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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.

27 of 374 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...garbage disposal and off-shore drilling too! Come on women, WTF!

    1. Re:Yeah... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well.. in the early days of computing, it was a field dominated by women. So it's not that they can't do the job; we know, intellectually, women are more than adequate for IT. The question becomes: why did women fall out of IT/Programming roles?

      Or maybe the question is, why do women tend to choose other careers, and how can we force them to choose things they don't want to choose just so things will be "equal"?

    2. Re:Yeah... by meta-monkey · · Score: 5, Informative

      why did women fall out of IT/Programming roles?

      Because the "programming" most women did was laboriously transcribing algorithms written by men onto the punch cards. Those women were replaced by compilers.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    3. Re:Yeah... by Jodka · · Score: 5, Interesting

      ...garbage disposal and off-shore drilling too! Come on women, WTF!

      Good point, much like one in a Camille Paglia interview published yesterday.

      It is an absolute outrage how so many pampered, affluent, upper-middle-class professional women chronically spout snide anti-male feminist rhetoric, while they remain completely blind to the constant labor and sacrifices going on all around them as working-class men create and maintain the fabulous infrastructure that makes modern life possible in the Western world. Only a tiny number of women want to enter the trades where most of the nitty-gritty physical work is actually going on—plumbing, electricity, construction. Women have played virtually no role in the erection of those magnificent towers in every major city in the world. It's men who operate the cranes or set the foundations or wash windows on the 85th floor. It's men who troop out at 2:00 AM during an ice storm to restore power to neighborhoods where falling trees have brought down live wires. It's men who mix the stinking, toxic cauldrons to spread steaming hot tar on city roofs. Last year in a nearby town, I drove by a huge, chaotic scene where emergency workers in hazmat suits were struggling with a giant pipe break, as raw sewage was pouring into the street. Of course all those workers up to their knees in a torrent of thick brown water were men! I've seen figures indicating that 92 per cent of people killed on the job are men—and it's precisely because men are heroically doing most of the dangerous jobs in modern society...

      --
      Ceci n'est pas une signature.
    4. Re:Yeah... by HornWumpus · · Score: 3, Informative

      Many lumberjacks identify as female.

      Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    5. Re:Yeah... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I will now wait for you to strike down upon me with great vengeance and furious anger

      No, you post is just bland stupidity. It's not enough to invoke hugely strong emotions. The best you'll get is a very mildly dispairing sigh followed by a slight head shake. It will soon be fogotten, save to add another grain of sand to the huge pile of asshat on the internet.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    6. Re:Yeah... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Feels good eh? Being all right and righteous? Because I have a friend who runs a crane with a construction crew. The simple fact she's on the team is a constant issue for the men, they can't seem to get over it.

      My recent forays into manufacturing have given me some view into this, after visiting the contact manufacturer's factory to get things kicked off. It's not that the people are nasty or rude; the company I'm at has rather more women than is usual for the area (i.e. more than zero in senior and technical roles) and I dunno, but the reaction has been a bit peculiar. Like some of the guys don't quite know how to talk to a female senior technical person or CEO.

      And that's of course when they have a huge incentive to be nice because we're paying them lots of money. But some of the guys there seem kinda confused and panicy. It's been odd and interesting to witness it close up: it's very different from the creepy stalker behaviour I've seen at conferences.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  2. Enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Enough by BlueCoder · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Correct.

      IT and engineering in general is an anti social interest. The best people in the industry are very independent and highly socially deficient if not emotionally deficient. Being on light on the autism spectrum is actually a job qualification.

      Women simply are predominantly more social and less aggressive. Women are suited for IT management. The fewer women that are doing it the fewer women that want to do it.

  3. This is old territory... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:This is old territory... by meta-monkey · · Score: 4, Funny

      However, something like 95% of workplace-related deaths are men. We need to close the death gap by killing more women.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  4. And the outrage clickbait by waspleg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    continues unabated.

  5. Pushing towards any different than pushing away? by drnb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  6. questionable study by gravewax · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  7. Individual Choice by jimmifett · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  8. So what? by JustNiz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >> 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...

  9. Possibly not the cause you think it is by NotARealUser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  10. If we had unions to fight for work-life / family t by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If we had unions to fight for work-life / family time in IT jobs! then would we be having this talk?

  11. Re:Pushing towards any different than pushing away by TimothyHollins · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Letting women choose as individuals would run contrary to modern feminism where women must exist only as representatives of the group.

  12. Bull fucking shit by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If women were really cheaper, companies would be hiring them in droves to reduce cost.

    1. Re:Bull fucking shit by roman_mir · · Score: 3

      Correct. The reality is that women are more expensive for companies given they still end up doing more stuff at home, spend more time on kids and such, so where with a man one person may suffice for a job, in case of women maybe 2 need to be hired to cover for each other when either takes off in the middle of everything.

      However they are also more expensive in costs that are not immediate but are hanging out there: government turned women into a protected class and as such they are more dangerous (unexpectedly expensive) to hire than men. They can be the cause of more lawsuits regardless of what the company does or does not do.

      Now, the more expensive something is, the less of that you consume. Anybody can understand this concept when they need to buy anything, a car, a house, a boat whatever, even food. The more expensive something is, the less of that you consume.

      The costs do not have to be upfront. Buying a vacation house is probably not out of realm of possibilities for many people but it has to be maintained and there are taxes and other expenses (insurance, utilities, etc.) and these costs prevent some people from buying a vacation house.

      Women are more expensive because they are made more expensive artificially by the government. If it was simply the cost of having to deal with a woman that takes care of children and if this was done completely privately, without government intervention this wouldn't be bad, workplace flexibility can be discounted from the wages. However it is not simply 2 parties negotiating, there is always a 3rd party in all negotiations - the government. The government is there and it puts various burdens on the employer because the employee has a vagina and supposedly needs some kind of protection beyond what the men get and for political reasons the government wants to look as if it provides this 'protection'. In reality this protection often 'protects' the woman from having a job in the first place. Under those conditions it shouldn't be a surprise at all that women take some discount on the wage that would be paid to a man. *There is some* difference (a few percentage points) in the amount of money an average woman and an average man can make for the same job and this difference probably acts as insurance against government action.

  13. Re:Pushing towards any different than pushing away by epyT-R · · Score: 3, Funny

    Individual choice derived from conscious, unconscious, and environmental factors? Are you kidding? That's fascism!

  14. Not just that by s.petry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  15. Ah, the 1:1 fallacy by Chas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!!!
  16. Re:Few in numbers but kick ass as leaders.. by gweihir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This piece of fake news is not about those women. Those women compete on merit and do not need anything given to them for free because they happen to be female. I know quite a few women engineers and scientists in the same class. No, this news is about a type of woman that wants a high salary and a leadership positions solely because she happens to be a women.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  17. Re:If we had unions to fight for work-life / famil by jimmifett · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  18. Re:Women want security and not to feel abandoned by lactose99 · · Score: 3, Funny

    My coworkers and I have zero tolerance for slackers.

    Hey now, it wasn't THAT bad a film!

    --
    Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist