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Amazon Embodies the Gender Gap in Tech

Posted by Soulskill on from the don't-let-the-name-fool-you dept.

New submitter chpoot writes: "The Guardian reveals the gender breakdown among Amazon's management 'S Team.' At one end of the team of 132 are 12 secretaries. All are female. At the other end are 12 who report directly to Jeff Bezos. All are male. Of the 119 remaining when Bezos and the secretaries are put to one side, 18 are female. Amazon, of course, grew out of book selling. Book selling, publishing, and writing have all a fairly admirable tradition of employing women. In its attempts to overthrow traditional book selling, Amazon seems to have been particularly successful in subverting that part of the tradition."

4 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. And Amazon's not the only one either! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There's also a surprisingly low percentage of female garbage collectors.
    Since that particular job requires very little education, it would be far easier to start there when trying to close the gender gap.
    Why aren't we?

    1. Re:And Amazon's not the only one either! by lagomorpha2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Women tend to be more educated and weaker.

      Educated and physically weak happen to align well with the stereotype of tech nerds.

      The types of education women tend to get on the other hand do not align with the types of education associated with tech nerds. No, your gender studies degree is not as valid as my programming experience.

    2. Re:And Amazon's not the only one either! by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Purely out of curiosity: what percentage of this "management 'S' team", that the article refers to, are working as box shifters?

      It's amazing to me how so many people in these threads keep missing each others' points.

      Like GP, and apparently the parent commenter, who seem to have totally WHOOSHED the point that "gender inequality" is usually only raised when the subject is attractive, well-paying jobs, which is hypocrisy. Equality is equality, including garbage collection. Anything else is inequality, by definition.

      This only serves to reinforce the same old point I have been making for many years: most "feminists" I have met did not really want equality; they wanted advantage.

  2. Re:how come we never hear by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have a team of all male, all white people. Since I don't care about the sexual preferences of my workers I can't really say whether they're gay or not (in my experience, an oddly large amount of good programmers actually is), so I can only stereotype by the things I see because, frankly, I don't really care. For all I care I'd hire a blue-skinned alien that has all three genders instead of just two as would be normal with his species, as long as he/she/it performs what I need from him/her/it.

    The main reason why they're all male, all white is simply that so far only male and white people even applied for the jobs. That doesn't mean that I'd hire a black dyke because she's a black dyke. But if she knows her shit I'd hire her. Not because she's a black dyke, not despite her being a black dyke, but because she knows her shit.

    I can only hire people who apply, though. If you bemoan the lack of "diversity" in a field, first of all LOOK at the field. If you have two female engineers in a team of eight, it looks very unfair to the women, until you notice that one out of ten engineers in total is female. Then it suddenly looks quite unfair to the males.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.