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Could a Change In Wording Attract More Women To Infosec? (csoonline.com)
itwbennett writes: "Information security is an endeavor that is frequently described in terms of war," writes Lysa Myers. "But what would the gender balance of this industry be like if we used more terms from other disciplines?" Just 14 percent of U.S. federal government personnel in cybersecurity specialties are women, a number startlingly close to the 14.5 percent of active duty military members who are women (at least as of 2013). By comparison, women are well represented in other STEM fields: "As of 2011, women earn 60 percent of bachelor-level biology degrees. Women also earn between 40 and 50 percent of chemistry, mathematics and statistics, and Earth sciences undergraduate degrees," writes Myers. Why the difference? Myers points to a comment from someone who taught a GenCyber camp for girls: "He found that one effective way to get girls to feel passionate about security was to create an emotional connection with the subject: e.g. the shock and distress of seeing your drone hacked or your password exposed," writes Myers.
As a (female) senior developer my only response to the summary was a stunned 'WTH'. Now I'm certain this is a The Onion article... *checks*
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I'm the furthest thing from an SJW but could this be any more insulting toward women?
A sensitive bunch, to be sure. Perhaps, if a group isn't interested in a subject, just maybe you shouldn't try to con them into it? There's nothing wrong with someone being disinterested in something.
all women coders are like Elle Woods from Legally Blonde and won't take a job unless you feminize it. What an insult.
An SJW would actually promote this tactic. There was an article from CNNMoney a year ago that honestly said that we'd have more women going for IT jobs if we changed the wording of the job description. For instance use cooperative instead of competitive. Or don't use hard work in the description.
Could a change in wording repel the parasites trying to turn software development into a political football ?
It's kind of like saying, "You know, those poor, oversensitive women. The problem isn't harassment, unfair pay, or things like that. It's just that we are using the wrong words."
You want to hire more women? Pay them the same as guys and crush any attempt to harass them with an iron first.
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Something I've noticed is that the SJW diversity push is effectively pushing skilled women (and skilled minorities, for that matter) OUT of tech.
Partly it's because it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy that "women don't do tech." Where as before a technically inclined woman would do the same things that technically inclined men do, now they've been taught by SJWs that they "aren't welcome in tech" no matter what they experience. So they just don't enter because they've been told again and again that they're not welcome, without realizing that the people telling them that don't even work in tech in the first place.
It also means that where before, people knew a woman in tech was there because she had earned the job, now you have to wonder if she's a "diversity hire" who's there not because she was the best for the job but because she allowed the company to check off "employs women" on the SJW score-card.
I've seen women actively leave where I work not because they didn't enjoy the job but because my employer has started doing this whole "encourage women in STEM" thing and all they've really accomplished is crapping all over the accomplishments of the women who work there. They're no longer "the best in the field" they're now "the best women we could find." Turns out being told "you're only here 'cause you're a woman" is really demoralizing to technically skilled women.
And so now, they're leaving the field entirely, giving SJWs even more to whine about.
I find the whole concept of Penis-and-Vagina Accounting applied to software development insulting toward women. The whole attraction of geeky fields (at least to me) is that they're about your mind, not your body. Do you have the geek mindset? Bright and intellectually curious and fearless? Welcome about. Reducing that to "but how many penis and how many vaginas" soils the field. That aspect shouldn't be important, and focusing on some unimportant aspect of biology is certainly insulting: it's reducing people to their junk.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If we are choosing between "let women decide what they want" and "try to manipulate women into doing what you think they should do", then I guess I would have to say that only the first option is consistent with human dignity.
I'm a programmer on a team of about ten, all men. We were at lunch one day talking about it and my boss said he went way out of his way to try to hire women. He said he proactively sent invitations to CS programs soliciting women, sent invitations to women on LinkedIn, and as a rule he would interview any woman who applied, regardless of the resume (is that gender equality? whatever).
He got zero female applicants. Zero. We have women at the company, we have women doing programming, but none doing the kind of programming that my team does. My best guess, informed by personal experience, is that women are just a lot less likely to want to do this work. There might be more than zero, but the rate is less than 1/10th of the rate for men, which on a team this size means there are zero women.
Are you aware what you're saying there? You're saying that women are scared away from a field because of how it is described. They are according to this piece scared of words. Are you fucking serious? Can you get any more condescending and belittling?
I am in it security. And as far as I can tell it's the reputation the field has that is to blame for the gender gap, and how itsecs are treated by their coworkers. We don't tend to be the most social of people. On one hand because that's basically the reputation that we have (it's self perpetuating, on one hand we have that rep, on the other hand people who aren't too fond of too much human interaction choose the field, further reinforcing that stereotype), on the other hand itsec is usually as well liked as controlling. People feel uncomfortable talking to us. Because we might hear something that makes us go "Whhaaaaaat did you say?"
Most women probably just don't want to be outcasts.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The gender pay gap thing is just dumb anyway. If I run a company, and I could save ~25% by just hiring women, why wouldn't I do that? We should see men having a hard time getting employment if this were the case, but it's not.
While none of the female CS types I know have let themselves be pushed out by this, quite a few complain, and rightfully so. This is insulting to anybody that has worked hard to be good at things. In addition, the women that were hired because of gender often seem to be incompetent, disrupt the workplace, and generally make a lot of work for others, often the competent women.
Really, STEM is a "every competent sentient life-form welcome" club. There is NOTHING that should be done to push people in that field, because people that need to be pushed or manipulated into it will later very likely fail as they will lack the dedication and skill to make it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
SJWs are not info pesky facts. They want to portray themselves as victims and then reap unearned benefits from that. Basically parasites without any useful skills.
I just hope the STEM field if more resilient to this kind of dishonorable and destructive attacks than other fields have been.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
are rather sexist and are so busy fighting against "masculinism" that they don't notice they're reifying the very gendered category system that feminists once, at the beginning, set out to make obsolete. Once again, war, labor, objectivity and striving are seen increasingly as being for men, while flowers, cooperation, peace, and "locality" (a thin veneer over domesticity) are the supposedly more desirable feminine (i.e. not so masculine) traits that we ought to promote.
It's gone gone from "women should be free to leave the kitchen and join any action they want" to "if we can move the Oval Office and the battlefield into the kitchen, we can have women present in both places as they cook!"
STOP . AMERICA . NOW