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.”'"

Comments

Sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Oh come on...

[Grayhand]

There should be a quota! I'm tired of having to flirt with all the gay guys in IT. I needs me some women!

You didn't know? It's a conspiracy by gay IT guys to keep women out so you have to flirt with them. Why else do you think so many IT HR people are gay men? It's to keep out the competition.

Evidence?

[Kupfernigk]

Blanket, absolutist statements with absolutely no evidential backup? I could simply write the exact negative of your post and it would have exactly as much value (i.e. nil).

"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.