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Will Peggy the Programmer Be the New Rosie the Riveter?
theodp writes "The Mercury News' Mike Cassidy reports that women are missing out on lucrative careers in computer science. 'The dearth of women in computing,' writes Cassidy, 'has the potential to slow the U.S. economy, which needs more students in the pipeline to feed its need for more programmers. It harms women by excluding them from some of the best jobs in the country. And it damages U.S. companies, which studies show would benefit from more diverse teams.' The promise of better financial results, says Anita Borg Institute Director Denise Gammal, is making diversity a business imperative. It's 'the sort of imperative that cries out for a movement,' argues Cassidy, 'maybe this time one led not by Rosie the Riveter, but by Peggy the Programmer.' So, where will Peggy the Programmer come from? Well, Google is offering $100 to girls attending U.S. public high schools who complete a Codecademy JavaScript course. 'Currently only 12% of computer science graduates are women,' explains Codecademy, 'and great tech companies like Google want to see more smart girls like you enter this awesome profession!' Google joins tech giant-backed Code.org in incentivizing teachers to bring the next generation of girls to the CS table.
But Silicon Valley claims the talent crisis is now (although there are 19 billion reasons to question SV's hiring acumen). So, what about the women who are here now, asks Dr. AnnMaria De Mars. 'If you are overlooking the women who are here now,' De Mars writes, 'what does that tell the girls you are supposedly bringing up to be the next generation of women in tech that you can overlook 15 years from now? Why do we hear about 16-year-old interns far more than women like me? If it is true, as the New York Times says, that in 2001-2 28% of computer science degrees went to women compared to the 10% or so now — where are those women from 12 years ago? It seems to me that when people are looking at minorities or women to develop in their fields, they are much more interested in the hypothetical idea of that cute 11-year-old girl being a computer scientist someday than of that thirty-something competing with them for market share or jobs. If there are venture capitalists or conference organizers or others out there that are sincerely trying to promote women who code, not girls, I've never met any. That doesn't mean they don't exist, but it means that whoever they are seeking out, it isn't people like me.'"
But Silicon Valley claims the talent crisis is now (although there are 19 billion reasons to question SV's hiring acumen). So, what about the women who are here now, asks Dr. AnnMaria De Mars. 'If you are overlooking the women who are here now,' De Mars writes, 'what does that tell the girls you are supposedly bringing up to be the next generation of women in tech that you can overlook 15 years from now? Why do we hear about 16-year-old interns far more than women like me? If it is true, as the New York Times says, that in 2001-2 28% of computer science degrees went to women compared to the 10% or so now — where are those women from 12 years ago? It seems to me that when people are looking at minorities or women to develop in their fields, they are much more interested in the hypothetical idea of that cute 11-year-old girl being a computer scientist someday than of that thirty-something competing with them for market share or jobs. If there are venture capitalists or conference organizers or others out there that are sincerely trying to promote women who code, not girls, I've never met any. That doesn't mean they don't exist, but it means that whoever they are seeking out, it isn't people like me.'"
Peggy Hill as the spokeswoman. I could get behind that.
well there were not many women doctors not too long ago and now there are quite many. I assume if programming is as attractive as medicine then this will also happen. I know some will say that there is a hostile work environment but do you think most single gender dominated jobs do not. Like being doctors - those impediments will be overcome .
If a group isn't interested, they aren't fucking interested. You don't HAVE to have two of every creature in every positon.
Hell, the NBA is really lacking of white college educated women....are we freaking out and trying to induce them with $100 to work to get into the NBA (and god help them if the teams discrimate!!).
Geez, please...get over it..people will do what people want to do.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Or Frank the pharmacist? These two professions are dominated by women. Perhaps we should make boys more interested in those professions as well somehow.
"The Mercury News' Mike Cassidy reports that women are missing out on lucrative careers in computer science. 'The dearth of women in computing,' writes Cassidy, 'has the potential to slow the U.S. economy,
No they are not, there is no such thing, and I smell bullshit.
If you make up fairy tales, you can put any ending you want on them. That is what is happening here. Women are not missing out, they are choosing to not do certain things. Let's look at a very good reason for this to be the case.
Programmers tend to work horrible and long hours. Most women are choosing to manage life and work together, and not work 60+ hours a week. That is a choice, and I have no issues with them doing so. I used to work 60+ hours a week, and decided I was missing out on too much living to continue. I'm glad more women refuse to work 60 hour weeks, more men should do the same. Your average company does not reward you for the extra work, they simply take advantage of you for doing it.
This is similar to the myth that women on average make less money than men doing the same work. Sure, there is some of the good'ole boy network that does this intentionally, just like certain places won't hire minorities. Those places are extremely rare, and not "normal". If a man works 50 hours a week and a woman works 40, the man does and should make more money. Women on average choose not to do this for various reasons.
Reality is a real drag when you start to look at it, but it's reality. I don't buy this line of shit because that's what it is. It's a piece of trash intended to increase hostilities toward each other and ignore the bigger issues like corruption.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
MOST women don't like to code, stop fucking trying to turn them into programming machines. Some do, good for them, let them be great programmers, but for fucks sake stop trying to force women to do shit most of them have no interest in doing. Its not going to get you a girlfriend, you'll still be an asshole.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
But Silicon Valley claims the talent crisis is now
See this from 2012. As you can see, SV area isn't on the list for best paying cities for programmers and yet, it's the most expensive.
SV companies are averaging $110,000/year (Source: PayScale) for software engineers. Why should a talented person go there when they can make just as much (or even more) and have less than half of the living expenses?
SV companies pay shit for their area and if you consider the ridiculous hours they expect you to work, you're better off somewhere else.
Was wondering when this topic would finally get some coverage again. It's been at least a week since this important injustice graced the front page.
Well done slashdot, your click bait got me again.
"Will Peggy the Programmer Be the New Rosie the Riveter?"
No, but this "We need more women in IT" meme is becoming the new "Schools need more money".
Can we get past the PC nonsense and accept that reality that there are actual differences between the sexes (some due to social environment, some biological), and from that accept that some jobs just aren’t well suited for one sex or the other.
I’m all for providing the opportunity for either sex to do whatever job they want as long as they are capable, and to a certain extend I’m all for breaking down cultures that make the job less appealing to women for reasons unrelated to the job, but beyond that I think we have to accept that there are certain aspects to programming beyond the male dominated culture that are not appealing to a large number of women.
Now here comes the inflammatory part. What might those reasons be? Based on a very limited sample size and keeping in mind that we are talking general case here, there are plenty of exceptions, my best guess is:
- Weird hours. I know it’s not PC to say it, but yes, women tend to be more burdened by their life schedule then men. Sudden "ok everyone has to stay till 2am to get this working" are common in the job, and this can be a major stressor.
- Stress. I believe there’s different types of stress. Some men handle better, some women handle better. The kind of "you need to find a solution to this problem by 8am tomorrow or you might actually get fired/company might go out of business" stress you sometimes find in this job or even the "been pounding my head against this problem for 3 weeks and getting chewed out by management about why I haven’t made any progress" is a very specific kind of stress that (and again, this is a very small sample size) seems to hit women harder then men.
Reading what I just wrote, how the hell is this a "best job in the country". Many women have more common sense and realize that this is actually a shitty job with a lot of stress and crazy hours and a career path consisting of "you're probably fucked when you hit 40".
I'm all for making programming more attractive to women, but can we not tie the name to sticking a dildo up their bumb? I don't think that's really helping anything.
"Peggy" or "Pegging" the programmer? Given the current job market, either seems plausible.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
In 2011, 9 percent of all nurses were men while 91 percent were women. Men earned, on average, $60,700 per year, while women earned $51,100 per year.
I know it is impossible, but I just want there to be honest discourse about this supposed "STEM shortage / gender gap". There is no STEM shortage just like there is no Lawyer shortage. The gender gap in software engineering isn't a problem just like the gender gap in nursing isn't a problem. Corporations want to turn software engineers into a commodity. Period.
You missed the big one.
Todd the Teacher.
Men have been practically excluded from teaching, by being painted with the sexist assumptions
that they are all child molesters and pedophiles with nothing positive to contribute.
In comparison to this particular problem, an imbalance in programmers is nothing.. bias in the
teaching of our children should be a huge priority, and yet, its not....
They just don't have the upper body strength that the job requires.
No she won't.
No. No she won't.
Padma the Programmer, however, is a name with potential.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
> Well, Google is offering $100 to girls attending U.S. public high schools who complete a Codecademy JavaScript course.
As far as I can tell from RTFMing, Google is offering $100-worth of supplies from DonorsChoose.org for the classroom, not $100 cash to the girls that complete the course.
The same productivity gap for women exists in all industries. 5 days a month and doesn't die, etc. etc. plus baby-time means that fewer employers will invest in a female employee knowing the ROI is lower than for a male employee.
OTOH, men die earlier then women, so they have a chance to make it up on the back end.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
. . . and then the baby programming project will be done in a month!
We need more good programmers, not just more programmers. And their sex is totally irrelevant. A good programmer is a good programmer, regardless of sex,race, religion, shoe size, hair color, etc . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
since when did /. turn into the LifeTime network??
Where all men are evil, and women can do no wrong..
But seriously, I could grasp as the fact where this may appeal to the more feminine crowd.
But how does it really relate to the community at large?
Hence the referral to LifeTime.. A place where crap like this is more appropriate and tolerated, accordingly..
if I want cable crap I turn on lifetime and get a restful sleep, to others the affects may be different, but run along the same parallel. /., perhaps, with the propagation from their "dice" overlords this article, I may go elsewhere.
If I want stuff that I am used to seeing on
I am not a chauvinist vby any stretch, just pointing out the facts..
Thanks Dice, any more resumes posted as a result of this article..
Hmm speculative @ best I bet. right,,
c ya
computer science is not javaScript or other hands on skills it's loads of theory that is not really needed to do the job.
You can pay women less.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
This is soooo freakin tired. And not just on /. Women are not stupid. Or no more so than men. If they want a career/job in comp. sci they certainly can figure out what to do. Can we stop wetting our pants that 51% of the work force in industry X is not women?
are there any notable female programming wizards?
Programmer burn-out and turn-over to other IT careers is high. Age discrimination and RSI injuries are common, and you are competing with 3rd-world wage-slaves and typically work long hours. For those who want to be involved with family life, long hours is not a selling point.
Programming is a stepping-stone job into project, network, equipment logistics, and server management, but not the only path. It's only real appeal is quick money out of college. After that you statistically will flat-line compared to other options.
Enough STEM career bullshit already.
Table-ized A.I.
What about Chrystal the Crack dealer?? Or pete the Pimp?
should we reverse the roles of these dynamic professions make it Carl the crack dealer, and Penelope the Pimp?
or how about jenny the giglio? I mean really I could go on and on..
how about Darth vader transposed with Danielle Vader??
or prince larry instead of Princes Leia
or how about Jenny fallon transposed with Jimmie Fallon.. Now that would be interesting, but still to be aired on lifetime.
But I digress..
Remember when 1 bread winner could provide for a family in the 1950s? That was before women joined the workforce in mass and drove down wages by competing with men for jobs. It's all so defensible when it's masked as women's rights but it's really about cheap labor.
I've been doing this for about 25 years now and there used to be more women in the field. I'm not exactly sure what happened. As to Dr. AnnMaria De Mars's point, what about the ones that graduated 10 years ago? I'm guessing a lot of them moved on to different jobs, either in management or someplace else. Compounding the problem women face is ageism. I think it's pretty well accepted that older programmers have a more difficult time finding work in a field that demands constant retraining.
In addition, how many companies would be interested in a programmer that took a few years off to stay home with their kids and didn't have time to maintain their skills? Men don't have that problem to the same degree.
I'm in a position now where I'm involved in hiring new developers. We've always had far fewer women candidates then men. The last time around we had zero.
a lawyer or medical professional for the same experience
I've seen an absurd number of stories on this topic, probably ever since the Hour of Code crap started. /. would you please give this topic a @#$% rest???
Trying to recruit more women is a politically correct way to encourage folks to enter the profession, increasing the supply and subsequently reducing wages.
That's all.
Business NEVER does things for the common good - ever.
And as we see, it's Silicon Valley lamo companies bitching about "shortages" when it because they don't pay enough.
http://www.slate.com/articles/...
Women, as well as men, in the USA might be wise to avoid IT.
There is just no way for a US resident to compete with 3rd world wages.
The jobs that cannot be offshored, will be filled by visa workers.
It is far easier to offshore IT, than to offshore manufacturing. With IT there is no physical inventory, no shipping, no customs, no storage, nothing like that. With IT, you just zap files back and forth.
Unless you have a top secret clearance, there is no way for US and Europe to compete.
Humm, if only there was some economic event that happened around that time that could explain why large amounts of people would switch careers. It is almost as if there was some kind of recession in the number of software jobs available that caused female CS grads to pick different careers.
Enough of this narrative already. Women are given every opportunity and are practically begged by universities (via discriminating scholarships under the guise of 'diversity' programs) to major in comp-sci and other engineering/science majors. They've been doing this for decades, now, and they're still looking at it as though it's 1970. The problem is they're measuring success by the standard of equal outcome on the false premise that men and women are physically and psychologically the same. They're not, so they won't always make the same life choices given similar backgrounds and opportunities. Despite what the PC crowd will say, there's nothing wrong with this at all. This is the very essence of diversity. In a diverse systems, equal outcome is not a given.
How about we focus on equal opportunity based upon relevant attributes (ie demonstrated interest and aptitude), rather than building systemic bias into society under the guise of eliminating it? After that, let individuals make their own life choices. The only thing this bias does is teach women how to play better victims, which denies them opportunities to earn real respect among their peers. Getting society to discriminate against men will not empower them, either. It just creates more irrelevant discrimination and bilateral bigotry.
another solution looking for a problem. The reason there are fewer women in IT is not because they are being discriminated somehow. It's because they don't see it as a viable occupation for them. They are choosing not to enter the field - for whatever reason - but it is a choice that women have made.
This is not something that needs "fixing" but yet another diversity fuck-wit.
So Google is handing out $100 to girls that complete the JavaScript course? That's great but how about giving it to boys too?
-- Sarcasm begin: Oh but make sure you don't give it to any white boys. They have enough advantages in life already, don't ya know. What about those asian boys? Nah - we have enough of them in IT already. They don't need the $100. Yup, better just stick with giving it to the black and hispanic boys. They are, no doubt, under represented as well so they need a helping hand. And all girls - even white girls - will get the money. That should even things up. -- Sarcasm end
See where this is going?
i've met some really good women programmers over several decades in the tech world —but precious few. :-(
to make things fit our statistical ideal — we strive to glamourize writing code, the good pay, how easy it is to start, and the cool places you can work if you do. yet these things, have little to do with actually being interesting in numbers and algorithms.
if you have a real interest, the difficulty doesnt stop you, no more than salmon swimming upstream. the insatiable desire to grok code is its own reason. if we cant draw more people into computer science by showing how fascinating powers of 2 arithmetic, binary logic, and how neat pointer references are — then i'm afraid there's little hope — sometimes it seems they just dont like it. they have other less abstract, more practical concerns. so often, in perplexity, i have wondered — why are there so precious few women who are intrinsically interested in writing code? guys dig chicks with whom they can talk C++ —— but where are they!?!?
so i dont know if they are being shut out, or if they are simply averse. for the ones that arent — please, come code. the guys more than want more female programmers around. because of this, i've spent a lot of time trying to help women grok technology more deeply.
one thing i've noticed though, while machinery speaks in hexadecimal; the women are using the machinery more. instead of 'how it works', their quesion is 'how to use'? instead of making machines, they would rather use them. it reminds me of an old quote from Heinrich Heine's mom — 'the man thinks, and the women steers'.
in the end — it is for women to decide. :-D
all we can do is encourage, and hold the door open.
please come.
just hire more women and pay them 75 cents on the dollar.
It'd be worth every quarter just to drive out some of the brogrammers
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
So companies conspired to get more women in the workforce to drive down labor costs?
The field is already glutted. US workers are being replaced by offshore workers in droves. Wages are not going up.
But IT workers are never cheap enough for the tech companies, so they churn out this propaganda routinely.
A big part of the reason women aren't as present in the American high tech workforce compared to other countries is the complete lack of any sort of public child care. In other first world, and in third world (servant economies) a woman with children can rely on help while she pursues a career. In the US help is only available for those with thousands of dollars a month to pour into private childcare. The US prioritizes corporate profits above all, and ignoring the realities of child care is the order of the day.
It seems to me that there are basicly 3 things that contribute to the lack of women in tech:
1. As a society we tell women that having a career is optional and that if you do have a career it's acceptable to sacrifice it for other goals like family. By contrast we tell men that their value is directly related to their career and that if the want to pursue other interests like family they have to find a way to squeeze them in around their career. This results in women frequently being uninterested in jobs with the sort of expectations that are common in tech fields (particularly over time, and continued training/education).
2. Our society views being good at math and logic as un-feminine. So women who have the aptitude frequently choose other paths due to peer pressure.
3. Because there are few women in tech, the sub-cultures surrounding it are often pretty toxic, even hostile towards women. It's rarely intentional, but when a woman looks at her career options and on one hand there's a bunch of geeks who talk to her chest and won't stop making unfunny jokes about how there aren't any girls on the Internet, and on the other hand are a number of fields where she won't have to deal with that crap, it's pretty obvious what choice she's more likely to make.
I'd just as soon "Peggy" found something else to do. The entire "shortage" is a mythical construct of tech companies engaged in their biannual attempt to raise the H1-B cap.
If you need to be convinced to take up programming you probably won't be very good at it anyway.
Seriously, what the fuck difference does it make what sex, race or religion you are to be in IT??!?!
It makes a difference when the path to the field, and the field itself, is hostile to non-straight, white, men. Reading through the comments here there's a lot of really angry, hostile, dismissive posts. Which certainly doesn't help counter the argument by TFA.
Hell, the NBA is really lacking of white college educated women....are we freaking out and trying to induce them with $100 to work to get into the NBA (and god help them if the teams discrimate!!).
Aside from the fact that a sports league has nothing to do with IT, when's the last time you watched a WNBA game? Can you name a SINGLE WNBA player playing this season? How about a single hall-of-famer? Can you name your area's WNBA team? When was the last time you even accidentally came up on an WNBA game on TV? (hint: rarely, because they're not televised nearly as often.) Or how about this: why doesn't the NBA sanction both men's and women's leagues, ie, why did the WNBA need to be formed in the first place? Answer: because the NBA refused to allow women's teams.
So, women don't get the same TV coverage, sponsorship, press, etc.
The gender bias in professional sports *is* a huge problem. And it's a problem in scholastic/collegiate areas as well, which is the whole point behind Title 9 - all the money for scholastic and collegiate athletics was going to men's sports.
Please help metamoderate.
My current theory is that women don't enter programming because they're far too smart to get suckered into these jobs.
Unless you have a top secret clearance, there is no way for US and Europe to compete.
My father in-law was laid off form Lockheed months ago. He has a top secret clearance and Lockheed is the only place that requires such things.
He's VERY sharp but unfortunately, when a job posting isn't mysteriously closed, he'll get the "you're not a good fit" when he occasionally gets an interview. Of course, what makes him "not a good fit" is never mentioned. I think it's the gray in his beard.
When I see companies bitch about not getting enough qualified people, I can tell you that it's their hiring practices.
Anyway, off-shoring is going to continue and what I tell sharp kids is go into something else other than IT unless you really really LOVE it.
I for one fervently hope so.
Oh, not because this is a real or important issue. I find "diversity" studies in technical fields laughable. You can have more diversity in relevant thought between two white males who graduated from different schools than between a white male and a black female CS graduate. Race and sex are not equal to diversity.
No, I hope this works because I'm fucking tired of hearing about it. So very, very tired.
Ok, that's a bit dramatic. Perhaps.
But seriously, you can't expect a profession that almost REQUIRES minimum 50 hours per week (on an easy week) and off hours 'emergency' calls for basically your entire life, to be popular.
Working with new technology? Cool
Devising new ways for business to use said new technology? Cool
Supporting the demands of financial strapped business that now REQUIRE 24/7 uptime or it's a shit storm? Career breaking terrible.
The excess female graduates from 2001-2 were the ones at the tail end of the pipeline following the .com boom to become HTML programmers just like the excess men from that time frame. Once they got their degree they had to face the cold reality of a job environment that they didn't have the capacity to work in.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I currently sit in a .Net team that has 3 women to 1 male.
It really depends on if the job is appealing.
Most men don't care about having to be in a basement for there jobs.
I'd like to point out that Rosie quit after a couple of weeks because she thought the job was too dangerous.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Nothing stopping ANY women from becoming programmers...
Does that question even make sense without some sort of suitable historical context?
Is there some massive draft underway, with hundreds of thousands of code monkeys being churned into cannon fodder, that I missed out on?
Even casually equating a total-war domestic propaganda/production mobilization exercise with the half-assed plan of the day by silicon valley to get slightly cheaper programmers just seems... tone deaf. At best.
So what?
> It harms women by excluding them from some of the best jobs in the country
Nobody is excluding women from tech but women and this useless bullshit stance that we somehow need to make women more equal in order to encourage them in to tech jobs is more damaging than them not coming in to tech.
Seriously, why do the young men all have to flip burgers, and all the young ladies get to babysit. I don't know about the rest of you but I would have much rather played Legos with a 5 year old than stand behind a fryer all day.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
women can stay where they are, as far as I am concerned. Don't want that risk potential at the workplace. The workplace cooperation between men and women is severely tainted by threats of litigation, especially in the IT world.
The female hostile tech work environment is largely a myth nowadays. I've heard atrocious war stories from older female engineers who were treated like secretaries at former employers... and then they proclaim how much better they are treated at their current job. I've also heard numerous women with no actual experience paint an unappealing picture of what they perceive to be the work environment in (non-bio) science and engineering.
The reality is that the majority of women just aren't as interested in doing that type of work, either due to social conditioning (Barbie: "Math is hard") or innate lack of interest. There have been decades of effort to promote women in STEM positions with no real results other than the biology related sciences. Is that the fault of men or it is just because women aren't interested no matter how much boostering is directed their way? Is it really that important to put so much effort to create an artificially level paying field? Nobody is complaining about the paucity of male elementary school teachers. Why aren't there alarmists crying over that?
In my experience, the technical women are treated fairly and the negative image is just an outdated stereotype perpetuated by women themselves. I'm sure there is still a level of unfair bias and inappropriate behavior but from my observation the modern male tech worker is the most welcoming to women compared to other fields. I can't enumerate all the times I've heard inappropriate comments come from female coworkers that any male compatriot would not dare say for fear of going to a reeducation camp.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Exactly which war is Peggy the Programmer going to help us win? The war against 35-year-old virgins?
Maybe I'm too dim, but I'm just not seeing a meaningful connection here.
-
While some programming jobs do pay exceptionally well, there are loads of fully capable workers getting a pitence and being treated like indentured servants. We have too many programmers as it is. Getting more programmers isn't going to help anything. What we need are entrylevel positions for programmers. The biggest hurdle isn't the number of programmers, but getting them on-the-job experience.
Women aren't being excluded. The few women I've worked with had been given the same respect as the men. The reason there are so few women is that in school we had 4 women in the computing science department, and one was a teacher. They aren't interested in it. It's that simple.
well there were not many women doctors not too long ago and now there are quite many. I assume if programming is as attractive as medicine then this will also happen. I know some will say that there is a hostile work environment but do you think most single gender dominated jobs do not. Like being doctors - those impediments will be overcome .
Those are mostly red herring arguments. There are plenty of programmers out there, but employers don't want to pay good wages they want to be able to hire a college grad with 10 years experience for $20k a year, and right now they can't really get away with that. So by convincing women to get into the industry they're hoping for an influx of inexperienced and underqualified applicants who can water down the pool of available workers, leading to wage deflation all while claiming we're really making things better by getting women into tech.
If the goal REALLY is to get women into tech, then we shouldn't be pushing for programmers, but rather pushing for IT type jobs which are an applied (vo-tech) style degree, not a College track degree.
Maybe the ladies just aren't interested? Did any of the anti-male ass-fuckers who come up with these "we must have as many women as men in profession X" ever think about that? there's probably a dearth of female mechanics too, but that never garners headlines.
Just more reverse sexism from the culture that brought you Justin Beiber.
Because you've got more money than God.
Only around 10.7% of murders are committed by women. What are we doing to close the gap and introduce more women into this male dominated field?
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Because all the male geeks in CS course doesn't shower or bath.....
There are bad neighborhoods in tech that have quite the fratboy mentality and are quite hostile to women. You may have heard of "brogramming". I've heard enough first-hand accounts to believe that corner of the profession exists.
But in the sort of work I do - infrastructure and backend stuff - I've never seen a hint of it. We welcome anyone who's a competent coder and who actually wants to write the sort of programs that don't have UIs. It's a fairly introverted and inoffensive bunch even by developer standards, so it's not like "inappropriate comments" are likely regardless.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
they should complain about the lack of women lumberjacks, fishermen(fisherpersons?), taxi drivers, roofers, construction workers, farmers etc
but they don't because those jobs are dirty and hard and dangerous, leave those for the men
Personally I'm of the opinion that in order to be a really GOOD programmer you have to live, eat, and breathe it. Part of that is spending your formative years locked away coding on a computer, eschewing things like friends, social gatherings, etc. I know I did. How many girls and young women are willing to do that? I dunno, maybe that factors into it.
But I don't see why the only option for women in technology is programming. Where I work, it seems like just about every Project Manager is a woman. And that's probably because a good PM has to do things like interact with many people, pay attention to details, schedule, organize, etc. which traditionally are things that women are good at. Why not, you know, stress those kinds of options to young women interested in tech jobs instead of trying to force women into something they really don't seem that interested in? Just because men dominate a certain industry doesn't mean there's a "problem", you know.
Most women I've encountered in IT usually go into middle management. At pretty much every job I've ever had, most of the managers are women, they all claim to have come from a programming background, but there are hardly any female programmers (maybe one of two among the testers) who stick with it.
Women are smarter... maybe they just know something we don't?
IT companies are tired of paying $100k/yr for programmers. They're trying to flood the market. Getting women into Programmer is just one part of this.
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See the book "Unlocking the Clubhouse" for the results of hundreds of interviews with bright highly motivated female CS students.
> equal opportunity based upon relevant attributes (ie demonstrated interest and aptitude)
That's a good thing to focus on since we're not there yet and have more work to do.
Groups aren't interested in things, people are, and pre-adult female people get a lot of messages about what should interest them which are outright toxic and which we should compensate for. Getting them some exposure to CS and programming may partially make up for a lifetime that begins with their brothers hogging the computer and which continues with outright anti-intellectualism in school.
well there were not many women doctors not too long ago and now there are quite many. I assume if programming is as attractive as medicine then this will also happen.
Yes. When developer salaries rise to match the salaries to those in medicine, then the field will get flooded with all types of people looking to do development work. This will include women. That's economics 101: supply and demand.
A common assumption I read here is that the male dominated culture is keeping women out of engineering and programming.
Let us indulge in a little thought experiment about two male dominated fields.
50 years ago Law schools and Engineering schools had less than 5% women. Today, Law schools are 50+% women and Engineering schools are maybe 10% women. We can therefore conclude a) Techie men are much bigger jerks than lawyers, or b) something else is causing this.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
... then raise the pay.
I wonder how much of this is about empowering women and how much of this is trying to get programmers at 70 cents on the dollar. I'm all for the former, but not the latter.
Women, don't sell yourselves short!
This whole topic is a non-starter.
Programming is neither lucrative nor stable unless you're a 10x engineer or you lucked out in the right start-up.
As an RN, my wife:
- Makes 80% of the salary I do.
- Only puts in 70% of the time, and those hours are very fixed.
- Is paid overtime (time and a half) for any extra time she's asked to put in.
- Work is far more stable.
- Has far better benefits.
- Is *paid* for ongoing career training.
- **Does something that offers immediate benefits to others**
- **Deals in a line of work where experience is valued.**
- **Deals in a line of work where the wheel is NOT reinvented constantly (seeing the same thing in slightly different form but dressed up in a completely different name is so far from interesting) **
- Deals in a virtually all-female profession.
For the more ambitious: Doctors have it even better, despite their bellyaching.
Further bonus: We know RNs that double-dip by working two shifts in two different hospital (and hence, double pay); making a quarter of million a year for 70 hours a week is pretty damned good. I'm pretty sure most SV workers put in close to those hours for far less pay.
So the real question: Why the hell aren't there more men getting into this lucrative career of nursing?
They want more female programmers so that they can pay them less. Women typically earn less than men with the same qualifications and same responsibilities.
Good lord I hope not.. didn't Rosie quit after a few weeks? I'd rather not have a glut of half-hearted girls in my field just for a pathetic attempt at a cash-grab. It took me years to convince some of the older guys I worked with that I wasn't just some mimsy pretending to know what a pointer was. Times have changed substantially, and this kind of thing would only be a move in the wrong direction.
Everything in the summary is just as true for men/boys as it is for women/girls. We all know the shortage is a farce. At the same time, we actually would benefit from STEAM education, in the olden days they just used to call it education.
A key factor in getting more of a gender balance in IT is ensuring at a very young age that women are encouraged equally to explore and tinker just as young boys are. I obviously don't speak for everyone, but the majority of clever technologists I've met have had a keen interest in how things work from early childhood (hacker mentality). Boys are usually encouraged in this, whereas a lot of parents in the last 10-20 years still encourage women to be more 'feminine'.
I sincerely doubt offering girls $100 at the high school level to learn JavaScript (c'mon, really? JavaScript?) is going to do anything to affect the number of women in computing. It'll certainly put $100 in the pockets of some resourceful high school kids, however.
At the end of the day, a technologist needs to have a job that's also a hobby - keen interest in the field coupled with an analytic mind. Gender shouldn't be relevant, and I don't think any woman who has come through public grade school is going to let an immature mentality (i.e. a bunch of "bros" quipping "that's what she said") keep her out of a field that she has a passion for. That's just implying women are emotionally fragile, which I don't buy for a second.
Women are SMART(er) to stay out of this dumbass rathole of career.
"Brogrammers" aren't hostile to women, they're hostile to intelligence. Anyone with more than a few brain cells left, man or woman, would flee the fucking place as fast as possible.
Men like to code, women do not. So what?
Most men don't like to work at day care centers either. Thank God for the women who do. I can barely handle my own children. I couldn't imagine watching someone else's kids.
We each have our strengths. No amount of P.C. or feminism will change that.
I doubt it back then, but those sudden showings of kindness from Google and co sure look a bit suspicious. After all, they keep harping on STEM shortages, but when you dig a little deeper you tend to find out it's just that they want high paid workers for cheap, and the best way of doing this is by driving offer up so prices go down. Women just happen to be the most logical target: nobody will ever criticize them for it, they might even get some govt support for getting girls in tech, and theoretically it's a solid 30-40% gain in workforce if we aim for the mythical 51% split.
In a 50+ nation study referred to in the Norwegian documentary "Brainwashed", it was discovered that in developing nations (like India) where women are traditionally more limited in their career options, about 30% of young women express an interest in engineering as a career. However, as women progress in equality issues, they become less and less interested in engineering. In Norway, Sweden and Finland - the nations at the top of the male female equality scale, less than 10% of young women express an interest in engineering as a career.
It would appear that "Peggy the Programmer", as a social movement, is unlikely in the US.
Seriously?
Come on! Isn't it the high time to stop with that shit? This discrimination can not be allowed to stand any longer.
Too long have we been thought that it is only women who can aspire towards a career of marrying a rich and handsome individual. Or at the very least rich. Very.
Where is MY supermodel sugar-mommy?
But seriously... get that shit out of the way, convince the girls that not only do they not need to get married and have babies to be a complete person but that the marriage as a career option is demeaning and strictly for sleazy gigolos and dumb weaklings and you got your problem solved.
As a bonus, not only will there be more women in EVERY high paying profession (taking our jobs... but hey...), marriage will become a thing of the past. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink...
No. Really.
100$ incentive can't hold a candle to that all day every day "marry rich-make babies-be happy forever" training that they go through every second of their life.
I mean, come on.
Would you rather study and work OR would you impregnate supermodels for food, rent and everything else?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
As a woman, I feel guilty for when I hear about these teach kids to code ventures and my first thought is, what about me? I need to learn to code but I have to work at the mall even though I have a Masters because no one out there will give me a chance. I am almost through the javascript CodeAcademy course, can I have a $100? to add to the $30 in my bank account? Only jobs out there for women new to coding are freelance dead-ends. The jobs out there advertising for engineers are not talking about me. They are talking to the 11 year old girls in school now with an ipad in their hands and they are talking to the 20 something guy who graduated from an ivy league college who knows Ruby like the back of both his hands. Working women today, right now, not 10 years from now, are struggling and no amount of cheerleading is going to erase the fact that many of us already got college degrees and have no more chances to take out more loans, and learning to code and use: javascript, php, python, ruby, c++, css, css3, sass, html, html5, html canvas, MySQL, Adobe CC (not CS5, CS6) but CC you know the Adobe programs that you have subscribe now and not buy once. All of this requires a stable, sizeable income and for many women in this economy that is just not possible. I am quite tiered of the ra ra ra! and ya ya ya! for teaching coding. It's not easy especially for women in the their 30's with degrees in how to use dreamweaver to move a box across the screen. Google and them all know this, why try to fix what is already broken. Let's start afresh, anew with the young girls and boys. After all, computer products for kids is an exploding market. Kids are the future consumers of technology. Get them while they are hot.
So if the work environment was more hostile to women in the past than today, yet today there is a smaller percentage of new women entering the field than in the past, what does that mean? Women are staying away in larger numbers than in the past because they're hearing outdated horror stories?
The reality is that there were more women in the past who entered the field. They were apparently interested in it in the past. Maybe in the past CS was more closely aligned to math?
I do hear very inappropriate things from men in the field still. I am amazed at some of the stuff I hear. Though it varies with companies and the crowd; the groups that tend to be heavily male also seem to be the rudest, whereas groups with a mix of genders tends to be more civilized and professional.
As a white male who has never benefited from that white male privileged everyone talks about I am tired at the rampant sexism and racism aimed at me.
Not quite as non-insidious, but effectively, yes. Not because it's women, but because you now had a return to multiple household-members (we hadn't seen that since half the workforce was our children) providing for the household.
The more widespread and acceptable it became, the more they could ease down on the brakes regarding pay and benefits. You get twice the production, and look, a married couple can still afford their house and college for 1.5 of the 2.5 kids perfectly just fine even if we increase pay at less than half the rate of inflation for a few more years!
Women fully joining the workforce wasn't a problem in itself, just that it allowed some very intelligent bean-counters and their friends in the legislature to pull one heck of a smoke and mirror show on the economy. And anyone that tried to point out what was happening, well, obviously that's just one of those horrible mysoginists that wants his wife pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen once again, that's right, go lynch that patriarchist, girls!
Is this like a Listserv? The moronic politics are certainly pretty 90s.
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The field is full of useless programmers. Getting more women involved raises the number of good programmers. Companies pushing initiatives like this are the big ones that pay people well over the average, so your point about cheap wages is not really relevant.
The impact of the working environment doesn't just come from hostility, though. Take an organization - or any social group, really - and you're going to find it shaped by and for the people who are actually in it. If it's stuffed full of 22 year old men then you're going to find social expectations that you go out and get drunk with colleagues, and sympathy for people who turn up in the morning with a hangover. If it's stuffed full of 35 year old women you're more likely to find company provided childcare and sympathy for people who have to stay at home with sick children. There may be no hostility or different treatment of men and women whatsoever, and it's hard to say it's anyone's fault, but that doesn't make it go away.
I don't believe this can explain the whole of gender imbalances across industries, possibly not even a large part of it. There are no doubt many reasons. However, it is one of those causes that can be attacked using positive discrimination (though I don't agree with that, personally...I think that if you want equal treatment for each gender on principle, then you need to stick to that principle).
That's not necessarily true. There are many high-income professions which are male dominated.
I think that there's a great deal of interrelationship between the way men and women treat each other, and the way people treat each other at work and outside it. And one of aspect of that that I think is not looked at often enough is the way people make their sexual choices. Women can feel under pressure to be thin and beautiful with large chests because of men's preferences, but men come under pressure, too - under pressure to have high status jobs earning a lot of money (or, at least, to be higher status and higher earning than their prospective partner - one ex-partner told me that she wouldn't have considered me if I had earnt less than her). Inevitably, this will push more men than women in to making the sacrifices to their personal well-being to gain those things. In doing so, they make the labour market and working environment more competitive, political and hostile, and so less attractive to everyone. But that disproportionately puts off women, who don't need to deal with that to find the 'best' partners.
Women don't get the same coverage in sports because the public does not want the product. The WNBA was forced on the public and if it had to actually rely on its attendance and sponsorship to survive it would have died years ago. The only reason that it's afloat is because the NBA sees it as a marketing tool to get money out of women. So be proud girls, every time a WNBA game tips off the NBA is laughing behind one of their hands and taking your money with the other....FYI, the WNBA IS an NBA-sanctioned league...the majority of the teams are owned by the NBA, simply because no actual businessman would buy teams because they don't make money.
BTW, I've been in IT nearly 3 decades and can count on one hand the number of women who I've worked with at a very high technical level. But if you think it's hostile, you're wrong...the NUMBER ONE complaint in IT over it's history by men is that it's a sausage factory...all men. You think we WANT to work with other dudes?
Oh yeah...Title 9 is a massive failure. It has done zero, other than force a lot of colleges to shut down mens teams because they couldn't get enough women to play sports.
This is such B.S.! The defense contractor company I work for goes out if its way to the extreme to promote women! It's so blatant that it nearly amounts too reverse discrimination. The problem is, like so many politically correct crap is that you don't always get the best person for the job. Instead, the company gets to check off a box on their 'hire a woman or minority' list.
I'm so tired of hearing this same old song and dance. It's been sung time and time again since the 60's yet it's still in the P.C. songbook because every naive idiot buys into it.
Ever hear secretaries interact? They make a football locker room seem like a haven of political correctness. The bottom line is, people do that. So what. I've heard a room full of university-educated women rank the men in their workplace by penis size by pooling all their data from sleeping with them.
Little girls should be married
They make good wives.
Cute, nice.
They should not be turned into feminist cunts by women.
The old religions had it correct.
Deuteronomy 22 28-29 (in hebrew).
Those muslim hadiths.
Vedic writings (girls must be married young lest father goes to hell)
Sorry, but the days of lucrative careers are long over. Programming peaked in the late 90s.
But in the sort of work I do - infrastructure and backend stuff - I've never seen a hint of it. We welcome anyone who's a competent coder and who actually wants to write the sort of programs that don't have UIs. It's a fairly introverted and inoffensive bunch even by developer standards, so it's not like "inappropriate comments" are likely regardless.
This is my experience as well, and it applies to all forms of social discrimination, not just gender. Race, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion (well, except for vi users), national origin... none of it matters in the slightest. The people who can do the job are so scarce, and all that other stuff is so irrelevant, that no one cares.
Actually, that's not entirely true. Many companies (like Google) are convinced that diverse teams produce better results, and are fretting over the lack of diversity. So anyone who isn't the stereotypical white or asian male has an advantage. Not enough to overcome inability to do the job, of course, but still an advantage.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yes. When developer salaries rise to match the salaries to those in medicine, then the field will get flooded with all types of people looking to do development work. This will include women. That's economics 101: supply and demand.
Have you seen the salaries being offered at Google, et. al these days?
Simply increasing salaries mostly means you get people who get into a field simply for the money.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
How about MARGARET the programmer . . . oh, I guess that doesn't have a cute alliteration.
Heck, we have no problem with women joining our team. I know of two resumes we've received from women (or recruiters) for open Unix Admin positions at my job. The first was several years ago. She'd worked in a data center for 20 years but scripting wasn't something she had much experience with. Combined with other factors, she wasn't interviewed further. The second one was recently and apparently supplied by a recruiter who sprays resumes everywhere in the hopes it will stick on the wall somewhere. The candidate had extensive AIX experience but absolutely no experience with Linux or other Unix based operating systems. We considered her several times but finally the team decided to not interview.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
"The dearth of women in computing,' writes Cassidy, 'has the potential to slow the U.S. economy, which needs more students in the pipeline to feed its need for more programmers. It harms women by excluding them from some of the best jobs in the country."
The dearth is excluding women from the programming field? I mean, the "dearth" itself? I'll just table that statement as either someone doesn't know what the word "dearth" means or someone just doesn't proofread their own statements.
I don't think programming is appealing to a lot of women. I encourage family members to go into it, but even the very young ones who are especially good at math (although you don't need to be, just illustrating that they have some mental capacity) just don't find it interesting - they roll their eyes at it. It's sad and I very much hope I'm wrong because having more women in the field would be a really good thing for everybody.
I'm not shocked, but I am a little disappointed that the discussion here completely missed the main point, which was that maybe all these "women in tech" pushes are fundamentally flawed because they don't actually focus on the women in tech and the careers they've built. Instead the focus seems to be on "look at ms cutie teenager coding!" rather than "look at Ms. Senior Developer working on these interesting projects", and it's detrimental.
That actually makes a lot of sense to me. People need to be able to picture the future of something, an end result. A teenage girl isn't going to really be able to picture herself as a coding wunderkind unless she already is, and if all the images of adults in interesting STEM positions are white dudes, she's going to have a harder time imagining "hey, I could learn this, and then one day be doing job X!" And I think it's important that all this happens at a really subtle level, so it develops a series of expectations that are very hard to counter.
And it's something that's easily applicable outside the specific topic of women and IT jobs. If you want to motivate someone to volunteer, you don't tell them about George The Super Volunteer who single handedly saved orphans, you tell them that you need people to help sort canned goods in order to get food to hungry families. Specific action, specific outcome, both framed in such a way that the person can easily envision themselves in that role. People need to imagine not only how they could do something, but what it would achieve.
If I were trying to get boys to consider careers in nursing, I wouldn't just talk about boys who like biology, I'd talk about men whose nursing careers were successful and rewarding.
The feminist argument is that women are interested in programming and capable, but cannot get into the industry because they are being discriminated against. According to them, the work environment is hostile. But how can that be true?
If you write code, the ultimate judge of your job performance is a machine. The compiler doesn't magically switch to hard mode because the coder lacks a penis. An executable won't somehow crash in the presence of a vagina. This is as ridiculous as the argument that women fall behind in math because an equation will be solvable or not depending on who is trying to solve it.
As mentioned elsewhere, IT/Software is about as close to a meritocracy as you can get, in large part because the work involves unthinking machines that simply cannot be biased. It is also heavy on independent work. Your coworkers are keeping you from writing code? Did they steal your keyboard?
I fucking hate this site. You're all a bunch of idiotic fucksticks.
I'm not trying to be a troll or flamebait. Really I am not. I'm just posting an observation and opinion. I would genuinely like to hear if others have had similar or different experiences.
I've been programming for over 30 years. There truly are not very many women in programming. But there are a few, and of the few I've had to work with over the years there have been only three that I think were worth a damn at programming. The rest just typed and pointed and clicked and stumbled around until they had a solution. And sometimes they would never complete a project, which then required another, male programmer to come along and clean up the mess and get it working. Except for the three cases I've known, female programmers demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of how computers work, or how to write decent code. At my current job all but one of the programmers is male. But nearly all the BA's are female. The BA's, like their female programming counterparts are frustratingly ignorant when it comes to computers, networking, data administration and programming. Everything about a system has to be explained to them in excruciating detail, and still you can see that they don't really understand.
This is merely anecdotal evidence. This is just my experience. Based on my observations, women are pretty much incapable of coding. I don't know why that is, but I don't think it's because anyone is "keeping them down" or pushing them out of these careers. It is not that I am a mysogynist. There are some occupations where males dominate, that I think women excel at. My dentist, for example, is a woman, and I think she's great. Same for two of my doctors. But if I needed some coding done, I would be very, very reluctant to get a woman to do it.
I read this as being hostile to Gay, white, men
As a woman who has been an IT professional since 1977 I can attest to the fact that hiring has gotten more biased since the advent of the web. I am a senior J2EE developer and at user groups and conferences am frequently one of only a few women. And we are at best absolutely ignored and at worst harassed. If you are not a 20 or 30 something young male, forget getting any respect. People are VERY surprised when I tell them what I do or discuss a highly technical subject. It should not be that way. If I were a 25 yr old white male there would be no surprise. So, guys, own up to the unconscious bias and occassional outright misogyny. Maybe if there were not so many problems at conferences more women would be interested.
It needs a song like the original Rosie the Riveter song. What will be the sound effect to replace the original "Bltbltbltbltbltbltblt" noise? A clacking keyboard? The error bell?
Secondly, you need a major war where all the men are gone. Although women can serve in combat jobs, they are still not subject to the draft.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
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BT
and if you don't think there's a bias against women in the workplace, you have not been on the receiving end, and you are part of the problem. I didn't believe there was a gender bias in my last workplace.... I had been fortunate enough to be hired by a woman, who shielded me from a lot of it. When she left, they they hired a man 5 years younger than me with zero professional experience in the area he was assigned to, to be my boss. He got the job because he had been with the company for a while.... in another department. I was repeatedly referred to as one of the "girls" by this man. I was told that he felt I was "in the wrong department" and that I would "do so much better if I wanted to go to marketing". I have no marketing experience. I did not want to be in marketing. You know who's in marketing at this company, though? Women. 100%. Not a man works there. Guess how many women worked in my department? 3 of 45.
When I did not go to marketing, the snide comments about how I was not dressing professionally began. I worked in an office building, in a cubicle. I wore skirts that came to my ankles in the summertime, usually with a blouse and a sweater over top because it was always freezing cold. How was this inappropriate? Then being constantly asked to "smile, you look so much prettier that way". I am at work, not at a beauty contest. Or, "you should be nicer to people" when asking if they had work that they owed me 2 weeks ago.
I left that job of my own accord. I'm sure they were happy to see me go. They hired another man-- in fact, 3 other men to replace me (so much for women not working as much as a man!)
I work for a man now at my new job- my new job in the same field. I'm one of his best employees. I don't roll over and say yes to everyone, and I work harder and longer when it's really needed. I'm not asked to smile to look pretty, or to be charming and gracious to people when they are late with work. I'm not told that my long skirts are "unprofessional" and I'm not asked to go into the marketing department because there are more women there.
But here's the difference: at my new job, we are pretty well balanced gender-wise. I would say about half the employees are women. Half of our managerial/director positions are filled by women. Our CEO is a woman, and our exec director is a woman. Diversity is encouraged in a myriad of ways, and we are encouraged to hire women and minorities.
By the way, most of those women have children and families. At least a dozen women on my floor have gone out on maternity leave and come back. We're still managing to turn a profit. We're on those "best places to work" and "top companies in the country" lists.
My last workplace hasn't sunk... .but I know from the friends I have who stayed there that they're struggling financially... it's hitting the employees now... only a matter of time till it hits the shareholders.
You're obviously a moron. Die.
Exactly. This conditioning starts at birth and is pressed for our entire lives. You can also add to that the fact that boys are raised being told that they MUST get a good job if they want anything but a life of destitution because no one is going to pay your way through life. Girls are raised being told that they CAN get a good job, but they could also choose to attach themselves to a man who got a good job.
I have no doubt that if I grew up knowing that I would have women offering to pay my way through life just so that they could attach themselves to me, I might not have worked nearly as hard.
Nobody is complaining about the paucity of male elementary school teachers.
Yes, they are, you just haven't been paying attention to the forums where those conversations are happening. A tiny bit of Googling would educate you.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
You are naive. Nice, but naive. Yes, some things are a bit better. But are things good? No.
You could argue this is true in just about any profession. I don't see how it's more significant in the world of programming.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?