Slashdot Mirror
Survey: More Women Are Going Into Programming
itwbennett writes: We've previously discussed the dearth of women in computing. Indeed, according to U.S. Bureau and Labor Statistics estimates, in 2014 four out of five programmers and software developers in the U.S. were men. But according to a survey conducted this spring by the Application Developers Alliance and IDC, that may be changing. The survey of 855 developers worldwide found that women make up 42% of developers with less than 1 year of experience and 30% of those with between 1 and 5 years of experience. Of course, getting women into programming is one thing; keeping them is the next big challenge.
Perhaps we could move the craft forward rather than focusing on the players?
The trend is to hire more of them in all capacities and jettison the men,
The popularity of this I attribute to them being easily dominated by managerial types, men are far more likely to seek a little more parking lot justice than their female counterparts...
All joking aside, I would never exploit that feature myself, but nearly every boss man I ever met would do it in a second. God help us the American workplace is such a fricken joke. So much amazing science goes into how to fuck us that I wouldn't want any human being to be subjected to it.
It was a joke: nothing more, nothing less.
Like if I were gay and wrote "Oh that's too bad, less cocks to go around." Lighten up.
Trolling is a art,
FEWER cocks, sorry.
Trolling is a art,
Stories about women in tech always bring out the best in Slashdot readers.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Here at the UW there are a lot of women engineers, mathematicians, data scientists, biochemists, and computer scientists.
The main problem is that a lot of firms talk about diversity, but aren't great on actually hiring women in tech. And when they get hired, getting shunted into more "traditional" roles, like being asked to cover the phones or front desk (as a female) when the male interns aren't asked to do that.
Fix that. Hire first, treat equally, and fix the top levels too. If your board room is male only, or tokenized, you're doing it wrong.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Programming involves dealing with many sociopaths all day long. The computer is the only honest one out of the bunch.
Yup. My experience is that a large percentage work for a couple of years, then start having babies and are gone forever. Daycare for one is tough, leaving two or more cute toddlers and paying for day care isn't worth going to the office.
Well one thing that comes to mind is that some of the best programmers tend to be of personality type INTJ. The frequency of INTJ in male vs. female population is clearly shown to be radically different. Let's look at all of the INTx types:
Intellectuals (NT)
Population Male Female
ENTJ - Chief 4% 5.5% 2.5%
ENTP - Originator 4.5% 6% 3%
INTJ - Strategist 1.5% 2.5% 0.5%
INTP - Engineer 2.5% 4% 1%
All NTs 12.5% 18% 7%
Seems to pretty clearly show why we might have a difference in the number of male vs. female programmers, huh? I doubt the males are forcing personality types on them.
Take an informal survey of female programmers that you know (might be a small sample size, unfortunately). Of those who are married, what is the profession of the partner? I'm willing to bet (based on my experience) that the answer is "programmer". Even if the woman is not married to another programmer or engineer, chances are they are married to someone who makes a lot of money. I have *never* met a woman in IT who had significantly more earning potential than their husband.
Which is not to say that I think there is a huge wage disparity between men and women in IT (I think there is one, but it is very small in NA). It's just as well that I am posting AC, because I think this next statement will not be popular with some people, however true I think it is: it seems to me that woman (in general) tend to choose partners either in the same social class that they are in or higher. Men seem to do the opposite.
The upshot is that women in IT (or other high paying professions) who have babies also have husbands who make enough money to support a single income family. Also, most countries/companies give maternity leave, but not paternity leave. So this means that a woman with a high paying job (that has good maternity benefits) will take up to a year off work to look after the baby. Her husband will spend approximately 0% of that time looking after the baby. Most people have their first baby within 10 years of starting their career in IT, so that 1 year represents 10% or more of your overall experience.
Every woman in IT I have ever worked with who has had a baby has experienced the same thing. They intend to go back to work after maternity leave. After a year of being the sole care taker of their precious baby, they can not imagine anyone else looking after the baby. Their husbands have gotten promoted and been given raises in that one year, so the prospect of the husband looking after the baby seems ridiculous. Since there is enough money coming in (and day care is expensive anyway), the thought of handing over the baby to some one else seems absolutely horrible at that point.
For some professions (like doctors or lawyers) there may be considerable pressure for the woman to come back to work because the practice is an independent business. But for programmers, engineers, technicians, research scientists, etc there is very little pressure to return. A year away is a long time and their jobs have long since been filled by someone else.
My personal opinion is, if you want women to stay working, you have to give them a reasonable alternative to being the sole care taker of their baby. For example, if maternity leave was set at 6 months and if the spouse were then given paternal leave for the next 6 months, women would have a reasonable choice for returning to work for at least 6 months while their partner was looking after the child. It would also even out the burden for careers across the partners, so that the woman isn't always at a disadvantage.
I think without this kind of change, the only place that women will be a representative force in the work place is in lower paying jobs where the woman is forced to go back to work because her partner can not support the family on a single income.