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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.
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."
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.
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?
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.
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".
...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!
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.
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.
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.
it is not a 'shortage'. it's just not a 50/50 split that is not due to irrational discrimination. this is ok, no matter what the feminists tell you because it means women are freely choosing other paths, proving that feminists got what they claimed they wanted: free will for women.
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 !
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 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.
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'--
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.
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...
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.
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
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'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.)
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? Women are lazy and greedy. Alice doesn't want Betty to become successful, she just wants some other random chick to lose the contract to her so she can make money on the backs of Betty, Carl, Doug and Ed. Though Betty won't really do much anyway, because she'll just be chatting with Alice while the other three finish the work.
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...
I believe that women don't form large numbers of businesses to bid for these contracts because of restrictions on subcontracting work on set aside contracts. I know that a small business that wins a small business contract must generally perform at least half of the labor on the contract. In particular, subcontracting the majority of the work on a small business to a large contractor is forbidden.
I assume that a woman owned small business would be forbidden to subcontract the majority of the labor on a contract to a male owned business and would need to somehow demonstrate that the owner of the company maintained control over the contract. Attempting to set up a male owned business with a female figurehead in order to win women owned small business contracts would be considered defrauding the government and would be prosecuted as a felony.
In addition, the government doesn't like to award contracts to one person companies on the promise that the company will be able to hire qualified candidates to perform the work after winning the contract. The government generally wants to see evidence that the contractor has successfully executed a similar contract in the past.
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.
"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.
"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?
Protip: the key thing about humour is to make it funny.
HTH.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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?
Why? Women are lazy and greedy. Alice doesn't want Betty to become successful, she just wants some other random chick to lose the contract to her so she can make money on the backs of Betty, Carl, Doug and Ed. Though Betty won't really do much anyway, because she'll just be chatting with Alice while the other three finish the work.
Unlike all the hard-working men who are getting on with their jobs rather than surfing slashdot.... oh.
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 )
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."
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.
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.
If I did my wife would be using my scrotum for a coinpurse.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hmm, didn't realize I posted as AC but... Nope. Those girls were at the top of the class and I was definitely in the top 4-5. Didn't think I'd have to spell it out in this topic, but I guess somebody (read, you) had to prove the well-belabored point: Guys assume the worst about women with regards to the STEM fields. My experience tells me otherwise, especially since I've found women (brilliant or not) tend not to toot their own horns in public. In fact, there are rumors that the NSA has a large number of women mathematicians: I think their hook is offering cutting edge work while being family-friendly. The downside? Never getting published/acknowledged in journals for any brilliant accomplishments; something most capable men probably can't stomache.
"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...
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.
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.
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.