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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.

11 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...

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      Ceci n'est pas une signature.
  2. 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?

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    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.

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      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
  3. 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...

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

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

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

  7. 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?

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    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.