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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.”'"
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 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.
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.
There is still a greater social expectation upon men that they must have a career. I would not expect clse to fifty-fifty participation in the absence of hiring bias as there is always a greater proportion of women who choose to focus their lives on other areas than work. The social pressure - of being valued only by what job you have - tends to drive men up the career ladder as they have little other option. (A woman who focuses on her family is "a valid choice"; a man who does so is assumed to have failed in his career.)
Pinker addresses that. In particular that about 80% of women are primarily motivated by intrinsic factors such as job satisfaction and a sense of community and cooperation at work, whereas this is only about 40% for men. About 60% of men are primarily motivated by extrinsic factors such as money, power and status, whereas that's only about 20% for women. That alone accounts for the disparity in the boardroom -- it's not that women don't have what it takes to run a company, it's just that lots of them would rather be doing something else. Pinker complains that measures such as pay or presence in the boardroom are actually buying into a male model of success, and that women are right to reject them if they want to, but with a 60/40 split amongst men it's not all that much of a male measure either. It's just that those with power and status tend to set the agenda, whatever their gender.
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