Women Leaving I.T. 1027
Deinhard writes "NewsFactor is running a story on the exodus of women from the I.T. field. According to the article, women made up 41% of the I.T workforce in 1996. That number dropped to 35% by 2002 and that "the downward spiral is gaining momentum." While this is certainly a concern, what are the overall effects of such a mass departure?"
Looking at the distribution ... (Score:5, Insightful)
CC.
Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Too lazy to provide links... (Score:3, Insightful)
concern? (Score:2, Insightful)
What about (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it any wonder the people are leaving given that family friendly seems to be a concept completely lost on most companies.
Why is it a concern? (Score:4, Insightful)
The few women I know in the IT field seem to have gotten into it for the money or because they couldn't think of anything else to do, rather than because they like working with computers. Now the money's gone, so are they.
The same applies to many men of course, but it seems to me that geeky traits are exhibited more often by men than women, so women are going to be fewer than men in geeky endeavours.
I don't think that a 50:50 split in any particular field is necessarily fair, what matters is not the male:female ratio, but that somebody with the requisite talent is able to pursue a career in a field without being artificially held back on the basis of their sex.
No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I would dispute the figures they are spewing.
Unless of course they are including people who use computers to do their job rather than technical IT positions?
Nowadays, there is no point putting IT on your CV if computers are so ingrained into your career path that NOT knowing them would mean not being able to do the job in the first place (for instance a secretary not knowing how to email or use Office etc)
Anyway, we need more women posting on slashdot, but NO flowers or potpouri please, we have to keep some sense of decency.
Women aren't interested. (Score:3, Insightful)
There is nothing wrong with this. Why is it a crisis?
I suspect the "downward spiral" is due to a lot of women who went into IT (perhaps due to all the efforts made to attract them) only to discover they really weren't interested.
The effects won't be very significant. (it may have an impact on the consumer level as less software is written with women in mind though)
Live and let live. They're not interested, so what?
Re:Effects (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this sums it up nicely : the field of IT is not what it ws 15 years ago. Today, 95% of the so called IT staff are project managers & planners. In other words : suits.
It's common knowledge that that kind of jobs is still a highly men-only world.
So it's not the number of women that declines, but the number of male boneheads that increases.
Testing? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a well-established fact that women are generally better with (human) languages, and given that a lot of IT is not about advanced math but is about manipulating symbols you would therefore expect women to do rather well in those areas of IT. And of course a large part of any job and the main component of many support-based jobs is interpersonal skills, which is another area where women do well. In any case, the bell curves overlap a huge amount, so while your average woman may be slightly more or less gifted at some tasks than men, a lot of women will be better at the task than a lot of men, and vice versa.
I know plenty of women working in IT, and their spread along the competent-incompetent axis is pretty similar to the men I know. One of the best Un*x sys admins I know is a woman, who also happens to have a doctorate in math.
I'd suggest that the exodus, if it exists, has a lot more to do with issues such as working hours, and maybe with the limited novelty value of working with neanderthal male colleagues who can only rate to women on the basis of their genitals.
Re:Not politically correct but reality is... (Score:3, Insightful)
You're not sure why? But that's obvious - women have great people skills, men are better at building things, constructing objects. The later is true also for virtual objects - all great programmers or architects that I know in fact see how the code works. They unconsciously kind of visualize it in their mind as a functioning mechanism.
Project management in turn is a people skills exercise. You have to be very good at dealing with people, understand them, communicate effectively and so on. Women are much better at (unconsciously) manipulating people (especially men, above all geeks) into doing something they want. A man would sooner retort to using authority and orders - woman would first try to make you want to do it. Guess when the job is done better.
Re:Why is it a concern? (Score:1, Insightful)
To follow up on my own post, there's another factor to consider - where are they going?
Like it or not, many, many more women have the opportunity to simply give up their careers than men. There aren't that many househusbands around, but plenty of housewives. Hell, househusband isn't even a word!
It makes sense that now jobs in the IT industry are becoming scarce and less well paid, that more women will leave the industry than men, simply because, on average, more of them have the opportunity to do so.
Other factors (Score:3, Insightful)
Given the current wonky state of the larger IT companies, are they missing a useful female perspective?
Poor choice of dates, and show me the numbers. (Score:5, Insightful)
Start with the two years the mention: 1996 and 2002. 1996 was the start of the dot-com boom. And 2002, a slump after dot-bombs are clearing away.
Where's the numbers in the middle? Did it drop in 1997-1999, in the boom? Did it stay the same until 1999, then drop? Has it been a continuous rate change? Where's the support that it really is a "downward spiral"?
Second, lacking from TFA are actual numbers and places.
Is this the IT market globally, including countries like India, China, Russia, and others? Or is this the IT market in the US? Or perhaps just the San Jose area? Or just Arkansas where the school that ran the survey is at? How many women? Has there been an increase in the number, just less of an increase relative to men? Or has the total number stayed about the same, or dropped? What are the women doing? Are they including women employed as secretaries and managerial operations within the IT business? How about men similarly working in IT companies, but not doing IT? What about the people not in the IT business but doing the work for small companies?
Given the (lack of) data we are shown, their conclusions are not really warranted.
frob
Re:No surprise (Score:3, Insightful)
Cutting edge of the future? Hello, wake up!
It's not that anymore. Look around, most IT jobs are degrading with light speed - who is a sysadm or a programmer now and who was he in social perception ten or twenty years ago? These are now just dispensable human resources, sorry to say that but it's true. This industry is now becoming commonplace, normal industry like say telecoms or railways or textiles - each of them has been the cutting edge pulling the technology and society in their due time. But after that - it's just industry like all others.
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is a concern is if they're leaving because they're being driven out by sexist attitudes or working conditions (not deliberately sexist perhaps, but more likely designed by single men, for single men and with a "you have to change your life, because we're not changing our conditions" attitude). If this is the case then a) that shows a deep ingrained prejedice that belongs in the 50's rather then a 21st century cutting edge industry, and b) we're losing lots of very talented people who can bring whole new ideas and ways of looking at problems into the industry because they were born with a particular set of physical characteristics rather then for any worthwhile reason.
Diversity is good, not just in the operating system and software market but also in the people that produce that software.
Why is this a concern in and of itself? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're modded as +3 funny but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, I'm sure a buncha people are going to get up-in-arms screaming 'Men are not better than women!'. To which I wholeheartedly agree. However, people who spend their entire adolescence in their basement working on computers are better at computers than those who do not, and people who spend their entire adolescence in their basement are far more likely to be men. Ergo, a particular male, having been far more likely to have been hiding in his basement working on computers while other people were dating, is more likely to be qualified for an IT position that a particular female.
IT as a long-term career (Score:3, Insightful)
If IT remains a field where the only relevant knowledge is what you've done in the last two months or two years, then it makes no sense for someone to spend a career on it. Kids are coming out of school (in schools around the world now) with the latest programming languages. If a short absence from IT means you are less valuable than a recent graduate, then it makes sense to leave the field after an absence. Women are more often forced by circumstances like having children to make more mid-career decisions like this than men.
In other professions, there are skills you use and tools you become proficient at over the course of many years. It seems that these either don't exist in IT, or (as I believe) they do exist, but are rarely developed or valued. If returning to IT is as difficult as starting over in a new profession, we shouldn't be surprised that people choose to do so.
Re:Women? (Score:1, Insightful)
People always bring up the issue of what the female sex can and can't do, well IMHO it's all BS, it's all about what they want to do.
As a woman... (Score:2, Insightful)
My husband's working hours are 8 to 5, yet he's never home before 6 (and that's on a VERY quiet day).
When he's on standby he gets calls all times of the day, night and weekend and has had to drive to work in the middle of the night because a server is down.
And when he has a major project to work on he works even more overtime then he normally does.
Now, I don't have kids (yet) but if I did I don't think I'd cope with the erratic nature of his IT work environment. Kids have school and activities that run to a schedule, you don't get to chop and change that at will. And babies, well, they have a schedule all their own.
I am lucky, I have a husband who does more than his fair share at home, but are other working women (especially working moms) that lucky?
It's no surprise then that IT is not that appealing a career choice for women, but it has nothing to do with their talents and abilities. Rather it has to do with the inequalities in our social systems (as opposed to the work place) where women are still expected to put family first while men put work first.
Maybe women are not as interested in IT as men? (Score:2, Insightful)
We should fight for equal rights of women and men, that we should all have the same credit for the same work. But we should not decide that just as many men must do the same thing as women, or that there should be just as many women as men at every workplace. That's an artificial ideal. Women and men have different dreams for how they want to live.
However, I have always found it more stimulating and interesting to work in an environment with a balance of both sexes. If some workplace attracts mainly women or mainly men, one should perhaps see this as a problem with the workplace, not as a problem with what women or men generally want to do with their lives.
Re:Testing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Women seem to be a lot more sensible about taking that kind of crap from an employer than guys (who still feel driven to be "Primary breadwinner", and as such are more reluctant to leave a job and walk into uncertainty).
From being a contractor across a LOT of companies in my time, and various full time roles, I've always found that the guys on the job have always (well, nearly always) just got on with the job, and treated the women the same as anyone else.
If you want to pick up on the guys that didn't deal too well with women being around, I'd like to note that I've been some places where the guys have been no problem at all, and one or more of the female workers have been putting down they guys (which is seen as perfectly 'politically correct' and not a problem).
So, now the sector has been flooded by the people who were in it for a quick buck, and the money's leaving the area, so are the people who wanted the quick easy money.
The ones left are the ones who are passionate about the role.
Much as women are superior at human interaction languages, I've always noted that they are usually far better at interacting with humans.. And their interest tends to wane when faced with using an artificial language to communicate with a computer that has nothing much interesting to say back.
I'll wholeheartedly agree with your competency though. The ones that were good that you've met are likely the ones staying in the field (they must have really enjoyed it to get really good).
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I know a lot of women in IT, and there are certain qualities that they have. Men have different qualities.
To generalise, women are better in less geeky programming, where it is more business oriented. They don't tend to "play" in the way men do.
Most women I know have less languages/tools under their belt, but have done a lot more of them. They have some wisdom about languages - mostly a change of language doesn't deliver the stratospheric improvements touted by the manufacturers.
Here's why this matters: the world of programming used to be a lot more stable. You could learn COBOL and use it almost unchanged for a decade and keep getting better at it. The current thing of skills changing rapidly (i.e. another version of a tool that delivers nothing in terms of productivity to a business) doesn't help that.
I think a lot of women just get fed up with this geeky game.
It may also be that at one time, software development in companies was becoming more and more business orientated. Now, I see more and more hacker mentality than business oriented programming. And, I don't know if it's a culture particularly attractive to women.
You mean, just like 3 out of 4 men? (Score:5, Insightful)
The dot-con fraud attracted a _lot_ of frauds in this field. The dot-cons were throwing other people's money out the window with both hands, just to show that they can. People with less brains or economic sense than a garden snail, had found themselves in a bunch of money, and had no idea what to do with them... other than show the Joneses that they too can spend like the big boys. Fast cars, huge headquarters, corporate airplanes for a tiny startup, or expensive programmers, it was just conspicuous consumption. (I.e., same as having a massive gold watch, just to show the neighbours who's rich. Doesn't even have to be a good watch: it just has to look blatantly expensive.)
And they hired _anyone_. Literally _any_ drooling ex-burger-flipper was suddenly employable in IT or programming. People who were too stupid to operate a cash register, were ok as "web application developpers" or whatever.
Lots of them, preferrably. Having 20 programmers and 30 artists for a 3 page web site was _cool_. Made the PHB feel like he too can play with the big boys' corporations.
And unsurprisingly, a lot did fake a resume and move into IT or programming. A whole caste of fraudsters was created whose _only_ skill was marketting themselves. They too "deserved" the big bucks, a sports car and a plasma TV, and were not gonna let utter lack of skill and knowledge get in the way of their American Dream.
It had nothing to do with liking to use a computer, or having any skill or inclination. Most not only had none, they didn't even try to learn either. They just "deserved" the money, they didn't actually want to start working for them.
And I don't think that being male or female played that big a role there. If there weren't 50% females there, if anything, makes me suspect they're more honest. Because anything to do with skill or liking computers, it sure didn't have.
Re:Why is this a concern in and of itself? (Score:2, Insightful)
As for the inherent differences thing, look at entry to law and medical school. Figures have risen from under 10% females in the 70's to near equal numbers of men and women - and I see this reflected in doctors and lawyers around me. More than half of the general practitioners at my local surgery, including senior partners, are women.
Entry to university science courses is getting more equal too, but the diversity there is not being reflected in the staffing levels in faculty. Is science harder than medicine or law? It may require different thought processes but I don't think so. Does science require extra dedication or determination? You try getting a training contract as a lawyer, or getting into med school. So what's going wrong? It always seems to come down to family. Fair enough, women will always have time off to have kids due to biology, but if a man wants kids he doesn't seem to have the social expectations that he will have to juggle a career, childminding etc. His professional respectability is in no way diminished by having kids. Once women have kids, a lot of workplace culture seems to see that she is less committed, less capable and not as trustworthy as before. If a woman is good at her job, why does it matter if she has kids?
Next time you here some bloke ('cos it will be a man) making a comment about women and childrearing and jobs, ask him how many kids he has. If he has kids, then obviously he's less committed to his job, 'cos he's a parent, right? This a bit of a ramble. I don't have any answers but I have seen professional women (I'm a medical researcher in academia) face these challenges. For some good reading, check out Science's careers pages - there is some insightful writing on the male/female and work/life balances.
Re:As a woman... (Score:2, Insightful)
I do it (well I am also in school now... it is my turn) but nothing is stopping women from having a career except women.
Am I REALLY The First Person To Say This? (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA talks about women's participation in IT as a percentage of the IT workforce, but that doesn't tell us anything about whether or not women are fleeing IT. Try this as an experiment:
Time 0: 100 IT positions. 40 are women.
Time X: 1000 IT positions, 350 are women.
We've gone from 40% women to 35% women. Have women fled the field? HELL NO.
We need absolute numbers to figure out whether or not there are less women in IT than there used to be, but TFA doesn't seem to have them (or I missed them -- I did R it, of course).
Re:You're modded as +3 funny but... (Score:3, Insightful)
women aren't departing in greater numbers... (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, no...that's not fair to say either. What's really happening is that there were never as many women in IT as this story suggests. There were roles in the IT field that were held by women more than men, but those roles weren't really *IT* roles...and those roles don't exist as much now.
Its simply a matter of how IT was defined then, and how the landscape has changed. The core support and development teams (what most of us would call IT) have always been overwhelmingly male....never were they 44% female. On what planet did that happen? I've never seen an IT dept with more than 10% females. That's really unfortunate, I think, but...that's just how it is (esp in the sysadmin ranks...the women population goes up some in the web dev ranks).
Re:Women aren't interested. (Score:3, Insightful)
It depends on WHY they are not interested.
1) They are just not into tech stuff anymore.
2) They are not interested because there's a glass ceiling and no room for advancement,
3) They are not interested anymore because they are tired of maintaining ten times the competence required from male co-workers.
One of them is more OK than others. Clueful people can tell which.
I think I know why. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
The closest I could find to an actual example in the article was this gem:
Where "enterprise software" is a link to a company selling something (ie it's an advert). What little credibility the author may have had vanished with that line. Ooooh! Enterprise software! That's some scary stuff you got right there.
I mean it's not like men ever get hit by a car and have to take a few months out (or lose their jobs!), is it? This article is a total fluff piece pandering to those who actually care about the imbalance, ie managers and not (by and large) the techs who just want to work with the best people possible.
Re:As a woman... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmm... kinda makes me wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally know people who left a field or a job precisely _because_ they were passionate about it... and it had turned into something they disliked. E.g., we have at least 3 people here alone, who used to program assembly since the days of mainframes and long before dot-coms, and then left for other completely unrelated jobs (2 of them became marketters and 1 trained to be a usability expert) when basically the job was no longer what they liked to do.
Loving computers and programming is sometimes _the_ best way to _hate_ an IT or programming job, respectively.
People liked coding a smart algorithm or maybe a cute game at home, they had their peer recognition for being good with computer in university, and... then moved into a real world that doesn't even vaguely resemble that. In the real world they:
- got bogged in hundreds of hours of verbal-masturbation meetings,
- were forced to do overtime for someone _else's_ mistake (e.g., the boss being too weak to tell the customer that completely changing the program needs more time and budget),
- were asked to implement blatantly wrong specs, or use the blatantly wrong tools, just because a PHB (own or client's) said so and wasn't gonna take feedback from a lowly peon. (The nice salesman says it's the perfect "solution" for anything, so now go make it work. If it doesn't work, it's your fault, not the nice salesman's.)
- had to wrestle with systems that wouldn't have been the wrong tools as such, but were wrongly configured and piss-poorly adminned by some other corporate department that's above the law,
- had to deal with co-workers that were annoying in a miriad of ways (ranging from the 400 pound stinking geek, to office backstabbers, to people who are utterly incompetent and lazy but awesome at selling snake oil to the boss, to whatever else),
- were forced to do stuff that really had nothing to do with the job they had signed for, such as being the poor-man's marketer instead of a programmer,
- were asked to do blatantly unethical stuff, like to actively lie to a customer,
Etc.
And some of us just learned to shrug and deal with it. Some left the job. And I think it's a bit unfair to just lump them into the same category as those who were in it just for the dot-com's money.
Re:You're modded as +3 funny but... (Score:5, Insightful)
3 of the best programmers I know are women. That includes my boss, and 2 people that went through the CS curriculum with me.
Now
There's a gender difference in teaching though. Men tend to get called on more than women in classes, and also tend to get taken more seriously than women, all the way back into elementary schools, by both male and female teachers.
Caplan and Caplan's "Thinking Critically about Women and Gender" has a good chapter on educational differences.
Ultimately, the women in IT are just as good as the men, but they're a far smaller sample. There's a lot of piss-poor programmers and sysadmins and support people who are men, and a smaller number in the same positions who are women. If a man screws up, it's more likely to be blamed on his incredible incompetence, where if a woman screws up, you're more likely to draw the attribution that it's because she's a woman.
Re:Are there really... (Score:5, Insightful)
Women in science aren't in science to "hook a man". They're there to study science.
The women going to college hoping to get married along the way and be a dependent for life are the ones that go into gender-typical classes (ie: elementary education, liberal arts, to a lesser extent management or nursing).
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most women surviving on the internet realise fairly quickly that it's courting severe and long-term irritation to admit to their gender in a room full of geeks. Therefore the majority of women registered on slashdot are not going to be using names with giveaway terms like, I dunno, "babe" in them.
Flaw in argument (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You're modded as +3 funny but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Testing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Those things that many men hold true, many women also come to hold true, at least on some level.
Your belief in "what women were for" came from somewhere, and more likely than not what indoctrinated you indoctrinated someone of the opposite sex just as deeply.
And more likely than not, the women who were raised believing that are living out those beliefs, hunting for husbands, working dead-end jobs, and trying to look good, instead of trying to build careers.
Re:Women aren't interested in IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
The managers, hence fuckwits (just like men.) Very few managers are not fuckwits. Unfortunately, with one possible exception, on which the jury's still out, the female managers I dealt with were as bad as the usual male manager. By virtue of having contact with more male managers than with female ones, the chances of meeting a non-fuckwit female manager was greatly reduced.
The uninterested--as another poster described, these were the sort of trend-drones seen during the dot-com boom. Once again, fuckwits. Fewer women percentually means fewer non-fuckwits, absolutely. In my case, the non-fuckwit female trend-drone share was nil.
The intimidated--because of the (real or perceived) disadvantages faced by women in IT, these were the mousy, quiet types who never had anything to say. Happens with men too, but as men usually tend to be at least a bit more assertive, it's less common. Not unpleasant to work with, mainly since you never encounter them (they're hiding.) "Oh no I could never do this, I might break it."
The intimidating--taking the previous class a step further, these are the ones who treat every personal encounter as a confrontation. Not man-haters, just insecure people afraid of being fucked by god-knows-what, or unsure of their ability to deal with people trying to fuck them (in a professional manner, mind--no, not that kind of professional manner.) See managers.
The officious--an offshoot of the last category. One of my dearly held stereotypes is that women care more about rules than men do (as in Dilbert's Wally vs. Alice.) These are the types who will throw rules and roadblocks in your face out of principle, because you COULD BE TRYING TO PULL A FAST ONE OH MY GOD. See managers.
The cool ones--don't care, are professional and competent, have the self-confidence to ignore harassment or hit back with wit and style, and understand that there's a job to be done and hey, can't we all just get along. Very rare, but oh so incredibly appreciated. They get things done, are more responsible than the guys, come up with cool, creative solutions, and basically combine all the good sides of a "typical" female personality with a few characteristics making it easy for guys to work with them.
Once again, I realize that most of these stereotypes apply to men as well. I love working with women, if they fall into the latter class. It's just been my experience that a far higher percentage of men tend to be competently agreeable to work with than women.
The main points that I make to women (as with anyone) when talking about IT careers are: (a) don't be intimidated, and (b) don't do this job if you don't love it, and can deal with technical and human shit a lot of the time. Rule #1? Relax, it's a job, get it done and that's it.
Re:Oh man... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:1, Insightful)
At least the parent alludes to it being speculation than `That's not it at all`.
You mean, you don't think thats it.
I don't personally agree with the lack of business orientated programming. Most programming is business orientated. The distinction between software development and hacker development seems a bit vague to me, i'm not even really sure where you are coming from.
Re:Women aren't interested. (Score:1, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2, Insightful)
I hardly bother making comments anymore, I just exit to BoingBoing until the slashcode gives me mod points, but this really needs to be said. The deprecation of computer related fields which is so prevalent in America is NOT the case elsewhere. Where I grew up, the "computer guys" were treated with a certain reverence and awe.
Brains are appreciated in systems which aren't the meatgrinder and specialisation winnowing of US education. I was puzzled for a long time by the "news for nerds" tag on the front page for a long time, eventually I just figured it was there to keep most of the meatheads out.
I mean I fit the classical "nerdy" stereotype almost perfectly, but I'll plant you on your ass if you call me a nerd, son. Mod me down if you like, but seriously, people, a little perspective here!
Re:You mean, just like 3 out of 4 men? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I stand by what I wrote there. From personal experience, 3 out of 4 men I've worked with, were utterly and totally incompetent.
Thing is, men really _aren't_ natural-born tech experts they try to sound like. (And I'm one, so I think I'm allowed to say that.) Maybe a bit more interested in tech stuff, but definitely _not_ naturally inclined to actually be competent at it.
We've just received an idiotic education where if you have a dick, you _must_ do the macho thing and fix your own car/computer/radio/whatever. Most men seem to have had the idiotic notion hammered into their head that if they don't open their car's hood (and ruin the car in the process), it's like admitting sexual impotence or worse. That you have to _prove_ you have a dick, by doing all sorts of stupid or dangerous stuff personally.
But as I've said, that doesn't actually make them competent. They just use massive selective confirmation to promote minor trivial achievements into meaning some technical expertise. "W00t, I changed the oil! I'm such a total expert in car mechanics! I know all about cars!" Not.
And when it _doesn't_ go well, it's selective confirmation to the rescue again. It's quickly shoved behind an excuse and discarded. In 2-3 days it's back to the old, "Hey, I'm still the greatest technology expert ever! I never made a mistake!" (Except those dozens of times which got conveniently "forgotten.")
E.g., dear old dad almost zapped himself to death about a dozen times, rather than just call an electrician. And lemme tell you, getting zapped by a 230V socked it bad enough. Getting zapped by the TV he opened to try to fix himself, now that muscle spasm smashed him into a wall, and left him there for a while. There's some really high voltage inside those. But that, of course, wouldn't stop him from thinking that he's God's gift to any tech device. 'Cause if he wasn't, he'd be like, you know, not man enough.
E.g., every Real Man knows that men are perfect drivers, unlike those women who can't even steer in a straight line. Too bad it's actually false. Insurance company statistics say that, per 100 km driven, a man is _twice_ as likely to cause an accident as a woman is. Unlike the popular myth, according to actual accident statistics, being a macho testosterone machine doesn't make one an expert driver... quite au contraire. It makes one more likely to drive in a reckless and dangerous manner.
E.g., the same pre-conception and selective confirmation goes for computers too. Any idiot who can write 5 lines in BASIC on their parent's computer, or launch someone else's compile script, thinks that his Y chromosome makes him God's gift to computers. W00t, typing those few lines was such a major achievement and surely making him the greatest expert to ever walk the Earth.
Sorry, nope. Being able to "emerge KDE" does _not_ make one a computer expert. And writing a "hello world" does _not_ make one a programmer.
Actual competence starts around the point where your team did a project worth at _least_ 100,000 lines, and which didn't fail miserably. (Of course, that means divided into modules, programs, whatever.) And where your contribution was actually a substantial enough slice of that. (Not like some Wally instances here that just inherited someone else's module and refused to do any changes for _3_ _years_ straight, for fear of breaking code that's well beyond their skill or knowledge.)
Re:overall effects? (Score:3, Insightful)
I could equally say that there's plenty of shallow men out there, interested in little more than:-
Cars
Toys. Including iPods and the like.
Babes/Porn Particularly with ludicrously inflated breasts.
Beer
Crap sci-fi movies and series
Maybe they're not too interested in you. Perhaps, because you show little interest in the things they might be interested in (eg Clothes).
Actually, there's plenty of bright, interesting women, but the way your carrying on, I think the real men are more likely to get a share than you.
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:2, Insightful)
"I don't know why other women are being chased out."
Well its nice to see a completely impartial view. Maybe you should read the article, then you would KNOW why. I'm awfully tempted to utter the immortal 4 letters. As a woman yourself, I would have thought you would have wanted the facts.
You know what, men do have to deal with patronising managers too, a little knowledge is sometime dangerous. If they learn something, they tend to get happy about it and teach you what they know. The time I have spent humouring managers like this. Jeez. Don't think just because you are a woman means that you are the only one who has difficulties in their work.
I just knew some article about women leaving IT would bring out some women how bad they have it. Some guys have it bad too, I just think it is crazy sometimes to assume that its because what you have or don't have in your pants.
I'm sure the company when dealing with you didn't mean anything by it, they just assumed it was a guy. You know what? More guys are in IT, its not like its a wildly stupid thing to say. Most women i've met are proud of the fact they are women in IT and would have smiled at the opportunity to point out they were the `techie guy`.
Re:You mean, just like 3 out of 4 men? (Score:1, Insightful)
No, I stand by what I wrote there. From personal experience, 3 out of 4 men I've worked with, were utterly and totally incompetent.
Hang on a sec, you said "according to real studies". That's quite different to "from personal experience".
Thing is, men really _aren't_ natural-born tech experts they try to sound like. (And I'm one, so I think I'm allowed to say that.)
No, you aren't. Speak for yourself, not all men, thanks.
Nobody is a natual-born expert in anything. That doesn't mean there aren't genuine biological tendencies that lead people to prefer one career path over another.
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, I am aware. We have one manager here that does it to everyone, which fills me with a sort of 'part of something' joy. I would guess though, that no one has ever assumed you were the receptionist or the Office Manager? Or actually being asked point blank if there was a technical contact onsite after your name had been provided? OR, this is my favorite, have you ever been asked if your name is your 'stage name?' Or have you ever had a man shout at you over the phone, insisting that he HAD TO SPEAK TO A MAN to fix his system? These things happen to us all the time and I can assure you, it's not just me.
And of course it brought out this kind of a response. The article wanted to know why and I'm telling you why I've thought about leaving IT. As for the rest, who knows? I would assume that my gender probably is motivated by money, security and ambition just like men are. It's no secret that IT is kind of bottomed out.
I am enormously proud of being a woman in IT. I think it's pretty cool, especially in the face of all of this *waves around at the
And this is a concern because..... (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I love women (after all, I'm a man) why is it a concern that women might prefer work that's a little less tedious and a little more rewarding. Maybe we should worry a little bit more about improving the quality of IT jobs and software engineering jobs in particular rather than sexist or racist issues of why we don't have equal numbers of every sexual and ethnic group in IT jobs. Is it a concern that most garbage collectors are men????
Re:You're modded as +3 funny but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the male is much more likely to be proficient in what *he* is doing. But is he more proficient in what *she* is doing? Women tend to prefer information management rather than information technology or algorithmics. My experience tells me that women are often better getting the "big picture" in IM than men who just like cut the crap and go write some code.
Then again my sample of fellow geeks is too small for my observations to carry any real weight.
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
The system that was designed for single men, by single men has worked very well thus far. It has caused the industry to advance with a unprecedented velocity because of its culture of obsession, and isolation (which are two things that most but not all women I know generally find hard to deal with). It seems to me that the most productive and innovative companies are the ones that embody this culture the most, such as EA which although is a horrific workplace, manages to produce inordinate amounts of software. Open source which is done primarily by the most hardcore of nerds in an environment with typically no human contact, and at late hours because of sheer obsession has created some terrific software and innovation.
Beleive it or not, but I actually really like women, and I'd love to be in the company of many many women while working, especially if they are women who like and are good at computing and this is not simply because of sexual attraction, I actually like them for many reasons. So I most cordially welcome anyone to join this system as an equal, regardless of sex and also for that matter race, colour or creed. For it is true, computing does lack gender diversity. But simply put, if someone is wanting to be useful, they MUST adapt to the only system that has proved itself to work. If computing is to remain the 21st century's most cutting edge industry it must keep itself geared towards production over inclusiveness and comfort. As for losing people, if they are not willing to give themselves to the pursuit of excelence as the great minds of computing have done before them, they are simply not worth persuing because their potential, no matter how high, will not be exploited as well as the moderate potential of someone who is committed in mind, body and spirit to the tasks of this feild.
If women are kept out of the system because of active sexism, that is wrong and it needs to change. If women are kept out of the system because they don't fit into the system, they need to try to fit in. After all, there are plenty of systems relating to jobs that a geek would need to change their life to be a part of.
Re:Or maybe women, in general, are just bad at IT? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is really the heart of the point if you have a low number of women entering IT then you have a very low number of women who are any good entering IT. I can count on one hand the number of women I have met who were good at IT as well, but I can only count on hand the number of women I have met who were actually involved in IT anyway (well it may be 2 hands but with several spare fingers!) so how does that prove women are naturally bad at the subject? surely its more likely to prove that many women who would be good at it dont get involved for some reason.
I'm with you on there being a wider problem of society funnelling people ionto gender stereotypes though, but lets face it its easier to change the attitudes of some computer professionals then the entire of society
Re:Testing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Primarily, they are more professional than male programmers. They get the code built, it's generally better tested and better documented. They don't "play" with the systems, they use them as a tool.
Now, it may be that not "playing" has a small downsize. That by "playing", you learn the fine stuff that may help you optimize code better.
The thing is, for most of the time in most computer departments, code optimization is just not the issue in computing any more. Space is incredibly cheap. Buying a new machine is often a cheaper and simpler solution.
Does it matter!? (Score:1, Insightful)
"Certainly a concern"? Are you sexist? If not, then should it matter how many women are working in I.T.? As long as both have equal opportunities to be hired by means of qualifications, then I don't see a problem. I'd rather have people that really want to work in the field, than forcing an equal ratio of both males and females.
It's not avoiding sexism by making sure the jobs are split %50/%50, it is sexism when you do that, because you are discriminating really qualified people of a certain sex when its %50 is filled, just because you want to hire someone of the other sex, even if they are lazy--non efficient--asses, just to be seen as "Non Sexist".
Re:It's just too hard for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You're modded as +3 funny but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I was trying to explain male geekery to my wife the other day.
Her: "Women aren't encouraged to be nerds. If they are interested in geeky things, they are teased and degraded."
Me: "What do you think happens to male nerds?"
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is true, as a statistical group.
If it's not, we have a problem as a species.
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
- Work 12+ hours of the day
- Carry a pager when you're not working
- Deal with minute details and irritating incompatibilities all day long
- Spend your life alone in a server closet talking to the blinkenlights
Basically, this is your average obsessive single guy job. But that's the *nature* of IT. It's not sexist, and there's nothing wrong with saying "you have to change your life" to take this job, that's what jobs ARE. You can't be a forest ranger and hate the outdoors, and you most likely won't like IT work unless you get off on talking more to computers than you do to real human beings. And not having much social life.
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's not just the IT sector: Capitalism is rigged so that single workaholics with no children are the ones rewarded the most because they have no life outside of work and don't mind putting in 50 or 80 hours a week and dedicating their lives to a company.
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, my gender very rarely has anything to do with my comments at Slashdot, so why would I even bring it up? Though, my name may give it away if anyone were to notice.
That said, I suspect there are a lot more women reading and replying than most Slashdotters give credit. What should we do? Use a sig that says "I'm a chick. Please regard opinion accordingly?"
Re:It's just too hard for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, the answer to the question of precisely why there are so few women in computer science, physics, math completely eludes me. I'd really like to know why. I can't find any one good reason why not, and nobody else seems to be able to agree on a reason either.
Maybe it's a combination of everything. Overall, women and men do seem to have different distributions of personalities, aptitudes for certain skills, etc., just as any two distinct groups will. You can just as easily qualitatively compare the residents of two cities or Americans vs. Canadians, or anything else.
But it's always hard to point out some specific REASON that would explain the differences, be it genetic or upbringing or social expectations or hormonal or anything else. Maybe the fact that these distributions change over time serves as some sort of hint. Say, I haven't heard of many women physicists a hundred years ago, but today we at least have some.
From personal experience, though, I've observed that a sort of segmentation of the mind, whereby one can think about something while completely forgetting everything else (e.g., the ability to concentrate on a math problem after a nasty fight with your best friend) seems to be more common in men. I really might be wrong. But not being able escape your personal life while concentrating on hard abstract problems would make a technical profession rather frustrating, I think. Just a guess, maybe.
Because they were re-treds? (Score:3, Insightful)
During the boom, virtually anybody could work in IT. After the boom, you had to know your stuff. My guess is, that after the boom the re-treds, both male and female, went back to their old professions. Leaving the field as it was before the boom - predominately male. In fact, often the same males who were there before the boom.
Speaking only for myself (Score:2, Insightful)
It IS harder for them, in general (Score:1, Insightful)
Except that, in the fields of mathematics and logical thinking, the stereotype has been scientifically proven to be true in most cases. So, what we are seeing is exactly what we expect to see: some women in IT and many men in IT. This fits the distribution pattern as seen by years and years of aptitude tests.
Men and women's minds simply work differently. No amount of wishful thinking will ever make it otherwise. It comes to me as no surprise that there are more men in IT than women, not just because it has traditionally been a male-dominated career path, but also because men are simply better suited for it. Women excel in some areas of thinking, and men excel in others. IT just happens to land in the areas that men excel in, on average.
Re:It's just too hard for them (Score:2, Insightful)
Granted, I'm a female in engineering, not Computer Science, but I found this comment a little offensive.
Not everyone is as tenacious as your mother. Having work done for you and having people treat you like you're a "special person" is a pretty bad impression, and if a woman wasn't set on an IT career that could turn her off.
Huh? What exactly are you trying to say? Nobody treats me like I'm "a special person" because of my gender, and I do my own schoolwork. Really, the only difference is that I don't have to wait in line to use the bathroom.
Hell, idiot geek students almost turned me to another major. When it looks like you will have to probably spend the rest of your life with people you can't stand, you start looking for alternatives.
Which has
Re:As a woman in IT, I somewhat agree with the par (Score:2, Insightful)
Apart from moral questions, it's not even productive. Find where people are good and work with their strengths.
As a female undergrad computer science student... (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, I'd like to say a little bit about myself and what I've observed around me. I'm a second year student at Dalhousie University (that's in Halifax, if anyone cares), and I've only been an official computer science student for this past term. Before that, I was a biology major, so I'm really behind in my cs courses and have to take both first and second year classes concurrently. I've noticed that while my first year Java course has quite a number of girls in it, most of them are from other faculties and, quite frankly, wouldn't cut it in any IT-related field. These are the kinds of girls who got it into their miniscule brains sometime in highschool that boys only like stupid girly girls, so they seem to make a sincere effort to not learn anything about computers. In my second year classes, the girls are more like me -- perfectly ordinary geeks who just happen to like computers and want to learn more. Of course, there are far fewer girls in those second year classes because the aforementioned bimbo types have already been weeded out by the insurmountable challenge of writing a Hello World program in Java.
My question then becomes, how do we get more intelligent girls in computer science? Not just girls in general, but ones who actually have some kind of talent for it and aren't going to make the rest of us look bad with their antics. I don't think there's an easy answer to this, but I suspect that the current initiatives are doing more harm than good.
For example, when I see a job ad that says "We encourage minorities like blacks, Native Americans and women to apply!" I'm sitting there thinking to myself, "Uh... OVER 50% OF THE FREAKIN' POPULATION HERE! How the HELL are a minority?" But for some reason, we're treated as if we're some kind of endangered species. Doesn't it occur to anyone that we might not like that treatment? Doesn't it occur to anyone that we just want to be treated like ordinary human beings, no matter what's between our legs? I mean, I'm not going to refuse if somebody throws money at me for having a vagina and using a computer, but it's really not a good way to encourage other girls to join the field. It's hard to see myself as successful when I so often have to wonder if everything I've "achieved" is only because I'm female (and thus have to be specially encouraged and rewarded to keep me from running away.)
Oh, and another thing: I never see any similar initiatives to get more men into... say... nursing, or even regular biology. They're definitely in the minority, but either people are afraid of being called sexist for favouring the sex that's supposedly in power (even though it hasn't been for decades), or they've figured out that the best way to get men into something like nursing is NOT to say "Oh, don't worry! It's not just for women! You won't be less of a man if you're a nurse! Not feminine at all! Trust me!" because they know that any man will look at something like that and think to himself "So wait, nursing makes me gay?" thanks to the wonders of reverse psychology. I just wonder how long it will take for the faculty of computer science to figure that out as well...
(Yes, I know I'm bitter.)
An area where women are very common in IT (Score:5, Insightful)
I have worked for the various government agencies and departments for 8 years now, and the number of women working in IT is definitely above average for the IT field. I attribute this to the fact that they are not being driven out of the field here. As a government employee, we have steady and predictable hours with little overtime. Vacation time is quite generous, and family related leave is available. These working conditions are not only attractive to women, but also to the men that I have worked with as well. I knew one guy who took a 20% pay cut (transferring to government from the private sector) so that he could have dinner with his family on a regular basis. I know another who is taking parental leave shortly so he can raise his daughter while his wife goes back to work early (in the private sector, she also works in IT).
I think the problem here is that the expected working conditions in the (North American private sector) IT field are atrocious. Long hours, unpaid overtime, arcane technology that is constantly changing is what's wrong with the IT industry. Women leaving the field in droves are just a symptom of a deeper running illness.
Re:It IS harder for them, in general (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:3, Insightful)
-Mark
Young Women Have More Choices (Score:5, Insightful)
She has NO desire to go into IT. Nor do her friends.
Why?
These girls have seen all the "girls can do math/science" stuff their whole lives. They KNOW they can. They will take that else where.
When IT becomes people friendly, the women will come back. Many men are leaving for the same reasons.
Re:Eh? (Score:1, Insightful)
And as a single childfree guy who prefers computers to socializing, I therefore don't need a wife. All I can say to that is WOOHOO!
(I was recently described as a "good catch" by a cow orker who suggested I ask another cow orker out sometime. The look of bewilderment on her face when I explained that while I like teh b00bies as much as any male, I don't need 'em to feel like my life is complete. It's not so much about "get a life" -- I've got one, but it's just different than that of the nongeek because I chose to optimize mine for efficiency. I'm relatively frugal, don't want a family, and my right hand is cheap and available. For me, the gains in autonomy, simplicity, and elegance of going solo outweigh the drawbacks of not having a financial and emotional failover unit. "One less box on the rack to maintain" is sometimes a feature, not a bug :)
Re:Easy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just because someone is capable of, and has occasion to make use of skills the cross over from another field does by default make them a worker in that field.
* I watch a lot of movies but am not a film critic.
* I change the oil in my car, can change tires, and with the appropriate manual am sure I can handle working with fuel pumps, carbs, etc. but I am not an auto mechanic.
* I pay pretty good attention to politics but I'm not a political analyst.
* I can balance my checkbook but I'm not an accountant.
* I can make a lot of points but I'm not a master debater.
Re:It's just too hard for them (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:2, Insightful)
U.S. losing competitive edge
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/03/10/hightech.us.ap/ index.html [cnn.com]
A Better IT Workforce (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You're modded as +3 funny but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Her: "Women aren't encouraged to be nerds. If they are interested in geeky things, they are teased and degraded."
Me: "What do you think happens to male nerds?" I think the difference is that male geeks can usually depend on their geek peers for support. Girl geeks frequently take shit off their peers as well.
Re:Speaking only for myself (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok. I can't do it, but here is the truth that I was trying to politely say: If you want a field where collaboration is valued over competitiveness, then go into some field where men (and women who want to be men) are non existent. It seems to be part of maleness to be competitive (not just geeks) and you probably just have to face it more in a field where the males are higher saturated.
The only plan I've ever heard of to overcome this problem comes from the newer wave of feminists that believe that they can socialise young men to not be competitive when they are young. In my opinion (as a male that has been alive and grown up since this idea appeared) women who pursue this unfortunately and unwittingly do exactly what they are trying to avoid- compete with men. Its like you can't separate that from our nature. The backlash to this forced socialisation (I believe) has made feminism extremely unpopular- thanks to this men have been able to paint feminists as man hated dikes- and has made sexism popular in ways it hasn't been in a while (listen to the lyrics of mainstream rap one day. Its all about beating women back into their place with sexual and physical dominance). One can never avoid the game of "one-upsmanship" in men, you can only manipulate it for good things-"Oh yeah, well I bet Joe down the street can donate more money than you to tsunami relief. He's more of a man than you...etc..."
Sorry, but thats the breaks....
Is it any wonder I didn't get laid in University! (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't recommend computer science to my worst enemy.
Not only do you not meet any girls in any of your classes you carry around the stigma of comp sci.
On top of that I graduated at a time when there were no computer science jobs.
I was forced to take a job as a bartender.
Let me just say bartending was fun.
The stigma for girls is even worse in comp sci.
It's got to be hard not having any peers of the same gender.
They are surrounded by a buch of sex starved guys.
But look at the other side of the coin for example nursing.
Not a lot of guys there.
You never really hear studies about guys not going into nursing.
Even though there is a huge shortage of nurses.
The stigma of being a male nurse is a lot worse than comp sci.
If you look at country like Korea, The stigma of comp sci doesn't really exist.
I would imagine there is a high enrollment rate for women in comp sci there.
Technology is very much a part of their society.
IT is a dieing field. (Score:4, Insightful)
Although there will still be IT jobs (unlike the buggy makers) from here on out IT will be drudge work, and not a desireable field to be in anymore. It is just that women noticed this first.
==>Lazn
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:4, Insightful)
What a shame it is that this floods the market for the people who are really there because of their interest in the field.
Re:Testing? (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, I'd most likely ask them to clarify the question, by asking them what they meant - spec, type, OS, installed apps, intended use, etc.
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Easy (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks. Dick.
I am a female programmer like my mother before me (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a C++/multimedia programmer who works mostly on windows.
I have no children, but hope someday to continue the line of women geek programmers.
When I graduated from college - I majored in CS - we had 6 women out of 300 graduates. Then during the IT boom, the numbers seemed to go up - women, as well as men - were attracted by the "promise" of easy money.
Then the dot com bubble burst, and there isn't "easy money" anymore, so the numbers have gone down - back to about where they were before the dot com boom.
I believe that society does not tend to create as many geek women as they do geek men. I'm an exception rather than a trend. I learned to pull the power plug out of vt100 terminals to get my mother to pay attention to me. I helped my dad build our first computer - an 086 - from scratch when I was 8. I played adventure with my mother at 9, and together we charted the maze of twisty passages. I installed Linux at age 14. Had my own web server running in my bedroom by the time I went to college.
But most women aren't given the resources and encouragement I was. I was given free reign of the home computers. I was told at one point that anything I could do to the computers COULD be fixed. So when I corrupted windows at age 10 through experimentation, I was not punished, which allowed me to continue to view computers as learning experiences rather than "Scary machines".
My father had no sons. He loved to teach me "boy things" like tools and cars and computers, because there was no one else to teach it to. Had I a brother, I probably would not have been allowed to convert the spare computer into a linux box. Had my mother not been a mathematician and a programmer, I probably would not have been taught QBASIC when I was 9 - and then given a set of BASIC books and left to my own devices.
Most girls are taught to concentrate on other things. Clothes. TV. Boys. Art. Makeup. I am horrid at wearing makeup. My fashion is incredibly boring. I was never a "popular" girl. Most of the time I got treated as one of the geek guys, because I could program as well as any of them.
Which brings me back to my original point. There are only so many girls raised with the encouragement and inclination to become geeks. There are many more boys who are given the tools and resources and society pressure to become geeks. Therefore, boy geeks will continue to outnumber girl geeks.
The increase in girls in CS in the past few years was mearly an echo of the promise of "Easy money" of the dot comm boom, and now that it is gone, only those who do it because they love to do it remain.
Sincerely, A Girl Geek.
Re:Easy (Score:2, Insightful)