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

Oh come on...

[Frosty Piss]

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¦

Re:Oh come on...

[Kenja]

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

Re:Oh come on...

[TWX]

Historically, boys, rather than girls, were encouraged to play with computers in the, "let's take it apart and upgrade it," sense. This encourages boys through their adolescent years to play with computers themselves as opposed to just using them. These boys grow into young men with knowledge and experience that fills though few slots above the average user, ie, the exact knowledge needed for entry-level service, like fixing PCs, setting up equipment, and other things that small service companies do for revenue.

On top of that, if those companies do field work, destinations are as varied as a nice, genteel home in a good part of town, to a dirty, grimy warehouse in a bad part of town, to a construction yard, and everywhere in between. These are those places that girls and young women are generally discouraged from visiting without an escort, which is something they're not going to have when working for a small IT shop.

Entry-level IT employees may become mid-level IT employees, and some, even without college, might become high-level IT employees or even IT managers. Thing is, probably only one in ten will be good enough to be mid-level, and probably one in a hundred will be good enough to be at the top or to be a manager or owner. While it's not essential for an owner to know the ins and outs of the IT business, I can tell you from at three experiences in my career when the boss is only a businessman and doesn't know anything about performing the duties the business provides, the business generally folds or is weak with an empty suit occupying an office.

When probably less than 20% of incoming entry-level IT workers are women, and distill that to the one in ten or one in a hundred to mid and high level jobs, and you can quickly see why there are few women owners, managers, or non-college tech workers in general. While women with college degrees are certainly better represented in IT-related jobs that benefit from college, a lot of IT still lets experience replace college, which means that men still dominate if they come up through the work-experience route.

Had women been more represented in IT work through my roughly sixteen year career my life probably would have turned out differently. The few women in IT were either so hounded or so damaged that real relationships with women who actually understood my work were essentially impossible. So many of the very few women that were in the business were sexually-harassed to the point that they didn't bother to remain in IT either, instead looking for other kinds of work. To me, the lack of women is very much not a surprise.

Re:Oh come on...

[carolfromoz]

Historically, boys, rather than girls, were encouraged to play with computers in the, "let's take it apart and upgrade it," sense. This encourages boys through their adolescent years to play with computers themselves as opposed to just using them. These boys grow into young men with knowledge and experience that fills though few slots above the average user, ie, the exact knowledge needed for entry-level service, like fixing PCs, setting up equipment, and other things that small service companies do for revenue.

I don't know if it's as simple as childhood encouragement. As a 42 year old female who's been working in IT for more than 20 years you can imagine I encourage both my son and daughter to be interested in maths, science and computers. Boy loves it all and is very interested; girl does not want to know. Why is this? Maybe just natural tendencies - I don't know. Wish I did.

Re:Oh come on...

[TWX]

I don't know that I was lucky- when I broke toys I didn't get new ones. After awhile, my parents stopped fixing them for me, and I had to fix them myself. The computer was the same way, when I messed up DOS I had to figure out how to reinstall it. When I wanted a modem, I had to learn what an ISA slot was (as I only had one serial port for the aftermarket mouse), what COM ports were, what IRQs were, etc. When I wanted a 3.5" floppy, I had to learn, the hard way, that the 8088 couldn't address more than a 720K disk, so the 1.44M disks had to be taped and reformatted 720K for me to use them until I finally got a better computer. All of this expansion was purchased with my allowance- I had to save up for many months for each component.

My parents encouraged me to play to learn.

Re:Oh come on...

[TWX]

Age and physical sexual maturity probably factors in, and perceptions about the maturity of those who do play with this stuff probably also factors in. If she sees boys who play with this stuff as undesirable, either intellectually finding them immature, or sexually finding them unappealing, then she might not want much to do with the hobby because of her perceptions about them, even more than her perceptions of the hobby.

Most boys who play with computers do not become appealing to females until college age if they go to college, and sometimes later if they're not in the college setting with equally intelligent females. At that point, they're not perceived as successful. Success isn't yet measured in income or in income potential- it's measured in social performance- sports, fine arts, even academic performance sometimes. The further from the artificial environment that school fosters, the less those constructs fostered by that environment matter. Unfortunately, by then many females are well out of where this hobby-turned-career track could take them.

Re:Oh come on...

[humanrev]

Off topic, but I think the above post is an excellent example of how the lack of Unicode support in Slashdot is still retarded.

Re:Oh come on...

[Belial6]

I see this with all of my peers. They are either oblivious as to why girls pick certain things and boys others, or they believe they know why and use their children for their confirmation bias. All the while, I see every single one of them pushing their children into the predefined sexual roles that society has dictated. Even when they don't think they are doing it themselves, all of the people around them are doing it. Their relatives. The schools. The TVs. It is unavoidable.

Part of that gender message that gets ground into children day in and day out is that males MUST get a good job if they want a good life. females CAN get a good job if they want a good life. As soon as little girls begin to interact with the rest of society, it is made absolutely clear to them that they do not need to provide for themselves. There is always someone else who will do it for them.

Irrelevant of gender, you will get a lower percentage of people that have been told they don't have to work, working hard and taking less than desirable jobs. The fact that women as a group tend to gravitate towards jobs that pay less and require less sacrifice is not surprising. They are not underrepresented in these jobs because of their gender. It is because their gender is under represented in the group that is raised to believe that no one is going to pay their way through life.

It isn't a genetic problem, and the solution for under representation of women in IT isn't to do more of what caused the under representation in the first place.

If you want to see this whole thing really laid bare, look at plumbing. In IT it could be argued that everybody is equal, and thus it must be discrimination. When you look at plumbing, there are jobs were particular genders have a distinct advantage. While there are some jobs that require physical strength so a men as a group have a genetic advantage, in residential plumbing, it is incredibly common for the plumber to need to squeeze through small places. Many houses do not have enough clearance under them for an average sized man to fit. This is a field where equally competent little petite women should really shine. Every plumbing company in the country should have tiny little size 0 women working for them. Do we see this? No. Because tiny little size 0 women don't need to crawl around under dank insect infested crawlspaces. They don't need to literally crawl through human feces. So, they don't.

Again. This isn't a genetic problem, and it isn't an industry problem. It is a cultural problem that starts before the kids can even walk. (Of course, that is only if one considers it a problem at all)

Re:Oh come on...

[TWX]

Expressing interest while otherwise remaining professional in the environment isn't the problem- limiting one's contact to expressing interest a majority of the time is. That's what I've observed in computer clubs, computer classes, and workplaces. I've observed women who aren't physically touched, aren't directly solicited for sexual acts, aren't threatened with demotion or termination for a lack of sexual acts, but instead aren't respected professionally and instead are simply hit on. Their technical opinions are not solicited, their technical experience is considered irrelevant. It doesn't matter how good at their jobs they are- coworkers can't see and will not acknowledge the work they can do. It's the attitude that those around them are only going to value them for their gender difference for making a pass, regardless of what they have to contribute in the particular field.

That's the worst kind of sexual harassment of all, in my opinion, as it's the most insidious and is what truly creates "glass ceiling" and fosters the environment where egregious personal violations happen.

To me, honestly, it's okay to flirt with a coworker. Just respect that coworker's abilities and relevancy to the job, as well as any desire on their part to be left alone in this way if they request it.

Re:Oh come on...

[cffrost]

I don't know if it's as simple as childhood encouragement. As a 42 year old female who's been working in IT for more than 20 years you can imagine I encourage both my son and daughter to be interested in maths, science and computers. Boy loves it all and is very interested; girl does not want to know. Why is this? Maybe just natural tendencies - I don't know. Wish I did.

It is definitely (in part due to) natural tendencies. The same response is observed in at least one other primate species. I can't remember the specific species with which I saw this demonstrated, but when these young primates were presented with a selection of toys to play with, the females preferred dolls, while the males preferred to play with toy vehicles.

I'm pretty sure I saw this in an episode of BBC Horizon, but I don't have a reference to the particular episode. However, here are links to two articles that discuss primate toy preference:

Dorothy Lepkowska on Gender and Toys
Chimp "Girls" Play With "Dolls" Too—First Wild Evidence

Re:Oh come on...

[EEPROMS]

I can see a monty pythonish like skit on this in the making

IT Manager "yes sir as you can see 80% of our staff are female"
Govt official "are you sure, to be honest they just look like a bunch of men in skirts"
IT Manager "no I can asure you our IT staff are 80% female, just ask eeer John eerr itta any question you like"

Re:Oh come on...

[snowgirl]

Boy loves it all and is very interested; girl does not want to know. Why is this? Maybe just natural tendencies - I don't know. Wish I did.

It's less so natural tendencies, and rather a "conspiracy" of culture. Children are subjected to more gender-stereotype influence than just what they get from their parents. Nearly everything about the western culture kind of discourages women and girls from being techies, and geeks. (Any girl interested in such things would likely readily be labeled a "tomboy", I know I was...) No matter how hard a parent fights against that trend, children naturally want to conform to the rest of their gender peers... so while the actual positions themselves are less so natural, the "conspiracy" that girls want to conform to other girls, and boys want to conform to other boys, results in them all picking up certain common interests which make it difficult to distinguish from "nature".

Re:Oh come on...

[snowgirl]

Awesome post, and says everything I could say, and perhaps better than I would.

I've had to work on my own motorcycle from time to time, and my boyfriend kind of refused to help me, knowing that self-sufficiency is better than doing everything for me. However, from time to time, he would call me over with "hey, Japanese hands", because I had the tiny hands to get at/into something that his man hands were just too big to get at.

Re:Oh come on...

[DarkTempes]

Some of the above is bullshit.

Historically, as in over the past 100 years, there were periods when women were more encouraged to go into computer and periods where men were.

You have the obvious documented big names in early computing. I couldn't find any historical statistics before the late 60s though.

In the late 60s to 70s you get a rather wide range of (guesses?) that from 20% to 50% of IT workers were women.
There were popular magazine articles that featured the female programmer (though they seem pretty sexist, it still shows that women in computing was probably a social norm).

In the 80s something like 40% of IT workers were women (I see various statistics on this, from 37% of comp sci degrees in 1984 to 42% of developers in 1987).

It's only in the last 20 years that there has been this huge drop.
More women get bachelor's AND master's degrees than men, they're just going elsewhere and honestly that should be fine with society because that indicates to me that it's mostly a matter of personal choice.

Re:Oh come on...

[TWX]

There's a lot more to IT work than programming though, and I would argue that most programming isn't IT work. When I think of IT work, I think of an IT department in a company and all of the employees of that department, or IT consulting companies. Yes, company IT departments often have programmers, and if the purpose of the company itself isn't IT-oriented, then it's quite possible that many of the company's programmers are in the IT department.

At my work, I'd say of about 10,000 employees with the vast majority not being in the IT department, there are about 60 of us in it, and there are about six programmers. The rest of us are either application/server people, networking, network infrastructure, helpdesk, desktop support, or core services server support. Of this nonprogrammers group, probably 5/6 do not have college degrees, let alone degrees in computer science. The programmers, which are split about 60/40 gender male heavy, all have college degrees.

All of the IT services companies that I've worked for had no programmers of any kind with college degrees. Most had no programmers at all. The jobs of those companies was to take care of existing systems or to install systems, like Novell, NT, POSIX, etc. They also had very few women.

One small business I worked for (about 30 people) had probably 30% women programmers that weren't part of IT, 25% women in quality assurance also not part of IT (the section I worked in, three of us men, one woman), and one IT employee, who was male.

I just do not see that many women turning screwdrivers or working with device drivers. This is not college-training work by and large, and it still lags significantly.

Re:Oh come on...

[epyT-R]

Has it occurred to you that building systemic pro woman bias into the culture actually makes any existing gender bias against women's technical abilities worse? The status quo demands that men at least wonder about the actual abilities of female coworkers/bosses/hires because they don't know for sure if they earned their way, or if they were given free rides in education and in corporate life by crappy politics. These kinds of people care more about the appearance of equality than objective measurement of relevant abilities and earning respect.

Re:Oh come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many ways it's harassment. Another poster covered some of those very well. For one, simple interest isn't quite the same thing as hitting on someone isn't quite the same thing as harassing them, necessarily. A lot of it is about how it's done. A lot of it has to do with how appropriate it is, which is all about context.

Derailing a business meeting to keep saying shit like, "god, you're gorgeous" or "I'd love to show you my place" or whatever? Stupid, offensive, and really inappropriate.

The other thing that's often forgotten in these conversations? There's a big fucking difference between expressing simple interest at an appropriate time and NOT TAKING NO FOR AN ANSWER. Most people? Are pretty good at picking up the signals that say "I'm uncomfortable," "I'm not interested," "Please leave me alone". Not everyone is, but that's relatively rare, and in any case, those sentiments will usually eventually be voiced, usually, if it becomes necessary. But speaking as a woman? Too many dudes ignore all of the above, and it's not because they have trouble reading body language or understanding that "Can we just get back to project y?" or "I'm not interested," means "please stop". They just don't care. They're DUDES! How dare a woman not be FLATTERED that they want to sleep with her? Shouldn't she automatically reciprocate, regardless? They're dudes!

And if you don't believe me, listen to the rants of men who've pushed things to the point where women have to push back. It's always about the ungrateful bitches who think they're too good for anyone.

Re:Oh come on...

[mwvdlee]

Yeah, but without more women in IT, miss Wendy Frank has to compete with other companies based on quality and price.
That is somehow totally unfair to women!

Re:Oh come on...

[janimal]

The primates argument is a strong one against social conditioning. My wife and I both believe that women are genetically less apt to like certain types of work than men. Her IQ approaches a mensa measured 200 and she used to be far better at maths than I ever was, but she couldn't care less for maths or computers. She places the reason for it in that she's more interested in things she can directly apply to her life and to people she interacts with. Evidence of the superficiality of her not liking computers is that as soon as computers became a social tool, she began taking an interest in them more. She has always pushed for a better smartphone, and now she's doing a .com startup. She just isn't doing it for technical reasons, but for the interaction that she can get.

I'm the opposite: I enjoy making airplane models, or thinking up abstract things I think it helps me to understand the world, but she's right to say that I don't work at the level, where the result of my work has a direct and immediate effect on life. This post, for example is a veritable waste of my practical time.

Our conclusion is that women tend to fields that somehow include a large amount of social interaction and pragmatism, while men are perfectly fine doing things in which they can be alone and where the practicality is more removed (although not necessarily absent). More than that: women can relax in highly social work, while men are more able to relax in loner work. The ability to relax and enjoy doing something is the biggest indicator of how we are wired, as opposed to conditioned, to behave.

IT is a lot about working alone. Even though you work in teams in IT, the large majority of guys who go into IT do not like to interact with others (the typical developer drives me nuts, when I try to get him to understand how what he's doing is practical). When I build IT teams, I find that I need both social types and loner types, with an emphasis on universality of each. The team ends up consisting of someone who speaks business and is responsible for communication and a team of folks who prefer to work semi-alone and develop based on the documented requirements. It just so happens, that it's easier to find girls to fit the business analyst role than the lone developer role. The girl analysts do like IT projects, but they like them for different reasons than the guys. The girl's ability to think logically, work hard for their money and like the IT systems we produce tends to be similar to guys, but with different emphasis.

I think the resulting small amount of women in IT is simply because IT requires less social interaction than project management or sales. I find that women are no less driven, intelligent, and capable than men. They just gravitate to more social types of work, which IT often isn't.

Re:Oh come on...

[epyT-R]

So what? you want legal protection from stupid comments/people? I don't think that's really attainable without a police state, and even then... Stand up for yourself. If they think less of you because of it, they are stupid fools. If they're groping or touching you, I have no problem with you defending yourself, physically if necessary. However, your discomfort does not justify bypassing due process like VAWA and other nonsense allows. You were harassed? prove it...and if it's so bad that you're ready to sue, this should be fairly easy. Unfortunately, the definition of 'harassment' keeps expanding every year as women's groups demand zero tolerance for male behavior in growing numbers of contexts. Men will not be eunuchs for the same reason women won't be, no matter what the feminists say about social constructs.

If you've got a lot of guys harassing you, maybe your behavior is playing a role too. See this is another area that irks me: apparently men are the sole proprietors of sexual non-verbal cues and women are just helpless, molested bystanders. This just isn't true. Women started it when they set themselves up to look attractive in the first place (which 99% of women do, of course). From what they do in the morning before work, to the way they carry themselves walking down the hall or sitting in a meeting, to the way they speak, all play into this. As a male, I can tell you this: when a woman is interested, it's very obvious. when a woman is not interested, but is flattered, she is obvious, even when she vehemently denies her interest. men can see that, so they pursue. they have their nature just as women have theirs. Since I don't know how you dress or any details of your situation, I can't comment further, but this is generally what I've seen go down. This is the same thing as the highschool cheerleader that complains about guys staring when she's got nothing on but low cut shorts and a tight tshirt. She's been taught that men owe her whatever behavior she wants, when the reality is that we can't control another's behavior, only our own. Of course, what she really wants is the attention of the 'hot guys' and not the 'losers.' It doesn't work that way.

I happen to find women who take advantage of this mandated upper hand even more inappropriate than a stupid comment. I've seen more than one woman manipulate her way out of trouble she's caused by blaming a man for it (and of course the feminist trained males just believed her and he was raked over the coals for it). Another even held threat of accusation over a man as a means to gain advantage in bonuses. The more attractive the woman, the more likely this is to work, and these sorts of women use this to flatter the men whom they are sexually attracted to and/or are useful idiots, while sticking it to the guys they find unattractive/contemptuous (eg the hs example above). I have zero respect for this. If victimization is claimed by a party, it has no business opportunistically victimizing others, especially when the victim's victimizing occurs in the same context, in this case being gender discrimination.

Re:Oh come on...

[samoanbiscuit]

Children conform ALL THE TIME. Children look for scripts that other people (especially adults or older children) use and try to adapt them for themselves. How would little girls know that they're supposed to wear pink things and get married in a huge fairy tale ceremony if it wasn't shoved down their throats from the minute they appear to understand spoken words? It's in every cartoon they watch, every fairy tale they hear, and even in advertising aimed at them. Also for little boys, how are they supposed to know that they like rough play, taking things apart (only the geeky ones will try to put it back together) and almost anything to do with sports? Their parents, fellow children and the media, that's how.

Even the determined non-conformist who doesn't wear the clothes all the other high schoolers are wearing, doesn't want to go to prom because "it's like so fake!", blah blah blah . They're mostly using the same script, just as a negative rather than a positive. There are few truly original people in the world, the rest just adapt the scripts their culture give their demographic in a way that suits them.

Looking back on our childhoods, it SEEMS like we made every decision ourselves, and that our preferences were these deep innate drives that we followed, but the truth is that most of what we are today is through upbringing and experience. Genetics accounts for VERY little of the differences between the sexes.

Re:Oh come on...

[erroneus]

I don't think that is the case at all.

People most often end up being who they are. People don't "learn" to be social. They either are or are not. There is biological cause for a lot of behavior and tendency. Why do we have to pretend that women and men are equal? We see a problem with the notion that "We need more female players in the NFL!" yet because IT work is less physically demanding, women should gravitate to it.

I think before people get back on the "women in IT" thing again, it would be better to understand why so few men are good at IT and to understand the personalities (irrespective of gender) who can get it. As much as we would like to be able to "train and set lose in the workplace," it is disasterous to do so. Not everyone is cut out to be a doctor or a lawyer or an artist or anything. There are factors which go beyond simple training and skillset and move into aptitude. If a person ain't got it, they ain't got it. Adding more training or opportunity ain't gonna make it happen any better.

Speaking for myself, fixing things is a compulsion disorder. Few people have it. VERY few women have it. As much as I would like to teach people to be like me, it's not something that can be taught.

"Tomboy" labels don't generally prevent women who are of that sort from being that. So you already inherently understand the nature of the problem. Fear of being called gay doesn't prevent people from being gay. Fear of being a "geek" doesn't prevent people from being a geek. Fear of being left handed doesn't prevent people from being left handed. How much "on and on" do I need to do?

Re:Oh come on...

[alphatel]

If you want to see this whole thing really laid bare, look at plumbing. In IT it could be argued that everybody is equal, and thus it must be discrimination. When you look at plumbing, there are jobs were particular genders have a distinct advantage. While there are some jobs that require physical strength so a men as a group have a genetic advantage, in residential plumbing, it is incredibly common for the plumber to need to squeeze through small places. Many houses do not have enough clearance under them for an average sized man to fit. This is a field where equally competent little petite women should really shine. Every plumbing company in the country should have tiny little size 0 women working for them. Do we see this? No. Because tiny little size 0 women don't need to crawl around under dank insect infested crawlspaces. They don't need to literally crawl through human feces. So, they don't.

Are you on crack? My whole family is plumbers and the two factors that make it distinctly male have nothing to do with crawl spaces which are incredibly rare, and in any case, would be perfectly suitable for midgets, yet I've never met a dwarf plumber.
Plumbing is 1) dirty, and sadly women have an aversion to the stuff, breaking fingernails, etc. It's ugly, smelly and pardon the pun, shitty work. 2) You are definitely advantaged by having extra weight and/or strength. Much of the work requires carrying cargo, lifting, and turning old threads that refuse to move, or new ones that refuse to joint. Pulling boilers that weigh several tons out of a basement with nothing but a handcart?

Ultimately it is #1 that causes most women to simply walk away from any plumbing opportunity. The only ladies I have seen successfully apply to and retain plumbing jobs were in the military - where they learned on the job to deal with the difficulty of being a lady and getting dirty. So your analogy sucks. As for women in IT, more power to them. Although I walked through a Google space yesterday and I have to tell you, there wasn't a woman programmer in sight. Talk about sweatshops.

Re:Oh come on...

[epyT-R]

What the fuck dude. What. The. Fuck. Women are attractive because they are attractive. If you don't have the mental discipline to set aside sexual attraction and deal with a co-worker as a person and not a set of orifices, then it's YOU who's the problem. A woman gets harassed and you think SHE STARTED IT by being ATTRACTIVE? What is she supposed to walk around in a burqa? I for one, can enjoy the scenery without getting handsy or passing comments, and if I think something I might say or do is inappropriate, I suppose my "feminist training" kicks in, and I judge for myself whether it's appropriate or not

1. Strawman argument. ad hominem. I never said I or anyone see women as orifices. This accusation is just a stupid shaming tactic. There's a BIG difference between intrinsic attractiveness triggering occasional unwanted attention, and blatantly shining it on to manipulate, and/or prop up petty narcissism, then complaining about unwanted attention. My language made it obvious I'm talking about the latter, which makes up the majority of anecdotal examples I've seen. In fact, this kind of thing is dramatized in the media quite a bit as 'girl power' moments, complete with the woman gloating about how she managed to extract some favor from a guy.

2. It doesn't really matter who starts it because it takes both to keep it going. My example stated that she probably had a part in it if lots of guys were coming on to her. Despite what paranoid feminists claim, 99.99% of guys ARE capable of controlling themselves. I also said that 'harassment' is very loosely defined these days. To me harassment starts when it gets physical without permission. Words are irrelevant. Feminists are so busy redefining masculinity and demanding male behavior take on feminine imperatives that they haven't considered that changes in their own behavior would also benefit interaction. Examples include controlling feelings, placing insecurities in perspective, and growing thicker skins. Dishing shit is easy, and women have mastered this already. Taking it is a whole other story. This oversensitivity breeds unstable people and explosive situations that blow completely out of preportion, like this conversation. I can't even explore the topic without you immediately playing the victim and flying off the handle.

3. not a burqa, that's pretty stupid. how about not tight pants and a blouse that shows off substantial cleavage for the purpose of using her attractiveness to manipulate guys to her benefit? why dress provocatively otherwise? If she doesn't intend to attract that kind of attention, then maybe this woman should be made aware of her unconscious behavior and its consequences. While vehemently defending their empowerment as justification to act as they please without consequence, feminists sure have made sure society brainwashes guys into being ashamed for what comes naturally to them! Usually using all sorts of shaming tactics and fallacies...more than that, they made sure guys can be punished at whim like the bad dogs they are. Anyway, all rhetoric aside, it's just really hard to have any sympathy at this point. The whole situation today makes both genders behave like idiot, insecure, entitled adolescents.

So what? It's supposed to be a workplace, not the Love Boat. Once again, if you can't reign in your mating impulses, it's not someone else's problem if they can conceal theirs better. Spend some time with females in a non-"I wanna fuck you" context. Read a few books about "the male gaze".

no kidding.. it isn't the love boat. so put some clothes on, turn down the sensitivity knob and learn to put verbal rubbish in perspective, like males have had to long before there was a homo sapiens sapiens. We're all equals here, supposedly, so if they can do it, you can too. Anyway, feminists have no right to demand that men not dictate femininity while they work at redefining masculinity and male behavior to be what they want it to. It's blatantly hypocritical.

Re:Oh come on...

[epyT-R]

the problem is that whatever she says is taken as truth by default, and the males in the situation are facing guilty until proven innocent. Crapola like VAWA back this. If men are treating them this way, then they haven't earned the mens' respect. men do it to men too you know. no, they don't hit on each other, but guys who can't walk the walk when they talk the talk are similarly shunned. Of course women bitch when they aren't given immediate accolades just for existing in the room. They expect support with social interaction and consensus while men earn each other's respect with acts. This is something women don't often understand about men. They need to learn it if men and women are to survive in the work place. unfortunately feminists only care about modifying men's behavior to suit them while propping up womens' whims as intrinsic empowerment.

Re:Oh come on...

[epyT-R]

you would be correct if feminism wasn't baking pro woman/anti-man bias, which is sexism as well, into the culture while crying victim. When this is gone, then your statement would be acceptable, ad hominems and all.

Re:Oh come on...

[misexistentialist]

How is having a vagina "cultural"? Women figure out pretty quickly that they are sexually valuable by nature, and men find out that they are worthless. I guess it could be corrected "culturally" by exterminating 30%+ of men through war, or assigning 30%+ of women to work for minimum wage in brothels, but that's actually more of a "structural" solution.

Re:Oh come on...

[realityimpaired]

Irrelevant of gender, you will get a lower percentage of people that have been told they don't have to work, working hard and taking less than desirable jobs. The fact that women as a group tend to gravitate towards jobs that pay less and require less sacrifice is not surprising. They are not underrepresented in these jobs because of their gender. It is because their gender is under represented in the group that is raised to believe that no one is going to pay their way through life.

You're wrong on that point. I'm a woman who was raised to believe in a strong work ethic, always go to work, and sometimes you need to take a job you don't want in order to make ends meet. And I have had some shitty jobs in the past that I did not enjoy at all, but I took them because I needed to put food on the table and pay rent. I have never, in my life, claimed employment insurance or any of the other entitlements that we have in this country, despite being eligible for it, because I believe in fending for myself.

However, there comes a point where you reach certain minimums that let you make ends meet. Once you are able to live comfortably, you don't need more money, more wealth that you can't use. It becomes a quality of life tradeoff... do you want that extra $20,000/year if it means that you will be working 80 hour weeks with weird on-call hours, or are you willing to take a slightly smaller paycheque if it means that you can work a 40-hour week Monday-Friday, and have your weekends and holidays off? I took the latter, and it's not because I was raised to think I didn't have to work for myself, it's because I was raised to believe that quality of life is more important than bank balance. I live comfortably and have growing savings that will have me retiring by about 55 or 60, but I do it by not wasting money on things when I can have as much fun for free. I'm probably healthier for it, too, because instead of going to the movies, I'd rather go roller-blading by the canal for a couple of hours, things like that. But in balance, I think I will have a much better life out of it, because I have the time to enjoy myself, and I have a job I can leave at the office.

There is a cultural problem, but I believe the cultural problem is the emphasis that gets placed on materialism. There's a *lot* of pressure to succeed in life, and success is measured by the size of your bank balance, and by the type of car in your driveway. You must be able to out-bling your neighbours, you see.

Re:Oh come on...

[am 2k]

My wife [...] IQ approaches a mensa measured 200 and she used to be far better at maths than I ever was, but she couldn't care less for maths or computers.

Apparently she doesn't care about statistics at all, since then she would know about generalization and how a single data point is meaningless for constructing a general rule.

women can relax in highly social work, while men are more able to relax in loner work. The ability to relax and enjoy doing something is the biggest indicator of how we are wired, as opposed to conditioned, to behave.

That's actually defined by the introvert/extrovert scale, which is orthogonal to the gender. If you want to know more about that and how to cope with it, read the book The Introvert Advantage. This book is actually written by a female introvert, which shouldn't exist by your explanation.

Re:Oh come on...

[Swampash]

I've got two kids (shock horror! Slashdot poster has had sex!), a boy and a girl, and they've each had the most balanced upbringing I could give them because I'm AWARE of all this shit. I have specifically avoided, to the best of my ability, putting either of them in a gender box.

Boy: wants to play with toy trains, Super Mario Galaxy, and kick a ball around outside. Comes in scraped and bloody from some injury that he didn't think was worth telling me about. Wants to know why the motor on the little circuit board runs faster with two batteries connected. Draws for me diagrams of what look like complicated Rube Goldberg machines, until I realise he's sketching out imaginary Angry Birds Space levels.

Girl: wants to play dress-up, have some variation on a "Princess" fairy story read to her, and dance. Preferably with multiple wardrobe and shoe changes. Is by far the best nonverbal communicator, with facial expressions, gestures, and a sense of vocal inflection that her older brother still hasn't mastered.

Re:Oh come on...

[forand]

You draw this conclusion from a sample group of 2 with 2 groups? Not saying it is wrong but it seems more reasonable to conclude, from all the post here, that more data is needed to understand the issues that are creating the discrepancies. Furthermore, regardless of how genetically or socially predisposed a group is to avoid certain fields if that group represents a sizable portion of your society (i.e. women) then NOT having them in the work place can lead to some very bad internal social norms.

Re:Oh come on...

[zenyu]

As the father I see how hard the community pushes boys and girls into their gender roles. My daughter doesn't love pink because of the color, she loves it because no one calls her a boy when she wears it. She plays with cars at home, but she won't touch one when another kid is around. When she wears any dress she gets constant compliments, not so when she wears a very cute outfit consisting of a shirt and pants. And whenever we talk with other parents the talk of the "inate" characteristics of girls and boys is usually constant, even when the characteristics are obviously universal.

It doesn't just stop at childhood either, as an involved father that stayed at home for a 18 months after my kids were born I met the most sexist women I've ever encountered on the playground. Now there were many women who weren't and I wasn't the only dad around, but even a woman I knew before, who had a kid around the same time, couldn't stop herself from saying men can't do X and women always do Y when I was doing those things everyday by choice before and after my wife went back to work. Mom's groups were also extreemely unwelcoming. I understand that they might not want to talk about their breastfeeding problems with a man around but there are a plethora of things to talk about when cooped up all day with a small child. For any mothers-to-be out there, taking a vote on whether do admit me and my kids to a playdate makes you appear about as democratic as an apartheid jury deciding if I looked white enough to join you at the pool; I won't really care which way the vote goes, I don't want my children around bigots.

FYI I also see sexism alive and well when hiring in IT. At work we'd been interviewing for a programming position for months and finally found a decent candidate. I wanted to hire her and kept getting resistance and unqualified alternate prospects pushed at me. When I finally found out what the reservations were, it came down to "she'll be the only woman on the team and will be lonely" and "this job involves working late and it's dangerous for a woman to go home alone at night." I reminded them that as a woman in IT she is surely used to a male dominated workplace and the position rarely involves working very late, we could call a car service when it does as is company policy for all day-shift employees anyway. Luckilly she was hired, but we could have easily lost her to another company with the delay these unstated concerns caused.

Re:Oh come on...

[DiscountBorg(TM)]

This is a brilliant comment that really sums it up. I too have seen the same problems throughout my life. Not only in IT, but as a pat time musician (also a male-dominated field) I've met many women who, if they make it, are completely on their own. As kids they were constantly excluded from the boys club of the music jam.. or discouraged or belittled for any attempts at creativity. And if they did it was always about boys trying to get into their pants. Even as an adult, as a male, I've deliberately left projects where men deliberately turned projects into boys clubs, because I'm all the more aware of the issue now. (And I find it hypocritical, because what, you to drink and smoke doobies, and you can't do that around female musicians? Rolls eyes.)

Sexism is alive and well and rampant. Those who decry its existence are those who perpetuate it (not even intentionally, but by their sheer apathy and lack of empathy for others).

Re:Oh come on...

[Belial6]

I saw the same thing with the Mom's groups when my son was born. A single dad tried to join one of the groups my wife belonged to. About half the women started throwing a fit. They deleted their posts off the groups discussion board. Stopped going to play dates. They even went so far as to start making really nasty slanderous comments about the poor guy. Making comments to the effect of "Any man that would want to join this group must be a pervert doing it for sexual reasons." It was truly disgusting.

Damn it..

[Anonymous Coward]

They shouldn't have made the glass ceiling out of that stuff they use for ipad screens..

Re:Damn it..

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably got tired of the bullshit involved.

There are, unfortunately, no shortage of IT shops where long, effectively unpaid, hours are the norm.

I've noticed women generally don't have a bromance culture. Ergo, when an idiot boss attempts to take advantage of workers - men can be convinced that they're 'rockstars', comrades in arms, a veritable band of brothers, for putting in an eighty hour week that nets them forty hours of pay.

Women, used to the Machiavellian scheming of the fairer sex, easily spot the delusional asshattery, and GTFO.

Re:Damn it..

[Ukab the Great]

Manipulating the glass ceiling involves multiple touches, gestures, and the occasional pinch.

Bullshit.

[jcr]

"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

Re:Bullshit.

[Technician]

The requirement for 50/50 representation on the bids is the problem. The contract bid should be and even mix of the market. The current bid process gives a few companies all the entries while excluding the majority of potential clients.

This is NOT free enterprise where the best offering gets the job. What happened to hire the best? Lost to PC.

Re:Bullshit.

[ShaggyZet]

The problem with this statement is that historically and on average, female dominated industries (like nursing and teaching) don't pay as well as male dominated industries (like engineering). And when they start to, like nursing did a few years ago when there was a shortage, more and more men go into them.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this, it's the free market at work, but government contracting isn't the free market, for various reasons good and bad.

Re:Bullshit.

[fredprado]

The link you post is a pitiful badly done study and the article conclusions were tremendously overblown from data that would be inconclusive to any real scientist. Girls do not face any uphill battle. If anything it is the other way around. They are too protected. A hundred years ago most professions were inaccessible for women. Today, almost anything is accessible, but there will ALWAYS be things that are better done by one gender or another, physically AND mentally. This ridiculously demented politically correct hypocrisy that demands from us to ignore facts and reshape our perceptions of reality to conform to misguided notions is ridiculous. Things are as they are and it is past time for us to start to deal with them instead of blatantly ignoring them when they hurt our fantasies of what should be.

Re:Bullshit.

[LordLucless]

If so, then shouldn't we make sure the talent pool is as wide as possible?

What, you mean by introducing quotas to enable people who wouldn't ordinarily be competent enough to get a job to get one solely based on their gender instead? I don't think that'll have the effect you're looking for.

If a company wants better quality people, they should do one thing: raise wages. Maybe also increase annual leave, flex time, and other perks. They'll attract better people, male and female.

Re:Bullshit.

[Jedi Alec]

What can we do to make IT, development, and computer science a friendlier place for everyone?

I'm sure there are things that can be done. Whether it is a good idea to do them is a different story though.

And while we're at it, may I suggest we do the same for the less glamorous industries? Let's have more female truck drivers, female garbage disposal workers, female sewer cleaners and all the other less glamorous jobs that are male-dominated.

If we're going to work based on the presumption that it's all nurture and nature plays no role whatsoever, let's go all the way.

Re:Bullshit.

[0100010001010011]

What is the percentage of Men in elementary education, nursing, primary child care (babysitting), etc? Why aren't people all up in arms over this? Where is my equal opportunity scholarship to become an elementary school teacher? It seems my school is throwing money at women hoping that some will become engineers (and most should NOT, not because they're women but because they're just not engineers).

Not an IT problem...

[bziman]

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.

To stop being sexist, stop being sexist

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:To stop being sexist, stop being sexist

[shutdown -p now]

Affirmative action == discrimination.

The only business that government has here is to ensure that no-one is unfairly discriminated (i.e. people are turned down because of their race/sex/...). The moment government starts discriminating itself, by instituting quotas and other privileges, any pretense of equality goes out of the window, and divisions between all those artificially created groups only deepen.

Re:To stop being sexist, stop being sexist

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The only business that government has here is to ensure that no-one is unfairly discriminated (i.e. people are turned down because of their race/sex/...).

And what if government is unable to ensure that? That the cost of documenting and enforcing penalties against unfair discrimination is too high to be practical. What then? Give up? Or go for an imperfect but affordable solution?

Re:To stop being sexist, stop being sexist

[shutdown -p now]

Yeah right - that worked out REAL WELL for the non-whites in the USA in the 1950s - right? Slavery was ended in 1865 and yet it wasn't until affirmative action was introduced under Kennedy in the 60s that real change began

After slavery was ended, discrimination of blacks was still institutional - Jim Crow laws were just that, laws, enacted by state governments. The turnaround happened when federal government intervened and declared those laws unconstitutional, not because of affirmative action.

Furthermore, I have explicitly said that governments safeguard the rights of citizens, even in private deals between each other - i.e. you can't be fired or denied a job because of your race etc. But that's not affirmative action - that's just enforcing equal opportunity.

What the governments shouldn't do is announce specific groups of people protected, and enact quotas and other ways to promote those groups ahead of other groups, on the basis that they have been historically discriminated against, and now need an unfair advantage in order to "even out" things. That is segregation and discrimination, and it is no less evil when it's done in favor of the minority rather than the majority. That is what affirmative action is.

Re:To stop being sexist, stop being sexist

[khipu]

Yeah right - that worked out REAL WELL for the non-whites in the USA in the 1950s - right? Slavery was ended in 1865 and yet it wasn't until affirmative action was introduced under Kennedy in the 60s that real change began

Yes, but it has outlived its usefulness now. In the 1950's, the predominant factor for minorities being excluded from jobs was racism by employers. Today, the predominant factor are lower educational attainment, criminal records, etc. Those may or may not be caused by racism, but they are not caused by racism on the part of employers, and you can't fix them by forcing employers to do something. At this point, you should merely hold employers responsible for non-discrimination, for being race-blind.

Opposition to affirmative action on the part of whites is often presented as some kind of competition for limited jobs, but the vast majority of whites really doesn't care about that. The real problem with affirmative action is that it doesn't work and hurts the communities by failing to address their real problems, problems which occur long before minorities hit the job market.

Re:To stop being sexist, stop being sexist

[shutdown -p now]

Affirmative action tries (and still fails, if you look at how it fares in real world) to level the playing field in short term, ignoring long-term issues. So long as you keep using affirmative action, you will have to keep it going, because it doesn't do anything to solve the fundamental problem, which is the existence of discrimination in society. In fact, since affirmative action upholds and encourages segregation and discrimination, as time goes by, you will need to do more of it to even things out, not less.

It's a fast, poorly working solution to a problem that is rather best dealt with through enforced equality of opportunity, comprehensive anti-racist/sexist/discriminationist education for everyone from elementary school onward, and time. Time is crucial here. What we need is two-three generations raised entirely in a society that in no way acknowledges segregation.

Re:To stop being sexist, stop being sexist

[SydShamino]

My house, I just bought, was built in the 1940s. The filed covenants are pretty rudimentary from modern standards - can't subdivide, house must be at least 750 sq ft and worth at least $9000 - but still in the paperwork I was given is the restriction that "negros and other non-whites" can't own or live on the property - except as a servant.

In the 40s, simply no one wanted to allow blacks to live anywhere but on the east side of town. Later when such covenants were voided, income disparity kept it that way. And with income disparity comes less time with parents/grandparents at home to help newborns get the jump start they need in education. Now the state closes schools that don't perform well - you guess it, in the "traditionally black" areas - so those kids end up getting bussed around further. Obviously there are some people so naturally gifted that they can succeed in any situation, and those people have "escaped" this cycle and do fine. But on average I don't think we've evened things up from institutional discrimination yet, so we still have to keep pushing on things to get them aligned.

The people who wrote and signed those original covenants are long dead and buried; not buying the house from its Nth owner because of that would have been pointless.

Also I'm posting to fix a mistaken moderation elsewhere in the thread.

Re:To stop being sexist, stop being sexist

[SydShamino]

Affirmative action isn't intended to fix discrimination. Affirmative action is intended to fix the income gap caused by past discrimination. Fix that, and neighborhoods will integrate because the only way left to legally discriminate against anyone is via wealth. With integrated neighborhoods and (mostly) integrated schools and playmates, discrimination will (mostly) die away for that generation.

Re:To stop being sexist, stop being sexist

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Discrimination is evil, period. It doesn't matter if it's affordable or not, it's plain wrong - not just "imperfect", but fundamentally wrong.

Seems to me that you are avoiding the question of WHY discriminiation is wrong. Simply stating that it is fundamentally wrong without a rationalization for why it is wrong isn't particularly useful. Sure, it is nice and simple to say that and ignore the whys, but it isn't really all that helpful to getting us to a place that fixes the problems that discrimination causes.

So long as you make discrimination hard (not necessarily impossible - just requiring an effort, and shameful if you're discovered), it will be more and more marginal as time goes by, and so there will be less of it.

That there is the problem with your analysis, you think that it is feasible to make discrimination hard. That, I contend, is an unfounded assumption. So unfounded that we even have a name for discrimination that is not feasible to prevent - soft bigotry. The majority of discrimination in the US is the soft kind because it is so incredibly hard to prove.

The fundamental problem with affirmative action is that it emphasizes the existence of distinct groups separated by some objective factor.

Emphasizes or recognizes? Your position sounds a lot like "if we ignore it, it will go away." My experience has been that there is no one more bitter than someone facing the loss of unearned privilege. No matter how you do it, any attempt to take away that unearned privilege is going to provoke all kinds of nastiness.

Re:To stop being sexist, stop being sexist

[shutdown -p now]

Affirmative action is a way to give minorities and women the opportunity to succeed and show the prevailing stereotypes are incorrect. In acts as an anti-segregation force. Increasing diversity in the workforce and in higher education is similar to anti-discriminating education. If you see and interact with people who are different than you but perform at the same level; you are compelled to rethink whatever stereotypes you might hold.

Except that's exactly what's not happening. Take this case. Suppose that they now start forcing N% of contracts to IT businesses run by women. Now there aren't many such businesses (regardless of the reason), which means that competition for that N% is going to be lackluster - heck, it's spelled out in TFA, pretty much. Which means that they'll have to sign on anyone who comes and satisfies the criteria just to fill that position - and the likelihood of them being good at is going to be low, precisely because there were no competition. You think the people who are forced to hand out tasks to people based on some arbitrary politically correct criteria of the day - rather than anyone who's good at it, regardless of anything else - aren't going to be bitter about it? Even if they weren't sexist before, you think this kind of experience is not going to make them believe the stereotypes are actually true?

When you're targeting some group with affirmative action, all that does in terms of education is re-enforcing the stereotypes - "X can't succeed on their own without an unfair advantage". Worse, it encourages picking token representatives just to satisfy the quota, who are not necessarily even good at it (because their job, in effect, is not to be good - it's to satisfy the quota). And even if they do get someone who's good, it won't really help with the stereotypes - it'll be explained away as "well, there was that one good guy I know". In other words, an exception rather than rule. Because, again, if it was the rule, common sense dictates that quotas wouldn't be needed.

Re:To stop being sexist, stop being sexist

[shutdown -p now]

Seems to me that you are avoiding the question of WHY discriminiation is wrong. Simply stating that it is fundamentally wrong without a rationalization for why it is wrong isn't particularly useful. Sure, it is nice and simple to say that and ignore the whys, but it isn't really all that helpful to getting us to a place that fixes the problems that discrimination causes.

It's wrong because it violates the fundamental assumption that all people are born (or created, if you're a deist/theist) equal.

That there is the problem with your analysis, you think that it is feasible to make discrimination hard. That, I contend, is an unfounded assumption. So unfounded that we even have a name for discrimination that is not feasible to prevent - soft bigotry. The majority of discrimination in the US is the soft kind because it is so incredibly hard to prove.

Um, are you saying that we have not been successful in making discrimination significantly harder than it was, say, 60 years ago?

I realize that you can't enforce non-discrimination in all spheres of social life. Or rather you can, but only in a truly totalitarian society. My argument is rather than you don't need to enforce it so long as people themselves don't see a reason to discriminate. Preconceived discrimination is inherently irrational - it's a fluke of one's cultural upbringing. Fix the culture, and you'll fix the problem. Education goes a long way towards solving this.

Emphasizes or recognizes?

Emphasizes, and sometimes even creats. For example, in U.S., there's this weird "race" named Hispanic. To me, as a foreigner, it's obvious bullshit - there's no more difference between "white" and "Hispanic" than there is between, say, Finnish and Greek. Yet Americans themselves do seem to treat it as if it made some magical difference. Of course, this also goes for white/black, and most other superficial distinctions.

However, when government takes those superficial societal divisions, and puts them into law (every U.S. govt form with personal info that I've seen includes a field regarding one's race - why? - and "hispanic" is one of the options - why???) - even if it's done to "equalize" the divided groups - it sets that division forever into stone. It all but tells people that, yes, the way they are categorizing folk in "like me" and "not like me" is valid, so long as they don't discriminate against "not like me" - at least insofar as it is under purview of the law. It's exactly the same notion as in "separate but equal". I hope I don't need to explain why that never works.

y experience has been that there is no one more bitter than someone facing the loss of unearned privilege. No matter how you do it, any attempt to take away that unearned privilege is going to provoke all kinds of nastiness.

The remaining "privileges" these days are not at all obvious. I recognize that some bias remains and constitutes an advantage, but you have to be consciously aware about it to expect it. If you raise kids to believe that artificial divisions do not matter, they won't expect special treatment when they grow up. On the other hand, if you raise kids in an environment where being of the "protected class" entitles you to, say, some obvious and material advantages like priority admittance to the university, they will take that lesson to heart, and will retain the ability to make that distinction for the rest of their lives (and then they will be bitter when you take away their privileges - or rather give privileges to someone else).

Re:To stop being sexist, stop being sexist

[AK Marc]

Affirmative action tries (and still fails, if you look at how it fares in real world) to level the playing field in short term, ignoring long-term issues.

What do you think AA is? Quotas and preferences? At the most basic, it's requiring documentation that proves non-discrimination. Not a requirement for "equality" in numbers or pay, but in treatment. If a white person walked in with that resume, are they treated the same as a black person with that same resume?

In real world studies (even in the world of Affirmative Action) then answer is "no". The black people with the same resume will be less likely to be interviewed (well, in the case of the one I read, they used "ethnic" names, rather than identifying race, so Shaniqua wouldn't be interviewed, but Jane would be - no word on whether Bubba Billy Joe Jr. the third would get an interview).

a problem that is rather best dealt with through enforced equality of opportunity,

That's what affirmative action is.

My favorite is when people like Bush Jr. come out against AA because they think nobody should get something based on who their daddy is, but should be judged on their own actions. When AA for whites ("legacy") is the only thing that got him in Yale. Does nobody else see the irony and hypocrisy?

The real issue here...

[jcr]

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

Re:The real issue here...

[X0563511]

Unfortunately you cannot know the quality of the output until the output is made.

If you toss out the "lowest bid" in an attempt to get better quality, you're merely going to get the same low bidders artificially enlarging their bids to provide said illusion.

I don't have a solution. I'm merely pointing out how difficult paying attention to that metric would be.

This is what the government does...

[intertrode]

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 owned, veteran owned etc = junk

[MobyDisk]

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.

Re:Women owned, veteran owned etc = junk

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely true. A relative of mine had a company in an obscure (and utterly mundane) line of work relevant to the interests of various government agencies. The nominal owner was a female veteran of mixed black/native american heritage whose sole role was to collect a percentage of the contracts awarded via these set-aside programs. She had nothing to do with the creation or operation of the business, but was recruited for this "role" specifically for her demographic characteristics.

I did not have the sense that this scenario was in any way uncommon among small-time government contractors.

eh?

[Lips]

"The Shortage of Women In IT"

How tall do they need to be?

Not true...

[kenh]

"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."

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.

Re:Not true...

[wisnoskij]

Well that would be true if women owned companies were inherently inferior and unable to compete and therefore need special treatment. The rest of the article seems to imply that is the authors opinion.

Re:Not true...

[X0563511]

Aaah, affirmative action: "they cannot help themselves, we must take care of them"

2 problems here.

[gimmebeer]

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.

Waaaah! I Don't Get Enough Federal Aid!

[Jane Q. Public]

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.

Re:That's nothing

[kenh]

Shhh - The Gov't will force them to include men in 5% of the lesbian scenes...

Further clarification.

[khasim]

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!

Not surprised

[rabbit994]

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.

the issue is bigger than article suggests

[epyT-R]

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.

Quota system = degradation of standard

[Taco Cowboy]

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

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[InspectorGadget1964]

I like them (women) in my private life, but for work, I like to be working with people that are capable, gender is superficial and irrelevant.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[serviscope_minor]

When quota system is imposed on anything you will see the effect - end product is almost guaranteed to be inferior

What you say is true, unless there is actually a significant bias present. If it undoes the bias, then ti won't necessarily make standards go down, it could even make them go up.

[citation needed] below, but I've lost the reference.

I did read a study about geneder discrimination in academia, normalizing out for all different subject areas. Bottom line, everywhere except the USA (which has significant positive discrimination), women need significantly better track records to get the same job. In the USA with all its quotas etc, it's about the same.

It would be tough to argue that standards have gone down as a result, as hiring is now done from an effectively larger pool of applicants with the same qualifications and skills.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[HertzaHaeon]

The bias and prejudice that keep women out of IT could be said to be an informal quota system for men. That too should lead to an inferior product.

Diversifying doesn't necessarily mean a quota system, and it can very well be profitable. Like for IBM.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[digitig]

Do you have evidence that there is bias and prejudice keeping women out of IT, rather than, for instance women tending not to want to go into IT for other reasons? In The Sexual Paradox, Susan Pinker presents a lot of evidence for such other reasons (and complains about the widespread "infantilisation" of women which assumes that women are not fit to make their own career choices), although it's possible that there might be bias and prejudice as well.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[ETEQ]

The point is that claiming a quota system "always" leads to degradation of standards is a blanket statement that ignores the fact that some quota systems are designed to cancel out inefficiencies that already exist. The original Taco Cowboy point is based on an over-simplified view of reality (that the "default" lacks any sort of biases).

  But I think it's incredibly obvious that there's a bias against women in any male-dominated field, just as there's a bias against men in female-dominated fields. No one can reasonably claim that society doesn't apply a lot of gender roles in every aspect of a person's life, so any task dominated by one gender will by nature be harder to get at for the other, because the context the minority group has as less applicable.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[digitig]

But I think it's incredibly obvious that there's a bias against women in any male-dominated field, just as there's a bias against men in female-dominated fields. No one can reasonably claim that society doesn't apply a lot of gender roles in every aspect of a person's life, so any task dominated by one gender will by nature be harder to get at for the other, because the context the minority group has as less applicable.

The "Sexual Paradox" Pinker talks about is that as women get more opportunities the number of women in traditionally male roles increases, then as they get more opportunities still it falls again, though not to original levels. My interpretation of her analysis is that the downturn happens when women's choice outweighs the effect of the bias, and this has happened in most professions in most developed countries. So although the bias probably still exists in places, it is not the dominant factor in determining the male/female ratio in most professions. Yes, it's good to tackle that bias where it exists, but the effect is unlikely to be significantly more women in those jobs (which is what tokenism attempts to address) but is more likely to be a better working environment for women. In other words, we're using the wrong measures and the result is that we're drawing the wrong conclusions and formulating the wrong policies from them.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[kdemetter]

Not to mention how degrading it must be for the women he actually want an IT job : to be hired not for your competence, but because you are a women.
Quota's are sexist.

Also, I have never seen quota's the other way around ( there are jobs which typically are occupied by a lot of women and only men ) .

Just hire the most competent person for the job, regardless of gender or sexual preference.

On the other hand, women and men often have different viewpoints, so it can be an advantage to have both men and women in a team.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[AmiMoJo]

There are other explanations for the decline. For example as maternity rights have increased and employers have been faced with a well paid and highly skilled worker taking a year off in the middle of their career there has been some reluctance to hire women in the first place. Scare stories about frivolous sexual harassment lawsuits and so forth have not helped either.

There has been a bit of a backlash against women in the workplace, especially in skilled roles.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[jimbolauski]

The point is that claiming a quota system "always" leads to degradation of standards is a blanket statement that ignores the fact that some quota systems are designed to cancel out inefficiencies that already exist. The original Taco Cowboy point is based on an over-simplified view of reality (that the "default" lacks any sort of biases).

But I think it's incredibly obvious that there's a bias against women in any male-dominated field, just as there's a bias against men in female-dominated fields. No one can reasonably claim that society doesn't apply a lot of gender roles in every aspect of a person's life, so any task dominated by one gender will by nature be harder to get at for the other, because the context the minority group has as less applicable.

That is not bias, bias is not hiring a female in the IT field because they are female, it's impossible to determine if the reason there are so few women enter the field is because of societal pressures or simply because women are not as interested in the field. The claim that society steers women into other fields early in a child's life is irrelevant because once they are adults they will not have the skills of their male peers, and thus would be inferior. A quota system can not undo these problems, you simply can not make up for a decade of missed education opportunities and fix it by making the path easier.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[jellomizer]

I am guessing the moderators didn't get your reference of the talking Barbie Doll.

But I think that is root of the problem. While woman are going into college in record numbers, most of them are not going into majors required by high demand fields which require Math and Science. With the exception of Biology, most Science degrees are still men only. It isn't that woman cannot do the work, but because culture has told them that they shouldn't do it.

Don't blame the men, it isn't just the men, it is peers too, if a woman decides to go into a math intensive science, their peers will try to dissuade them. If they like Mathematics they have to be quite about it.
Even look at the ITT commercials, most of them are about Men, the few that have women, the woman tend to be rather masculine, with lower voices. Our culture is setup to dissuade woman from math.
I have actually worked with a lot of Woman IT workers. However most of them are near retirement age. I fond woman IT workers to be able to do their jobs very well, however it is different on how men do the work. For men IT is about building and concurring, for women it is about fixing and solving. I find that woman IT workers are happier in managing existing code, man are happier with building new code.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[digitig]

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.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[L4t3r4lu5]

Gender, ethnicity, religion, educational background, sexuality, OS choice... All moot unless quota-mandated by the government.

True diversity in the workplace does not come from employing (e.g.) 1 in every 10 female or non-caucasian by law. It achieves nothing, while harming business, patronising those you shoehorn into jobs, and is prejudiced against those who, through no fault of their own, are the statistically common gender/race/body type to apply for that position.

It is all bullshit. Best person to apply for the job is all that matters.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[RobertLTux]

you can blunt the effect of maternity leave by doing some planning and having a good protocol for dealing with such things

1 run your shop with N "spare" workers (i would bet that you won't have a group of females all out on leave at once)
2 have a good "remote" work policy (telecommuting is a good thing)
3 have some sort of semi-onsite daycare (cut a deal with a daycare nearby??)
4 write the policies out so that guys can have a block of personal leave also.

heck the same sort of planning used for Maternity Leave (or any Family Leave) is a subset of your Disaster Planning (since out dealing with a new kid and out because you got run over by a bus is the same thing for business purposes).

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[drinkypoo]

Scare stories about frivolous sexual harassment lawsuits and so forth have not helped either.

So long as the laws are specifically unequal (for example it is illegal for a man to lean over a woman in California, but not vice-versa. I've been hit with boobs against my will as a result of these policies! Good thing I'm not a little bitch) you will continue to hear scare stories.

There has been a bit of a backlash against women in the workplace, especially in skilled roles.

Some women want special treatment because they're women and some women don't want special treatment positive or negative and unfortunately the goals of these two camps collide and there seems to be no rational way to serve them both equally at once.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[nbauman]

So you'd prefer to have the doctor who is there because he got into medical school through his father's connections? That's the way it is in much of medicine.

The reason the Supreme Court finally allowed making race a consideration is because they heard evidence about the alumni's son preference.

There used to be a lot of medical schools that had quotas on Jews. There were medical schools that didn't accept blacks at all.

I've met a few black doctors and they're very good. There are a lot more blacks who worked twice as hard as a white guy to get through medical school than there are incompetents who got in through quotas.

There aren't a lot of black doctors in America. About 10% of the American population is black, and about 5% of doctors are black. The reason for that is clearly 100 years of slavery, and 100 years of Jim Crow. Black people couldn't even vote in most of the South until around 1968, and they're still having trouble. Black schools were segregated and inferior in the South.

I think people who suffered violations of their rights like that should be compensated. If you want to give $1 million to everyone who suffered because his ancestor was a slave, and forget about affirmative action, that would be fair. Unfortunately restitution doesn't seem to be politically possible. As a compensation, there are a few affirmative action programs, but they don't really provide that much. It's better than nothing.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[Darinbob]

You get diversity by getting rid of sexist and racist employees too. Too many IT shops have a tendency towards scaring off the women with bad attitude and then pretending that nothing is wrong by saying "they need a thicker skin". The best person for the job often doesn't want a job working with troglodytes. And IT definitely seems to have more all-male departments than many other software or engineering jobs I've seen.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[nbauman]

You raise more points than I can answer, but let's start with the Jews.

I'm Jewish. I read the sociology books and the history books. I worked for Jewish organizations.

The Jews continually demanded handouts -- and got them. That's one of the reasons they succeeded.

The big wave of Jewish immigration was during and after WWI. The established German Jewish immigrants set up an elaborate social services system, which supported all the Jews with housing, work, education, and welfare if necessary.

New York City was heavily Jewish, and the City set up social services modeled on the Jewish (and Catholic) systems. Most significantly, they had City College, where anyone with good grades could get a free college education.

Fast forward to 1980. Ronald Reagan was president, and he put a lot of pressure on the Soviet Union to allow Soviet Jews to emigrate. That alone was a privilege, because people from other countries -- like Mexico -- weren't able to immigrate as freely. I was living in Brooklyn at the time, and I met a lot of Soviet Jews. They got a pretty good reception. They got welfare, housing, education, job training, and job placement. It was easier for Soviet Jews off the boat to get a college education then than it is for college students today.

A (black) friend of mine worked for the welfare department. She said that the Soviet Jews came in with a sense of entitlement -- America owed them welfare. They demanded welfare.

I know where they were coming from. It's a Jewish tradition that the community has an obligation to provide for your welfare and get you a job.

To their credit, a lot of Jews extend this tradition to mean that the community has an obligation to provide for the welfare of everyone, and that's why Jews who became secular and joined the broader community have been so active in demanding the same rights for everyone else.

Prime example: The Jews were prominent in the Civil Rights movement. They basically taught the blacks how to demand and get the same thing the Jews were getting.

On the other hand, there were Jews who didn't have that social concern for others. There's an ultra-religious orthodox community in New York City that has developed a political machine which trades bloc voting for handouts. Rudolph Giuliani had a "liason to the Jewish community" named Bruce Teitelbaum, who was in the middle of some of the worst welfare corruption in New York City, and nobody was held to account. The Orthodox Jews had families of 5, sometimes 8 children, and milked the welfare system for all it was worth. They had offices which helped people apply for welfare and get as much as they could. Teitelbaum's friends were setting up phony day care centers, and getting paid with government money for salaries of employees who didn't exist. The New York Daily News had some exposes. You can Google "Bruce Teitelbaum" and get the stories.

One of the starkest examples of hypocrisy was the favored treatment of German Jewish slaves in Nazi Germany during WWII, compared to the black slaves in America. Our government used every lever of manipulation to get more compensation from the German and Swiss government for Jewish slaves (even though most of the money didn't go to the same people who were slaves or their descendants, and huge fees were diverted to lawyers). They demanded it and they got it. However, no major politician has supported compensation for black slaves.

So I'm sick and tired of that excuse, "the Jews did it, why can't the blacks do it?" If (when) the blacks had the same government handouts and opportunities that Jews did, they were as successful as the Jews. And the Jews have in general wanted to share their success with everybody else.

Unfortunately the conservatives have taken over this country and they're busy destroying the government social system that made this country so successful.

Re:Quota system = degradation of standard

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The sad part about that was that the average serf had more rights than the average American does today. Yes, they were owned by the local lord, but he couldn't sell them; their ownership was tied to the land. He could sell the land and the serfs that went with it, but owning the land meant 100% responsibility for the health and welfare of the serfs. If a lord failed in this duty, chances are he'd be killed by his own guards.

Just try to get to any of the governmental or business owners that own the average American worker today. You won't get within any successful attacking range of any of them.

Women not underrepresented among rent-seekers

[russotto]

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.

Slashdot...

[tpstigers]

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.

Re:Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of problems with the "Women make less than men for the same work", but I'm going to point out the easiest and most obvious here.

Basic logic dictates that if women made $0.77 per hour, while men received $1.00 per hour, then businesses would hire ONLY women to save on salaries. In this age of businesses trying to shave PENNIES off their bottom lines, do you really think they'd continue to pay an extra $0.23 per hour just to maintain the "Old Boys" club. If such a "club" actually exists anymore, do you think that a man that has to worry about his pay against what a woman earns is going to be a part of it? Explain to me how men get any jobs, anywhere, given what you're shoveling right now, then I might give your point some attention.

Re:Slashdot...

[dristoph]

Bullshit. I grew up in a single-wide trailer in Kansas. When the season came around, everyone in the trailer park and their dogs and babies had to huddle up in an underground tornado shelter which lacked drainage and would steadily fill with water under the torrential rain. Last time I was in there, the water was damn near my waist by the time we were cleared to go home. I'm not saying it wasn't nice to at least have that shelter, but the fact is, I'd seen enough to know without a doubt that my family was living in poverty.

Now I have an office in SOMA in San Francisco as the co-founder of a bootstrapped startup. It wasn't entirely easy getting here, but I can't say it was all that hard either. It just felt natural the whole time. All I did was work on my interests until I could build something I could be proud of; doing that helped me to build an impressive resumé without so much as a 2-year college degree.

Would it have been easier had I been born into a middle- or upper-class family? Honestly it's hard to say. I think being poor taught me to be resourceful with what I have, which could actually be a great advantage. Would it have been harder had I been born black or a woman (or a black lesbian woman)? Well that's just impossible for me to answer.

What I will say is this: Whatever the magnitude of discrimination there actually is out there, for every person putting their energy into shouting loudly about how their attributes make their life harder, there's someone else out there with the exact same attributes furthering their education, skills, and careers, working steadily toward a position where they can have an infinitely greater impact on the condition of their group within society.

Re:Slashdot...

[rabbit994]

I can. On average, women work less then men and take time off for a family. So in most cases, they are paid less then men because they don't work as much as men. There are many studies that show that women who work the same as men, same hours and experience because they haven't taken any time off work for family, they make same as men.

Re:Slashdot...

[serviscope_minor]

Bullshit.

You call bullshit, then you go on to freely state that you simply don't know.

Congratulations. You are one of those rare intelligent, motivated self startes who can drag yourself up from poverty and become a success. That's great and the world could do with more people like you.

Because, most people aren't like you.

Perpahps for you, being poor taught you to be resouceful. That's good. You're one of those that can learn very easily. But have you kept in contact with all those single-wide trailer park dwellers that you grew up with? I'd bet that for almost all of them, growing up poor taught them one thing: how to be poor.

Re:Slashdot...

[firewrought]

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.

Some of it's gender discrimination. Some of it's the tendency for men to spend more time working on their career (and less time on personal health, childcare, and other familial obligations). Some of it is the tendency for men to take larger risks than women... leading to raises and promotions or outright failures (and when you get struck from the payrolls, I'm betting they don't factor your zero cents on the dollar into the pay equality metrics). Some of it may be men demanding more pay and women demanding more flexibility. Some of it may be other factors beyond an employer's control, such as a male salesman being perceived as more competent than a female one by biased customers. Some of it (when it comes to IT specifically) may be that men are more likely to be consummate loners who find themselves programming (and *cough* writing slashdot comments) at 4AM in the morning.

Affirmative action and equal pay laws seem like good solutions when the discrepancies are mainly a result of employer discrimination. They seem ill-suited when the discrepancies largely arise from personal choices, cultural upbringing, and biological tendencies that are beyond an employer's direct influence. If that's the case, then you're probably going to make society pay detrimentally more for goods and services in the long run by instituting policies that artificially equalize the numbers. Is that the case? I don't know. I've seen outright gender discrimination (a religious institution where "men are suppose to be the breadwinners for their families"), and then I've seen a very "progressive" company where hiring is done pretty much on a personality interview with no evaluation of merit... because evaluating on merit might accidentally be discriminatory. Neither philosophy seems moral to me, but--at the risk of sounding like a cultist of the free market--I'm skeptical that a policy approach will be cost-effective.

motivation for affirmative action

[khipu]

Affirmative action == discrimination. The only business that government has here is to ensure that no-one is unfairly discriminated

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.

Re:motivation for affirmative action

[SuperKendall]

Affirmative action was created to redress past discrimination.

Yes it was. And now we know it doesn't work. Yet we continue to pile discrimination on top of discrimination, in the mad hope that moreArtificially discrimination will lead to less.

That must stop, for discrimination itself will naturally go away with familiarity. inducing discrimination ensures it remains.

Re:Total sausage party

[Anonymous Coward]

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'--

Such crap...

[downhole]

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?

Errrr....Yeah I don't think so.

[Vermifax]

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.

Genetics probably does play a role

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:Genetics probably does play a role

[TWX]

Veterinary medicine for pets is a fairly new phenomenon, and if the books of James Herriot are to be believed, evolved from livestock veterinary practices. Livestock practices were extremely difficult, dirty, and outright disgusting at times, with veterinarians literally stripping nude to the waist to avoid destroying clothes or leaving clothes bits inside animals when they had to reach into digestive systems or reproductive systems to perform. Obviously for a long time, even men weren't generally socially acceptable while shirtless, and women have been even less-so, continuing to this day. This, plus the physical nature of working with very large, very strong animals that might violently resist the veterinarian would certainly cause problems for women in the industry.

Small animal care, on the other hand, does not favor strength or the ability to get one's upper body into a large animal's cavities. If anything, like your plumbing example, there are situations where surgeries and other medical operations would be better carried out by small hands and small fingers due to working on small creatures.

Back to IT, and your comments on women potentially being unfairly forced away from it, I feel that sexual harassment is a major, major problem with discouraging girls and women from being interested. Unfortunately when boys don't get a lot of interaction with girls, it's difficult to regulate their behavior so that they don't harass. In non-workplace environments it's extremely difficult to control sexual harassment. Schools, clubs, Internet discussions, etc, all very, very hard to prevent sexual harassment if those present choose to do it. Can't fire them, can't really discipline them, etc. So, they drive girls and women away.

Re:Genetics probably does play a role

[Anonymous Coward]

Many Americans (and I am one) make the mistake of thinking that "You have the OPPORTUNITY to be whatever you want to be," means "You CAN be whatever you want to be." If you don't try then failure is guaranteed. Women as a group are just less interested in the IT field than men are. That's the only reason why there aren't more. I'd love to see more of them in it too; I just reject the notion that it's because of sexism.

Re:Genetics probably does play a role

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel that sexual harassment is a major, major problem with discouraging girls and women from being interested. Unfortunately when boys don't get a lot of interaction with girls, it's difficult to regulate their behavior so that they don't harass.

The problem is that our society has decided that it's OK for a female to engage in a Mating Display and expect the males to not respond. So the women are driven away by the unwelcome responses. The other problem is that in many cases the males involved are not the Alpha's who draw the female's primary interest- those guys are out playing football or working in management. So regardless of harassment, the females are drawn out of the profession because there aren't any suitable candidates for mating.

We vastly underestimate the role of sex and Mating in our society. We pretend it doesn't matter... it does. We pretend that a couple who are dating or married have "eyes only for each other" but that is also bullshit; despite traditions and cultural taboos, both genders are constantly on the lookout for a different partner. The females are always looking to trade up for a better Male, and the Males are always looking for more females to mate with. It's the elephant in the room that nobody wants to address- the idea that we should all become asexual drones seems to be the current thinking on how men and women should act in society.
There seems to be a lot of people promoting the idea that the male should have to "control himself" in responding to sexual triggers, but that women should NOT have to control themselves in sending them. Until we get such double standards addressed in our culture, we'll continue to see gender gaps in a lot of professions, not just IT.

Re:Genetics probably does play a role

[AK Marc]

Sexual harassment can't factor in. Why? Because career choices are made before "sexual harassment" exits. Harassing girls because they are girls isn't "Sexual harassment" (in the original definition, as the new one includes bad body odor, regardless of gender, as sexual harassment, making the phrase useless, which is why I refuse to acknowledge it.)

Re:Genetics probably does play a role

[misexistentialist]

That's because you define harassment as something men do to women. Women are equally likely of harassing men, just in a more passive-aggressive female way. The difference is that their behavior is entirely accepted. Women are also overly invested in their feelings and entitlements and when they don't interact enough with men in the real world they become wilting flowers and PC harpies. In a male-dominated office they can never feel comfortable unless the whole thing is rearranged around them personally; on the other hand there is no way for a male to fit into a female-dominated office.

Re:Genetics probably does play a role

[erroneus]

Bravo sir. Bravo. That's right up there on the list of things I wish I had said myself. Too bad it was posted "AC."

Re:Genetics probably does play a role

[Vanderhoth]

on the other hand there is no way for a male to fit into a female-dominated office.

I don't know if that's completely true. There are 4 guys that work in my wife's office with her and about 30 other women, but you're pretty well on the mark about it being acceptable for women to harass men and not the other way around. I've been in my wife's office once when we took our new daughter in to visit my wife's coworkers and was there when one of the guys was called "sugar cake" and one of the older women slapped him on the ass. He didn't seem to mind and just harty-har-hared it up with the girls. It was obvious I was more offended than he was. If that kind of behavior was taking place in my office, regardless of weather it was a man or women, it would have reported and at the vary least the verbal offender would be retaking our mandatory sensitivity training and the physical offender would have been suspended without pay.

I was also treated very rudely and, to my wife's embarrassment, said I was strictly there as the muscle to carry the car seat and would rather be ignored. I meant to say it jokingly, but is seemed to quickly snap the women making cat calls and remarks you'd expect a trucker to make to a pretty waitress at a truck stop back in line. Later my wife and I were told I wouldn't be allowed to visit again because "I didn't know my place" and "had over inserted my penis upsetting some of the other women". Yes my wife's manager said "penis", she was obviously upset and red in the face. If it was because of the way her employees were behaving or that I wasn't willing to let them poke fun at me, I don't know. Unfortunately my wife is the one taking the punishment, while her friends are still talking to her most of the other women are shunning her now because she "can't keep her hubby in line", which is killing her and that is the only reason I wish I had kept my mouth shut. Currently she's looking for another job while out on maternity leave, if that fails we plan to try and get her pregnant again before she goes back so she work the minimum amount of time and have another year of leave to find another job.

Because women are smarter than men...

[HockeyPuck]

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...

Your facts are wrong

[SuperKendall]

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.

Quick primer on Bell curves

[Okian Warrior]

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.

Wrong, it's close to zero not just less

[dbIII]

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.

A shortage of interested women

[Grayhand]

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.

Re:Total sausage party

[Jane Q. Public]

"... 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.

Re:Read up on geek feminism

[snowgirl]

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.

I like how you put this. "The environment that exists in the treatment of females means that I would not put a woman that I care about in that field"... says a lot. Thanks for your appreciation.

Re:That's nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

I am intrigued by your idea, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

I've done ~60 interviews so far

[melted]

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.

Re:Women opt out via pregnancy

[serviscope_minor]

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.

I think you've been duped. Do you know how many of those women took a few months off, then went to get a job elsewhere? Why on earth would they come back to a company with such pathetrically bad working conditions?

If the company made you work those massive hours and didn't give you any extra compensation, then you've been thoroughly had. Working on a really dreadful project isn't any better experience (apart, of course, from the experience in being on a really bad project) than working on a good one.

And if you have that experience, why haven't you quit to get a primo job? If they haven't given you a lot of compensation in leiu (i.e. share options) then you owe them no loyalty.

Re:Evidence?

[icebraining]

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.

So fucking tired of this bullshit. Parent spoke against quotas, not women. That argument is a complete strawman.

The point is that if you put quotas instead of fixing the underlying issues, you'll make the problem worse. Women in general still won't want to go to IT, and the ones that already do will be even less respected than they are now because they won't be able to prove their value by competing with all their peers.

Re:Evidence?

[TheRaven64]

Wow, way to miss the point. If you have 10 applicants for 2 posts, 8 from one group and 2 from another and you have a quota that says you have to hire at least one from the second group, then what is the result going to be? If you have no quotas, then you will hire the two best qualified. If you assume that there is no intrinsic difference in abilities between the two sets, then there is a 20% chance that you will end up with one from the second set. If there is a quota, then there is a 100% chance that you will end up with one from the second set, meaning that there is an 80% chance that you will end up with someone less qualified with the quota than without.

This then leads back to an ugly feedback cycle, where people are aware that the person in the second group is there instead of someone more qualified (see the caste quota system in India for examples of this) and so they grow to resent people from that group and, importantly, don't trust the competence of anyone from that group. This then makes it harder for the competent people in the group, because now they have an extra layer of prejudice against them.

Now, if you want more members of the second group to be hired, then you need to look at the causes and address them. For example, do they encounter the relevant skills later? Are there hidden prejudices against them in hiring? Are they excluded or discouraged from participating in some relevant educational prerequisites?

Re:Evidence?

[AmiMoJo]

The problem with this argument is you are looking at a ridiculously small group. There are hundreds of thousands of IT workers in the US, filling hundreds of thousands of jobs. With such a large sample size the "default" should be a 50/50 mix of men and women, but it is actually hugely biased one way and that deserves some scrutiny.

The problem isn't actually with women being unable to get IT jobs, at least not more so than with any other male dominated field where there are always a few "lads club" outfits. The problem is that very few women want to enter the field in the first place. Fewer than want to become mathematicians or some kind of scientist. There has to be a reason for that, and it isn't just that "computers are boring and not pink enough".

It works both ways too. In the UK we have a massive shortage of male primary school teachers. All sorts of theories have been put forward. Women have a natural maternal instinct. Men are worried about being accused of being paedophiles. I honestly don't know enough about the problem to comment.

Re:Evidence?

[spazdor]

If you have 10 applicants for 2 posts, 8 from one group and 2 from another

then the statistical significance of your hiring pool is pretty much nonexistent.

Assume instead that you have 10n applicants for 2n posts, 8n from one group and 2 from the other group. Then as n increases, the odds that in a quota-free system you would actually emerge with the 2n most qualified applicants very quickly approaches zero, unless you have some absurdly idealized, hiring system which perfectly excludes personality biases, pheromones, good/bad days on the parts of the clients. Furthermore, the expected difference in skill levels between the selected candidates at the top of their respective 8n and 2n sized bell-curves, also approaches zero. If that were not the case, then one of the constraints already postulated ("If you assume that there is no intrinsic difference in abilities between the two sets") could not be true.

So I'm afraid that your logic only shows that quotas will be measurably harmful in frictionless, spherical job markets.

Paternity leave

[Aqualung812]

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.

$0.02 worth from a woman in the IT field...

[Kyrene]

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.