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Women Still Underrepresented in Information Security (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Women make up only 11 percent of the cyber security workforce according to the latest report from the Center for Cyber Safety and Education and the Executive Women's Forum (EWF). The survey of more than 19,000 participants around the world finds that women have higher levels of education than men, with 51 percent holding a master's degree or higher, compared to 45 percent of men. Yet despite out qualifying them, women in cybersecurity earned less than men at every level and the wage gap shows very little signs of improvement. Men are four times more likely to hold C and executive level positions, and nine times more likely to hold managerial positions than women, globally. More worrying is that 51 percent of women report encountering one or more forms of discrimination in the cybersecurity workforce. In the Western world, discrimination becomes far more prevalent the higher a woman rises in an organization.
...garbage disposal and off-shore drilling too! Come on women, WTF!
Nothing in IT offers job security. STEM roles are just far too insecure and unstable in general, is the problem. Of course, that's the problem for older men quite often too.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Stop applying this as a 1:1 filter..
Shut the fuck up already. If there are fewer women it's because fewer of them are interested not because evil men want to keep them out.
Yet despite out qualifying them, women in cybersecurity earned less than men at every level and the wage gap shows very little signs of improvement.
Hereâ(TM)s an idea I'd like to float, something that I've never heard considered before: Perhaps there simply isn't a legion of women who want to work in the cybersecurity world?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
continues unabated.
We have 'Switft on Security', whoever HE is. What can go wrong?
@peetm
Don't women get a say? Must they be 50/51% of every field? Maybe pushing women towards a particular field is no better than pushing them away from a particular field. Remove any barriers but let them choose. Maybe some fields are not inherently interesting, we have evolved to have different capabilities and perspectives. If this results in preferences so be it. Let people do what they prefer.
comparing education levels and pay in cybersecurity makes me immediately question this studies conclusions. Anyone working in this industry will be aware that beyond your first job interview your degrees mean less than nothing. Experience and industry knowledge is what earns pay levels in cybersecurity and I am not aware of any of my female colleagues that get paid less for the same job.
Not all ppl, let alone girls, are capable of IT related jobs, especially security. For most individuals, a career in IT comes from a passion about tech at a young age. If a child is not passionate about some aspect of IT, no amount of funding of gender discriminating STEM programs is going to entice someone into the field.
>> Women make up only 11 percent of the cyber security workforce
So what? Thats called FREEDOM TO CHOOSE. Everything shows that's actually by their choice, partly because women are just not mentally as suited as men are to doing jobs like programming.
https://www.netnanny.com/learn...
If you're gonna get up in arms about numeric gender equality, you should be more bothered about why only 9% of nurses are men. Yeah thought not.
http://www.beckershospitalrevi...
They do use it; it's why most of 'em don't have to work in IT.
I remember having a conversation with a woman tech executive at a very large company. She told me that she has done everything in her power to attract women into the field and specifically into their workplace. Yet, she was unable to break through this imbalance. And this was the top tech exec at the company and she said they just could not maintain the levels of females in the workforce in their company that she wanted. It was, in fact, far, far, below the levels she wanted.
After being in the tech industry for years, I can honestly say that I really do not encounter the implied institutional discrimination in the tech industry. Is there an imbalance in representation? Yes. However, I feel like these imbalances are indicators of other things. It could be cultural things. It could be something else. Maybe even in specific companies, there is a problem. But I feel like these statistics are more of indicators of some other cause than discrimination within the tech industry as a whole.
If we had unions to fight for work-life / family time in IT jobs! then would we be having this talk?
Letting women choose as individuals would run contrary to modern feminism where women must exist only as representatives of the group.
If women were really cheaper, companies would be hiring them in droves to reduce cost.
Stop these "news".
Are women underrpresented in garbage disposal.
How's the representation of males in education, medicine, what else?
There are two kinds of people in this world, those that discriminate, and liars. Discrimination is innate to the human condition. Our brains are lazy and take shortcuts in decision making. The sooner we all acknowledge this fact, the better.
Once we acknowledge everyone discriminates, we can stop blaming "other people", and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Everyone is guilty, even the victims. Lets all agree to try harder. The way I see it, it's the only way the situation will improve.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Individual choice derived from conscious, unconscious, and environmental factors? Are you kidding? That's fascism!
There are three women (10%) on the InfoSec team that I'm on at work. All three are team leaders. They kick ass in technological knowledge, carrying the work load, and getting stuff done on time. The few men who had problems with this found jobs elsewhere.
Women are obtaining 61% of the Masters degrees in the US, the majority of which are NOT STEM RELATED! A PoliSci degree does no good for IT, let alone a specialty like IT Security. Can I take my 4 year Mathematics degree and instantly work in the Medical field? How about being a Sociologist? Journalist?
Once again we have pure propaganda creating a false narrative with a single fact where hundreds would need to be analyzed. Do sane people actually have to contemplate why many people call "Leftism" a mental disease?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
So only 11% of workers are female but 10% of managers are female and 20% of C level workers are female and somehow that proves information security female under-representation is because gender discrimination on the field. Who makes this articles?
Sorry, but any job category that has an actual 1:1 male:female ratio is a statistical fluke. Period.
If women want better representation in a given field, the jobs are there. They simply need to have the qualifications to earn them.
And "has a penis" isn't among the qualifications.
Women have equality of opportunity in this country.
But that's not enough for some. They want equality of outcome. Regardless of how stupid the idea is.
In short, anyone, man, woman, any of the umpty-zillion and one self-defined whatevers, if they believe in equality of outcome over equality of opportunity, please do humanity a favor and make sure these people never breed.
The human race is already collectively stupid enough as it is...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The underlying assumption is that women want to be "represented" in this field in the first place. Dread the thought that women might not want to do something enough to make the head count ratios match that of the general population.
Women earn about the same for the same work. Deviations are below 5% and it is unclear whom the favor, as this is below the margin of error of such studies. Women are generally not "higher qualified" than men, even if they have more degrees in absolute terms. There are degrees that are easy to get and those that are a lot harder to get. Women have more of the former than men. This whole thing is just a specific type of women trying to make it easy for themselves and get things for free.
That said, these claims just show one thing: It is easy to lie with numbers if you just leave the right bits out. And it shows that people with an agenda like this one are not above lying.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Remove any barriers but let them choose. Maybe some fields are not inherently interesting, we have evolved to have different capabilities and perspectives. If this results in preferences so be it. Let people do what they prefer.
Perhaps they believe they won't succeed in some fields so they don't try. In that case, their barrier is their own prejudice.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
A very large number of IT ppl would never join a union, because they have analytical minds and can see the pointlessness of giving a chunk of their paycheck to a group that only claims to look out for them, but instead makes themselves comfortable.
A lot of IT ppl believe in meritocracy, not socialism, and would rather avoid the industry destruction they've seen in the automotive market. Bad enough when an incompetent manager is kept around to lead a group, worse still when you can't shake off an incompetent team member skating by bc unions.
Remove any barriers but let them choose. Maybe some fields are not inherently interesting, we have evolved to have different capabilities and perspectives. If this results in preferences so be it. Let people do what they prefer.
Perhaps they believe they won't succeed in some fields so they don't try. In that case, their barrier is their own prejudice.
That seems an issue of preparation, of introduction to the field. That's the sort of barrier I would remove. Recall "shop" classes in high school? Similar thing, everyone takes a required "intro to programming" type shop class. For those that happen to be somewhat interested they can take the elective more advanced version of that shop class. Not unlike the successful model of decades past.
Letting women choose as individuals would run contrary to modern feminism where women must exist only as representatives of the group.
It also runs contrary to modern statistics. The data suggests that women as a statistical group have different career experiences than men. The question is why?
Do women have different capabilities? Why?
Do women have different preferences? Why?
Are women given fewer opportunities?
We have seen these stories over and over, but we haven't seen answers to these questions.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
That seems an issue of preparation, of introduction to the field. That's the sort of barrier I would remove. Recall "shop" classes in high school? Similar thing, everyone takes a required "intro to programming" type shop class. For those that happen to be somewhat interested they can take the elective more advanced version of that shop class. Not unlike the successful model of decades past.
I know my education in the 90's had exactly that. 8 weeks of shop, 8 weeks of programing, 8 weeks of home economics, 8 weeks of art, 8 weeks of health. Everyone had to take those classes.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I think part of it is because women are smarter than men. Honestly, look at the work environments that we men in IT/programming have to put up with; there's another article here on /. just above about how shitty open offices are. Why would a woman want to go into this profession? The work environment sucks, the coworkers suck, the stability sucks, the tools and technology suck, etc. There's lots of better careers out there for them. These jobs are *especially* bad when you think about the demands of having children, as many women do.
My girlfriend, by contrast, works in legal. She has a (get this) *office*. Not an open-plan office, but a real office to herself so she can concentrate and get work done. Apparently, this is just beyond imagining for IT/programming companies. But in legal, it's perfectly normal. Other women I've dated in legal fields were the same; they all have offices. And they have lots of job stability too.
Face it, this industry just sucks, especially for women. It's no surprise women are avoiding it these days (it wasn't always this way). One female tech exec trying to bring in more women isn't going to make a dent, because she alone doesn't control the culture across companies in this industry, and reputation is something that takes forever to improve once it's been dragged through the mud, and here it's not just one company's reputation, it's the entire industry's.
That seems an issue of preparation, of introduction to the field. That's the sort of barrier I would remove. Recall "shop" classes in high school? Similar thing, everyone takes a required "intro to programming" type shop class. For those that happen to be somewhat interested they can take the elective more advanced version of that shop class. Not unlike the successful model of decades past.
I know my education in the 90's had exactly that. 8 weeks of shop, 8 weeks of programing, 8 weeks of home economics, 8 weeks of art, 8 weeks of health. Everyone had to take those classes.
Honestly though, I think it still has to do with gender roles in our society has a whole. I remember enjoying shop, programing, home ec., and art class. I was surprised to find sewing just as satisfying as wood working. I think it has to do with making something with my hands. However, I still lean towards the shop and programming activities to this day, and it's probably due to the stigma society puts on home economics as "women's work".
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Choice!
Choices are based generally on two things.
1. Aptitude testing (if you suck at it you probably won't do it)
2. Personal Life Goals
There is no triple secret back room meetings with men claiming "We will help women into and through master level degrees in all areas except for STEM. If a women goes into STEM we won't pay the college bills and we won't hire them.
Belief in such is worthy of institutionalization for insanity.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
You've never worked in an environment with a union have you? All they do is take a $100 or so dollars a month from your pay check (maybe more since it's been a while I've had the unfortunate experience of being in a union shop). When you do need their help they come back saying management can do what they want but you have to give them unwavering support like a cult member. Ask no questions, pay your dues, cross no picket lines, and don't expect anything from them.
Individual choice derived from conscious, unconscious, and environmental factors? Are you kidding? That's fascism!
I think it's the unconscious and environmental factors part that people are getting hung up on.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
And of course the site uses an image of two supermodels to portray women in infosec :)))) No wonder they're underrepresented
Ask no questions, pay your dues, cross no picket lines, and don't expect anything from them.
You're doing it wrong. When my father had a problem he went straight to top, asked the receptionist which bar the union head was hiding in, and, after she blurts out the bar name, we confronted him in the bar. While father talked to the union head, I stood behind him to make sure he didn't run away. Union heads don't like messing up their $1,000 Italian suits.
Bring able to make individual choices is the basis of feminism, you prat. Including modern feminism.
In theory. In practice some choices are more "correct" than others. Never underestimate the ability of politicians and their minions to screw up a good idea.
That's a great idea, but I think you'll still wind up with fewer women interested in programming. Being interested in programming means you're willing to spend hours and hours alone in front of a screen, cursing in frustration at life, the universe and everything. Few men and fewer women voluntarily put up with that kind of abuse.
There will never be a point, though, when the feminists say "oh, women just don't want to do these shitty jobs." They'll still blame the men.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Comments like more women have Master's degrees than Men related to InfoSec skills how?
And it seems like they're talking discrimination at the management and above level. That's something that's hardly limited to InfoSec
That's quite a leap.
I think part of it is because women are smarter than men.
[citation needed]. Study done show that the mean IQ is the same, but men tends to have higher distribution at the extremities (ie. more very intelligent and more very dumb) men, whereas women concentrate on the mean.
And men are underrepresented in teaching and nursing.
And white people are underrepresented in professional sports.
Except NASCAR...where we need to conscript minorities.
These days, with ubiquitous computers, if a kid isn't programming well before high school, the ship has already sailed.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I already gave my reasoning: they avoid this crappy profession where you can't get a decent workspace.
Men ONLY MAKE UP 3% of Preschool & Kindergarten Teachers! WHY ARE WE NOT SCREAMING ABOUT THIS?!?!?!
http://www.menteach.org/resour...
This MUST be some kind of conspiracy to keep MEN out of these jobs!!!!! We need action NOW!
Techs get luxurious workspaces compared to most accountants and the like.
It's not like cubefarms aren't everywhere. Senior associates get offices. Paralegals, cubes. Legal secretaries, cubes.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
As an engineer, I have far more education than a legal secretary.
As an engineer (with engineering degrees), I've been in offices with doors or working from home for decades now. Legal secretaries/paralegals usually have four year degrees and specialized legal education. But they aren't making many important decisions that aren't reviewed.
I've found the biggest difference is working someplace that builds and sells products, so engineering is closely tied to a revenue source, like lawyers are in law firms, not pure overhead, like a janitor.
Paid dues in the cube farm sure, but so do Jr Associate shysters (and how, especially with the current lawyer glut).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Why should men have to do all the work? We need to force these lazy parasites to abandon their children and get out into the work force.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Don't women get a say? Must they be 50/51% of every field?...
This discussion is definitely 5150 every time
Until I see any concern about how under represented men are in HR, speech therapy, and a host of other roles this is just special interest groups looking for special handouts and playing the victim card. I'll pay attention when they actually want equality. To date I've never seen any special interest group (ie gender / ethnic / etc) that was really looking for equality. They are all just looking for special rights and a chance to play the victim card.
Men are underrepresented as Pre-School teachers. It is overwhelmingly women. Where is the outrage over that? Asian men are underrepresented in the NBA. African American women are underrepresented as Librarians. Who gives a shit?
This reminds me of that idiotic argument that female tennis players at Wimbledon should make the same as the male competitors. Yeah - except that the men play 5 sets (not 3 like the ladies do), and the audience is overwhelmingly larger for the mens events (and, by extension the advertising dollars). Yet Wimbledon succumbed to political pressure. Same tactic here I suppose.
If you do, you might as well not submit anything.
I tried to shorten mine like D.C. Fontana, but I am not allowed.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Research shows that, as a group, only men pay tax:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p...
http://judgybitch.com/2016/08/...
Truth and lies are often neighbours.
True, there are less women working in Information Security.
False, it has anything to do with discrimination. In fact, the job market right now is so good that I cannot for the life of me believe any company would turn down a woman or risk making her not take the offer by paying her less. Right now I know of several customers who are dying to hire qualified IS people (if you're anywhere in central Europe and/or willing to relocate, contact me).
Neighbourhood: Several studies about the alleged "gender pay gap" already revealed that the actual causes of the gap is that, statistically speaking, women have less years of experience at the same age, more gaps in their careers and CVs, and negotiate worse. Some of that may be gender-related, but it's not the same as crying "discrimination".
Whenever I am leading a team, I personally am happy to have a good mix of men and women, it tends to give the broadest perspective and the best results. But if you have an imbalance, you should look for the underlying reasons, not just paint a buzzword over it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
These questions are addressed in endless studies. It's a shame people always mod links to them down.
Here is a very detailed study that answers the questions you asked, and offers solutions: http://www.jite.informingscien...
From there it is easy to find more information:
http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/... - problems in education
http://www.npr.org/sections/al... - work culture
And since someone always claims that the stats are wrong, here are some experts explaining that the gap is real: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/...
It would be great if we could actually discuss this stuff for once instead of all the "we just don't know" hand-wringing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Do those strawwomen actually exist? Never met one in my life, and I've frequented all sorts of feminists.
There's nothing like $HOME
It's more like, a lot of people in IT think they are the shit and don't need any collective bargaining or union because they are above average and will negotiate a better than average salary/conditions anyway.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
...a field who's aim is secrecy and security to be filled by a gender that lists GOSSIPING as one of their worst faults?
Go ahead, mod me down.
It's not working, you're already on +3. But it is a +3 Troll mod, so that's something!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Perhaps it's because talking too much isn't really a desirable attribute in this field?
Out of interest, is forming misplaced opinions from debunked "facts" a hobby of yours, or do you do it professionally?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"This paper assesses gender disparities in federal criminal cases. It finds large gender gaps favoring women throughout the sentence length distribution (averaging over 60%), conditional on arrest offense, criminal history, and other pre-charge observables. Female arrestees are also significantly likelier to avoid charges and convictions entirely, and twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted. Prior studies have reported much smaller sentence gaps because they have ignored the role of charging, plea-bargaining, and sentencing fact-finding in producing sentences."
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2144002
And that's only one facet of gynocentric privilege in the injustice system. Thank social injustice AND chivalry.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head."
Score 1: Troll. Should be renamed "Score 1: Uncomfortable truth".
Seriously, Slashdot needs to make up-votes count more than down-votes, because too many people abuse overrated/troll as their personal "I disagree" mod.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Seriously. If women want to get into that profession, what stops them?
The article starts with a claim "women have higher levels of education than men," which might be true, but it has nothing to do with underrepresentation of women in Information Security. The relevant information would be the percent graduates in computer science. When I googled for that, I found that only 18% of CS graduates were women. (Source: http://www.aauw.org/research/s...). So though there are more women with degrees, most of those degrees have nothing to do with CS.
Then there was a claim that "women make up only 11 percent of the cyber security workforce". I don't know where this number came from. Based on statistics provided by US Department of Labor, there are 18.1 percent of women in Information security analysts. Source: https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/C...
Counter-counterpoint: that's something everyone can see. I think women are more social than men. You can get women to geek out on something like photography, or fashion design, the end result of which is seen and appreciated by other women. But programming? Nobody gives a shit about your clever little algorithm or the vexxing bug that took 2 days to track down. Programming is mostly a solitary, lonely pursuit that no one gives a shit about.
Counter-counter-counterpoint: with the advent of twitch streaming-type stuff for programmers (I've seen this mentioned on slashdot before, where some coders will livestream their coding session and talk about what they're doing and why) this could actually become a social activity that would attract more women. At this point there will definitely be an issue with sexism, because the chat screen will be filled with demands the programmer show everyone her tits.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Women still haven't reached parity in workplace fatalities. Protesters vowed to do their part by jumping like lemmings into a wood chipper until enough awareness was raised to end this injustice.
Yeah, they've got their own TV shows.
Oprah's was even pretty popular for a while.
Excellent response. I found that Iowa State paper very informative. However, my question was Socratic, and the parent has yet to respond.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
While that is a nice story, it does not match up with reality. Sure, there will be instances of that happening, but in general it is just not true.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The workers, by and large, aren't the ones who make the working environment shitty; that's management. The workers aren't the one who pushed open-office plans.
I work for a public organization, where they would absolutely salivate over hiring any underrepresented group.
In our last round of basic technician hiring, 150 or so people who applied for two positions.This was a job posted well ahead of time, to most of the government jobs websites.
Only two women applied. Of them, one failed the first written exam, and the second failed her hands on test because she didn't want to lift a PC ( job description included lifting 50 pounds occasionally).
The management was tearing out their hair trying to figure out why this was happening.
I wouldnt expect many people with choices to become a trucker these days. Automated vehicles, and all that. IT is arguably in disrepute after so much outsourcing. Why would anyone want to join a shrinking job field to compete with entrenched veterans for less pay?
https://www.google.com/search?...
Yes.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?