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Fortune.com: Blame Tech Diversity On Culture, Not Pipeline
FrnkMit writes: Challenging a previous Code.org story on tech diversity, a Forbes.com writer interviewed 716 women who left the technology field. Her conclusion: corporate culture, and the larger social structure, is the primary cause for these women leaving the industry and never looking back. Specific issues include a lack of maternity policies in small companies, low pay which barely covers day care, "jokes" from male coworkers, and always feeling like the "odd duck." In reality, there are probably many intertwined causes: peer pressure at the high-school and college level, female-unfriendly geek culture, low pay, a lack of accommodations for pregnant/nursing mothers, the myth of "having it all," stereotype threat, and repeated assertions that women aren't biologically suited to writing software and therefore there's no problem at all.
Women do get robbed a bit across the board and not just in the software industry. But their complaints do not reflect certain realities. First an employee that shows up for work is far more valuable than an employee that misses work. That is just an economic fact. It doesn't matter why an employee misses work at all. If they miss work they are less valuable. Some people feel that their reproduction is a big deal while other people may feel that most people have an obligation not to reproduce. Pregnancy disrupts business and pregnancy is not a requirement of one's personal life it is an option. Next problem is babies keeping workers awake at night and having employees show up that are essentially unfit for work. And an employer's insurance issues increase when married people with babies are hired. Then we have problems with women's monthly cycle. Some women show no difference in function during their period but quite a few either physically or emotionally are a mess. And in this era we see quite a few women with rather strident attitudes over their rights or perceived insults. Somewhere the concept that the best employees are those that bring in money for the firms has been lost. Life is unfair. To some extent we have no capacity to make life fair. We must compete with foreign powers to survive. It may be next to impossible to survive as a nation if we fail to consider the economic productivity of workers and put all kinds of factors in play which we need to avoid. And not all customers are stupid. I walked into the parts department of a motorcycle dealership and the parts clerk was dressed in a formal, gown as if she were going to a prom. The carpet was lush. I did a 180 turn and left the dealership. No way in the world do i want to support plush carpet and evening gowns on a parts clerk. I would far prefer to run into some old person who had twenty years experience wearing greasy Levis who actually knew bikes and parts. Sometimes society is too dumb for words.