places I've worked.
1. 50% of the women called in sick a lot more than the guys.
2. 25% of them have an alternate schedule or work part time.
3. Women take customer's complains too personal. And they hold grudges; they don't simply let go.
4. They don't like to work in the areas of IT with the most labor intensive tasks. For example, support dept. deliver, move and setup computers up to 75lb.
5. When they're managers, they want to know every single details about a solution or problem. And then they're not sure what to do. They delegate to a manager so they stay out of trouble.
6. They complain how much more money the guys make but they don't want to do the most complicated tasks (SQL, Domain migrations, cisco switches vlan configuration, RAID file system setup/configuration, etc.,)
The IT field is fair as long as employees have the skill set employers are looking for.
If I inform the government about the shortage of women in my bed, will it force them into my bed?
Ah, but a feminist would totally go off on that blog and about how horrible it is to women. For one thing, they'd go after the picture, noting that not only is it quite prominent, but it's not a simple headshot or anything else you'd see in a professional interview of a man, but a picture of the subject made-up, not in any sort of professional setting, and likely in revealing clothing. No doubt they'd insist that this was a sexualization and objectification of Ms. Verou, and go casting about for some man to blame. Both subject and interviewer are female, so if they couldn't find a male editor or photographer to blame, they'd go on to blame men in general for forcing women to think of themselves that way. Long before which point it's obvious to everyone that the conclusion came first and the evidence is what can be forced to fit.
That the massive under-representation of males as home-makers is something that society seriously needs to readdress? As a rough call (just from the sample set of people I know, I'm sure there are better stats out there), about 2% of males are home makers in a couple. About 50% are in shared (dual income) arrangements, and about 48% are sole breadwinners.
Can society please fix this MASSIVE disparity before working out lesser disparities?
Not a serious post to flame about though, but it gets my goat that saying "the stats aren't even on something" has nothing to do with personal choice.. Most of it is about choice and interest. It's only really been the last decade tech was about communication and getting more 'interesting' to the average person (male or female). It'll probably be about another half decade or so for that shift in access to filter into the university system and out through into the general jobs market..
I know a couple of decades ago, even those figures would have been a joy to anyone looking at the balance, which implies society trends of females becoming slowly more interested in aspects of the field..
Crying wolf all the time only pisses off the serious people in the field, infantilises women (and other targetted groups) and assumes that correlation is causation.
Seriously. Why should I give a crap about these statistics ?
Despite the infestation of MBAs computers are still a fairly technical field that many jobs have more in common with mechanics than most people would like to admit and I suspect that doesn't attract women.
If more women want to get into IT that's fine but it won't fix IT until we ditch the MBAs whose only means of measuring success is cutting costs more and more every year. You get what you pay for.
A bad developer has NEGATIVE value to the team. Other folks have to spend a lot of their time correcting his/her fuckups. He won't be happy in this job either, because performance ratings (and therefore promotions) are given, well, based on performance, and not on whether or not one has a dick, and if your performance sucks (and you can bet peer reviews will reflect if it does), you will eventually get fired.
by the lack of stilettos, and other hight adjusting accoutrements in modern geek fashion.
I've observed on dating websites, I see a lot of women who say "you must love animals" or that they love animals. Think there was even a movie called "Must love dogs". And there's that crazy ASPCA commercial with Sarah McLachlan. Or the ladies getting naked for PETA.
Maybe it's because I'm a dude, but I've never felt any moments of affection or empathy towards animals like I do with people. Just an awe and general admiration for nature from watching the Discovery channel.
But many women seem to be wired differently in this regard.
The western world is facing a shortage of men who want to be men and commit to women in marriage and women who want to be mothers and and raise children and consequently we are in effect outsourcing family creation to the third world, which will in a few decades overrun the west.
The article frames the issue as preventing women owned companies from competing for lucrative government contracts. It goes so far as to outline prospective legislation designed to remove the requirement for a minimum of two bids for WOSB participation. This is absolutely ludicrous. There's nothing to prevent women owned businesses from competing for government contracts along side male owned businesses... It's not like the other 95% of contracts are set aside for men. What it prevents is a small business owner cornering a lucrative market free from any market pressure what-so-ever. Essentially, it permits price gouging since she's guaranteed to be awarded the contract regardless of her bid. This is a complete destruction of good procurement policy and is an example of an unscrupulous businesswoman trying to use her sex to get ahead.
Not sure what the author is trying to get at because the women at my office don't seem short at all.
"The Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contract program requires 5% of all IT jobs to go to female-owned integration companies, but there must be at least 2 female bidders ... Wendy Frank, founder of Accell Security Inc. in Birdsboro, Pa., wishes she had more competitors."
Wendy needs to learn to think like a man. A man in her position would have the brains to create another female-owned company specifically so she would have a second bidder. Problem solved. Perhaps this is mentioned in the article, but I didn't want to waste my time reading it.
I used to work for a large systems integrator with many, many federal contracts. When our sales people encountered a Request for Proposal that they believed was a set aside, they would just start calling Women (or Minority, Veteran, Disabled, etc) Owned Small Businesses (*OSB) and find out if they're bidding or not. Once they find someone who isn't bidding, they would offter them the opportunity to let us do all the work (make the proposal, get all the hardware, integrate the systems, etc) if they would put our proposal on their letterhead, mark it up what they thought was appropriate (10% or so) and submit it as their bid.
This was an easy decision for the *OSB. They were now competing for a contract with healthy margins and low risk. There is no downside for them. For us, it was a chance to be more competitive against non *OSB's. For the technical folks like me, there was no difference. The projects were managed integrated the same way in either case.
I guess I don't understand why the WOSB owner in the OP doesn't know how the game is played. All she would have to do is play a little matchmaker placing less competitive WOSB's with less competitive traditional IT shops and let them make their best offer. Assuming they were later to the game and less prepared, the original WOSB would have the better, more complete offer anyway.
(This post has nothing to do with the state of Women in IT or Women owned small businesses. Just my experience with federal contracts and set asides for *OSB's.)
who modded this post "Troll". Is life tougher with no dick, bitch?
Many female entrepreneurs stick to the women-dominated categories of beauty, fashion, pregnancy, and children. There's no such dramatic ghettoisation with male business owners.
I don't know whether this indicates a problem, or whether women are just smartly choosing fields that they know about, with less male competition.
I know a few women in IT and they are good at what they do. :/
I think the first and foremost threat to IT is lack of GOOD IT Techs. The last 15yrs the IT industry has been going to shit and being filled by every test crammer that doesn't know a damn thing. They hired a guy at my place of employment that didn't even know how to cut, copy, paste. I guess I could also blame the hiring manager, but they we would have no IT manager.
Glad I got out of IT when I did and decided to move on to Network Engineering.
"That's right...I said it."
As a gay homosexual "IT Bear", I feel the need to comment that there are PLENTY of gurls that work in IT. Having teh gheys replace the traditional feminine rolls of the workplace is a much better alternative because: 1. If you flirt with them, they are unlikely to file a lawsuit. 2. They cook, clean, and gossip just as good. 3. They have the sensibility of men.
"The IT industry is hurting for women."
No it isn't. If they enter the IT they become nerds, like the men and stop caring about looking good (like the male nerds) and that's a disaster.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Women do make up a minority in IT, but the ones who are in the field are usually pretty damned good. They cared enough about the line of work to deal with the anti-social fucks that make up most of its ranks. I like that. The ones who stick around longer than a year or two are usually really smart, cool chicks who can kick ass in their chosen career. Let's not dilute that with a bunch of girly-girl bullshit.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The answer isn't pinning this on women, the answer is expecting men to step up as well.
In some countries, men get almost or the same amount of leave to care for a newborn.
If they did it this way, I could see many companies that have young women AND men who take anywhere from 2-3 days a week to 2 weeks at a time to take shifts caring for their newborn.
I would have *LOVED* the chance to take care of my children at that age. Even though I contributed the same amount of genetic material as my wife, because I have a penis, my country (USA) doesn't think I should be able to spend the same amount of time with my newborns.
Fix this, and the whole issue you illustrated (very well, I might add) goes away.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
...if the job paid the same as, say, catering...
it's not popular, glorified in media, does not get you laid, but gets you made fun of, beat up, and single your whole life.
So then, why are there boys in tech?
that's an easy one, we'll just shift it up the chain-- women don't choose IT career because society tells them to wear pink and do girly stuff, therefor we need more affirmative action.
Lea Verou has great legs, too :P
But that photo might just be part of her press kit or something? It seems to be attached to every second article written by her. And actually, I don't see a difference between that and the photos good looking male devs choose of themselves. Instead of staring straight into the camera, maybe with a hand under the chin, thinker style, black white -- she stares off into the distance, having visions of a nicely well designed and succinctly coded future or something. Same thing, really, and I see nothing particarly exploitative about that.
Sure, there's always people who find some bullshit flaw based on superficiality... but not all feminists are totally rabid man-haters, so I don't even know where that was coming from... who was talking about "feminists"? And why is there no word for maleists, btw? You really think not having a word makes it invisible? L.M.A.O.
It has to go straight to 11.
It anything, look for sexual harassment _before_ careers are chosen: in school among women themselves.
From the OP:
[...] The current Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contract program authorizes five percent of Federal prime and subcontracts to be set aside for WOSBs. While that might sound fair on the surface, in order to invoke the money set aside for this program, the contracting officer at an agency has to have a reasonable expectation that two or more WOSBs will submit offers for the job.
Sorry, no, that doesn't "sound fair on the surface". Both the idea of "setting aside" any contracting and a token amount of five percent are insulting.
I'm a white guy, so I get it: I don't have any idea how hard it is to get ahead in a white man's world, I've had everything handed to me on a silver platter, and I'm one of the oppressors keeping women and minorities down.
Little girls play with toys that don't encourage them to develop their cognitive skills as much as boy toys.
No way. Girls develop language faster and language is perhaps our most important cognitive skill. It's fundamental to pretty much every other cognitive skill we eventually develop, especially abstract reasoning.
The the point about children vs adults is right in general. I think the key that we should focus on isn't that girls should be made to play with engineering-related toys. Instead, girls and boys should be encouraged to do things for reasons other than innate love. You want to play with dolls, fine, but that's not a career. End of story. If girls were given that message, rather than "Ohh how cute! Oh everybody is so special, find something you love and you will find a career around it! Nothing is more important than being happy!" we'd have soooo much more equal representation in the workforce.
If you are a professional in a technology-related career, look at your around and do a little math. Chances are, like most workplaces, the sum of male colleagues is greater than the total female be a longshot. In fact, when it comes to gender representation in a typical IT career the data is sobering. Women hold less than 24% of tech jobs in the US and lead only 8% of new technology startups. Furthermore, overall trends suggest the gender gap is actually increasing.
How many %% of IT companies are owned by homosexuals?
hehe
Female software engineer, been in the industry past 13+ years. I can definitely vouch that sexism, while not frequent, does indeed still exist in the workforce. I have been blatantly discriminated against and to my face in regards to my gender, one company made me telemarket for them as a developer because "women sound better over the phone". The other developers initially were forced to telemarket as well but were allowed to stop. I wasn't, and when I asked why was given that response. Hm. I think it comes down to perceived attitudes more than anything else. If you want more women in IT, stop selling Barbies to little girls telling them that "math is hard". I was raised around computers, taught myself to program at aged seven. No one ever gave me the impression growing up that "only boys" are interested in computers. I was the only female to graduate with a Computer Science degree, and nineteen times out of twenty am the only female developer at my workplace. I hope that this is a generational thing and will go away with the younger folk. My advice: raise your daughters on this stuff, and don't cop out by buying that pink Barbie software crap like they need "special things" because of their gender. Let them use it and run with it like anyone else. My $0.02 worth.
Do not disturb. Already disturbed. http://www.teaaddictedgeek.com
I want a doctor that woeks in an environment that promotes diveristy.
When I see a place with only whie middle aged doctors I know for certain that the buddy club effect is taking place and that more capable people that do not fit this particular group chracteristics are being overlooked.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Women face outright hostility combined with sexism, and more often than not nothing is done about it.
My wife's colleagues often want to go to strip clubs as part of their social gatherings, and they surely would be surprised to be told such attitude does not make the workplace women friendly.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But being social (both good and bad, loving and manipulative) IS a career. The list is endless, one example being the President (not related to any skills other than riding crowds and obeying skilled handlers).
Actually, IMHO, people do need to know who they are and what they want first and foremost, not "what society needs". The latter is only good for making Nazis, or to say it more hiply, Chinese. Of course, if society were made up of people who know who they are, then what an individual wants and what makes them and their surroundings better, would probably be very close to each other. But right now, we need people who go against the grain, not people who work on the noose. IMHO we don't need girls to make the same mistakes of men and bend over.
Not that I disagree with both your initial point that "playing with toy guns" is hardly as cognitive as "playing family" (hand-eye coordination is nice, but not cognition, right?), or that girls could do with being less encouraged for *merely* being cute, and ultimately toys themselves. But on the other hand, I've never poked around with computers because I thought there's money in it, and even in my twenties I thought I'd become photographer, musician, ANYTHING but computer stuff really. I always enjoyed computers, since I'm 6, and if anyone would have told me it's the sensible thing to do, I probably wouldn't have. It was *my* thing. Now I suddenly find myself in a world where I'm a half-eyed king among the blind, just because I can look deeper than the icons on the screen, or know what a fucking URL bar is -- while others pay through their nose for not having much clue. I didn't plan this at all, but I'm not complaining.
You have no idea how many times I talk to women (all people really, men and women) and half way through my explanation they go "I'm not technical and I have no idea what you are talking about" when I wasn't even using any real difficult terminology. Its like people turn off their brains when they don't immediately grasp something. So the problem we should be looking at is why this is true for women more then men. Is it cultural? Is it something to do with how our brains process technical and logical information? I don't know.