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?"
Eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
To Be Expected? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:5, Interesting)
More seriously there are a number of possible reasons for this. I would hazord a guess that a large number of women entered IT for the sake of the $ and now that the $ is harder to get they are moving to other fields.
Not that men didnt do this, but if you look at the major universities they have essentially been bribing women to go into technical fields (engineering, cs , etc.) so I would hazord a guess that those efforts recruited people more interested int he $ than the love of the field.
Of course I could be entirely of base.
Define "I.T." (Score:3, Interesting)
What is their definition of IT anyway? (Score:2, Interesting)
Does writing content for websites count as IT?
There used to be a time when women had the majority. Then, coding was seen as a boring women's thing. Later men realized that it can be fun and drove the women out. Could this be a wave of retirement women?
IT is becoming a commodity (Score:3, Interesting)
That equates to corporate IT being a pre-capped stove pipe within any given non-tech company - something women who are looking for good paying positions with the possibility of advancement aren't finding attractive. It may be that they aren't drawn naturally to the "me geek, me play with cool toys" life, but that life has limited applicability outside of the tech sector. Why would anyone intentionally choose to enter a career track that leads to becoming the digital equivalent to a cafeteria server or a janitor?
Until someone comes along and changes the landscape of Information within business (and society) to something that more closely approximates electricity - Information Utility - there won't be any truely good reason to get into anything but the super creative core disciplines of IT in a shrinking number of tech firms that are charting the course for the future of business computing.
Because women constitute both a more observed and a smaller population, trends will appear sooner in their group within the IT world as a whole. I think they are leaving because it's smart to be leaving this particular ship if you aren't in a position to steer a new course.
Re:No surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Testing? (Score:2, Interesting)
The two that stick in my mind most:
One crossed over from a maths degree and was technically excellent. Unfortunately she had to put up with over-criticism of her work by other male colleagues which IMHO was completely unjustified - I was the only one who stuck up for her. (and no I wasn't trying to get into her pants). She left to do IT training overseas.
Another was a complete geek, to the point of being highly annoying. Spoke in baby language half the time. She could write code allright ("writey-witey codey-wodey"), but was unable to follow project plans and didn't know the meaning of the word "test". I recommended her contract was not extended, but that decision was based solely on merit, not gender.
It's catch-22, women have to excel in their job to be regarded as "on the same level" as men, but when they do men feel inferior and try to make their life difficult.
Until us guys progress from a neanderthal mindset, it's not wonder women are leaving IT!
Are they counting call centers too? (Score:3, Interesting)
As for maternity leave. We have 3 out now and one more going by July here. Two are out on 12 week maternity leaves. This is where I disagree with the article. We, like other companies, simply don't move that fast. Yes a lot can go by in 12 weeks but most of it is meaningless. There might be one major change, maybe two if some managers actually got out of their own way. Two of them have come back once already from an earlier pregnancy and nothing really changed here other than they have a few more missed days throughout the year.
Leaving in droves? Maybe they got smart
Comparing percentages (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Testing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:3, Interesting)
And to put things in more perspective: I prefer Female managers over Male ones. I am very sexist at that because I think women have generaly more empathy and people skills, things a good manager needs.
As for masculine behaviour: would posting your holy opinion on slashdot be typical masculine or typical feminine behaviour? So why are there so little women here?
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a CS undergrad at purdue. Our CS undergrad program, as of the start of last semester had 40 women in it. 24 of them are graduating. it's estimated that 6-10 at most are coming in, by figures I've heard. This is down from 10-15% of the department 4 years ago.
This is in a curriculum which has 800 or so undergrads, if I remember correctly.
I'm currently in a 300-level class (a major requirement, no less) that has 80 students, none of whom are female. Last semester I was in a database class that had 50 students, with a single woman in it. The semester before, I was in a class with 150 people, and a grand total of 4 women, and I know that after that class one of them changed majors out of computer science.
As of the end of this semester, 20-26 out of 800+. Those are very discouraging numbers, for women in CS. And the IT curricula in the school of technology aren't faring much better, I'm told.
Re:Why is it a concern? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the motivation for 95% of the population. In your final year, our school careers office used to invite various professions to visit and give presentations on careers in their particular specialty; accounting, law, management, engineering. On one particular day, the accounting and computer industries were visiting. Of 110 students, who took time off to attend, 100 wanted to do accounting because that's where the maximum earnings for the minimum work were. The other ten were interested in computing because of their interest in technology.
Headline somewhat misleading (Score:3, Interesting)
Rather than crying that the sky is falling and theorizing as to why a trend that may not exist happen, maybe the article should question the way it uses statistics more closely. (You see similar things in Apple marketshare stories -- Apple is down to 2% of the market, but they sell a steady or increasing number of machines. Why? Because the market is growing. It helps to have perspective on these things.)
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:3, Interesting)
There's sexism, and there's realism. The reality is that there is a significant gender difference in leadership styles. Men tend to be authoritarian leaders, women tend to be more democratic. There's a time and a place for both, and one's not universally better than the other.
Your preference in leadership probably reflects the way you work best. Sexism would be "I prefer female managers because they're more fun to look at".
It's strictly a number game (Score:2, Interesting)
There are loads of girls in IT here in Korea (Score:5, Interesting)
When I came to Korea I was amazed at the ratio, it's approaching 40-50% in my new company. And not just artists but programmers, sysadmins etc.
It's not unusual to see a girl on the subway studying a cisco, C++ or Linux book. There's definitely no sense of uncoolness being in IT - it's not even seen as geeky, just a good career.
So in Korea, only old women are leaving IT
Re:Women? (Score:2, Interesting)
And what they're socialized into doing.
Women feel social pressure NOT to be in science and technology. They're not supposed to be smart, they're supposed to look good. At least, that's how it is after junior high, for a vast majority of girls.
Men, on the other hand, have no associated stigma with being smart. In fact, we're pressed to be intelligent and successful, where they're pressed not to be.
Some gender psychologists tack a lot of the blame for the low turnout of women in science and technology quite firmly on that, and there's a lot of very good research to back that view up.
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:3, Interesting)
As a student in the school of technology, I agree that women are drastically outnumbered along with leaving the program(s) entirely.
I've noticed a general flow of kids going for a technical education here though. They start off in a program like engineering or CS, fall back to school of tech., and lastly end up in either management (or some derivative of business) or as an education major.
Re:Women? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have never in my life held any such view or opinion that women are not supposed to be smart. On the other hand I have had on several occasions women express the opinion that I *must* believe this to be the case.
Re:Why is it a concern? (Score:3, Interesting)
If, let's just say for example's sake, 20% of men in Internet-related businesses were in it for non-monetatry reasons and 2% of women were. If half of the money-motivated people left, that would mean a 48% exodus of women while only 40% of men would leave.
I happen to think that the numbers are EVEN MORE skewed than that, and I think that there are also shades of gray. There are many men who are in it for the money, but also have some "this is cool work" motivation, keeping them more tightly tied to the industry.
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
The question is
Now, a "sexist pig" (or Harvard president) would suggest that this is strictly an innate difference. Someone a little more educated in the field of psychology (specifically gender studies) would be more prone to say that this is a socialized difference.
Women aren't electing to be programmers (or any of the numerous other IT positions out there), just like they aren't swarming to engineering and physics and chemistry. Nobody's saying they should be forced into jobs they don't want. But there's an indication of a problem when women as a whole are being indoctrinated with the idea that they CAN'T pursue these jobs, when they are capable of doing them.
More to the point, this isn't a gender difference that's always around. Women don't abandon their interests in science and technology until they're in their teens, as a rule. Ask 20 fourth grader girls, they all want to be scientists and doctors and executives and astronauts. Ask 20 9th grade girls, 18 of them will want to be thinner and more attractive, and have substantially no long-term goals beyond their appearances.
The problem is "why is the interest disappearing when these girls start puberty?".
Re:You're modded as +3 funny but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Although geeks are very important to IT, they often lack qualities that are very important to IT. In my IT department I can think of a very good example of a male geek who has enough certs to choke a horse and a female non-geek with just a low interest in persuing off-hours IT-for-fun kind of stuff. The woman is better.
The male is an egotistical blowhard who doesn't finish projects completely or on time. His projects are poorly documented. But, heck, he can answer almost any question off the top of his head about the interals of the servers and services he runs.
The female is demure and often has to say " I'll need to check on that." However, her projects work, come in on time, have excellent documentation and can be used much more easily by the whole company.
So, she's not as smart, IT-wise, as the guy. But who's the better IT worker?
TW
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:1, Interesting)
The dropping down to management trend happens at most schools where real CS and Engineering are taught (as opposed to programming and how-to-measure-voltage degrees). People typically come in with a poor understanding of what CS is especially, so when they hit lots of math, theory, and long nights they say "whoops! not for me!" and switch...
Re:Easy (Score:2, Interesting)
In departments where I've seen too many geeks get a foothold, these things go. Documentation ends up pisspoor. You end up with people writing stuff in their own choice of languages that no-one else supports, or deciding that they'll do things their own way for whatever reason.
Flexibility is good, but IT departments should be about collaboration, ensuring that what you create is an asset for everyone, that if you code something, someone else can pick it up and change it easily.
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Most professional (read paid) programming is business oriented as a goal, but the way in which the software is developed can be white-shirt-and-blue-tie waterfall methodology with weekly TPS reports, or it can be more like, "we are a team of geniuses who grok software development at a deep level, get all of the process out of our way; we have work to do." The latter development style can produce better software or worse software, depending entirely upon the individual competencies of your team members. If your goal is high quality and soonest (rather than most predictable) delivery, and if you have a team that can meet these goals following the second 'methodology', why not exploit that fact?
Other more familiar with Agile Programming than I am have commented that AP (incl XP) is more like the old pre-waterfall style, but with up-front safeguards (such as unit tests) built-in. I can't confirm or deny, but it may be that the style of AP feels 'right' to geekier people, but less geekier programmers (even very good ones) might dislike that mode of working. *If* it is true that women programmers (even very good ones) are on the less geeky side, then maybe that is why they are turning away from development.
This is neither a troll nor flamebait. These are not opinions that I hold dear, just possibilities to consider.
Bytes in the blood. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've met far fewer women doing IT here in the UK than men. I'd bet good money (if I had it) that the % of women in UK IT is much lower than in the US.
Why? IMHO those [women] that I've met in IT are very competent and good at their jobs. But I've not met any yet live IT . Doing the job 9 to 5 is all well and good, but I've yet to meet a woman who does this kind of thing in her spare time. The sort of thing we all do, home projects, fun hacks and the like. I think there are women out there like that but not as common as the men like that.
Help me understand (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is it always a concern when there are insufficient women in, or entering, a traditionally male dominated field? Is it not possible to let women naturally choose to join the field they wish?
When I was in university (88-92) there was a huge drive on to bring women into engineering. Scholarships and reduced entrance grade averages were used to attract them. This kind of discrimination against males was all the rage (and continues in some quarters still) during that time period. I've often wondered what, 15 years later, the outcome was. Is the engineering field better in some way than it was prior to massively (and I would argue, artifically) raising the number of females in that area of study?
Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that the real cause of the female IT exodus is twofold: The first is that the money is no longer there. Fortunately, this means that IT candidates now are likely more dedicated. On the other hand, that means homogeneity... you only get those that are dedicated in the field, and that seems to consist almost entirely of males. Additionally, there is a social stigma associated with these sorts of fields... or, for that matter, demonstrating rational intelligence at all. Women are expected to be nurturers because that is what society expects of them, not because of any significant innate difference. Likewise, men are supposed to be the rational protectors and financial supporters. For a woman to defy what her peers may think of her in order to pursue the field that she really wants to is rare. Then again, how many male nurses do you know?
as a female software architect... (Score:5, Interesting)
First, I've still never met another female software architect. People like to work with people who are like them. It gives them more to talk about than just "the code". It's hard to make friends at work when you're surrounded by mostly men. Everyone thinks you're "more than friends".
Second, IT managers tend to have less "soft skills" than their business-side counterparts. Face it, we live in a world where women do the lion's share of child-raising. If my manager isn't sensitive about the time I *need* to be away from work cos school is closing early, then I'm going to be less happy on the job.
Third, IT managers tend to be male (as are most IT workers). Managers like to promote people who are like them. It's been hard for me in some organizations to envision a good career path.
Lastly, it sucks sometimes to be in meetings and be the only woman there. Yes, that can be a point of pride, but it's not always a comfortable feeling.
Re:It's just too hard for them (Score:4, Interesting)
After watching my mom go back to school and work her ass off for what she wanted I'm offended when I hear statements like this.
As a woman in IT, I somewhat agree with the parent (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure that I'd say women are "better in less geeky programming, where it is more business oriented," but I would say that (in general) women I've known tend to prefer that end of the field. Maybe it's a desire to not have to spend their evenings learning new languages and technologies; maybe it's just less of an interest in pure technology and a predisposition toward seeing tech as just a tool for getting other things done; maybe it's something else entirely. But in my experience, the pattern does seem to exist. That generalization doesn't apply to me. I strongly prefer the "more geeky" hackerish stuff that requires keeping up with tech; it appeals to my curiosity about how things work. Nevertheless, the generalization has affected my career, because it's a perception many of my managers have had over the years. To be fair, my career does span two decades, and I started out in the southeast US, an area not well-known for progressive attitudes towards women in the work force. Lately, I've seen MUCH less of this, though perhaps it's because I'm now on the West Coast.
The experience I gained for myself in school included UNIX file systems kernel work, IBM mainframe data communications and systems-programming-level assembler, writing an ancient commercial computer game, etc. I spent my vacations paying my own way to Usenix UNIX research conferences and my spare student cash on a Compuserve connection and the PC Pursuit service (cheap long distance for calling BBSes) in the pre-Internet days. When I got out into the real world: "no, we don't think you're right for this systems position, how about this COBOL application development group?", (I was far better, and more experienced, at OS internals in C or assembly than I was at COBOL) "we need someone with your expertise in user interface design," (huh? I had none), etc. An astonishing percentage of the time, companies have steered me toward work in business applications even when I demonstrated more aptitutde and interest in other areas of computing. One choice quote: "Oh, honey, you don't want to spend your days lugging 50 pound servers around." Reality: I have found it frustrating to work in the same business apps development environment for very long. After a very short period of "learning the environment", my work consisted largely of tediously lining fields up on grids and populating database schema, NOT learning about technology or improving/challenging my dev skills (companies specifically didn't want new technologies used in their apps because then, horrors, my coworkers would have to LEARN them!). At one place of employment, a small VAR, I referred a (less technical) male friend to my employer. Before I knew it, he was the organization's official customer engineer (a job function that previously occupied half my day), getting to do customer system configurations, on-site support, etc. I was only trotted out as a problem solver when customers had trouble with their installations, complained and specifically requested my presence, having heard through the grapevine that there was a girl at the company who really knew her stuff even though the company insisted my friend was their best techie. Other women I know have had similar experiences.
It wasn't until I hung out my own shingle and had right of refusal over EVERY project, that I was able to lead my career away from that.
This is applicable to the slashdot crowd because I'd like to encourage folks to take an open mind toward the women you encounter in tech. Some of us have wired our homes with X-10 gear, read OS source code with breakfast and yes, even have a history of butting heads with school admins over learning activities they insisted
Arrogant Assholes (Score:0, Interesting)
At least in the electrical fields, I don't have to deal with a shitload of nitwits like you... I prefer befriending people with half a brain that can hack semiconductor physics..
Linux is supposed to be hard? Need I remind you that Unix has been around for far longer than windows?
Quite frankly, what's wrong with you that you can't figure out that women get out of this fields because of the idiotic people IN the field? Would you like to spend 10 hours a day around people that spend their time thinking about how fucking brilliant they are that they don't need to use their brains?
Re:This Proves It (Score:1, Interesting)
We started off with a little over 100 students 1st semester freshamn year, probably about 15 of which were female. Most of them got along well with the guys and were chatty (so was I at first). As the years went on, the guys talked to me less and less, I finally realized that they were completely intimidated by me. Not only was I that "other sex" but doing better in class. They would complain about not being able to finish an assignment that only took me 45 minutes.
I started to think that if I were the type of person to care about peer acceptance, this might have driven me crazy. However, to those people who this would affect, I say get a spine, some other friends, and get over it!!
As for a lot of the other girls, I think they were just curious about the hot field and found they either didn't really like it, or didn't think about how much math is involved in a good CS curriculum.
Oh, and no, I was not one of those few girls who sat in my basement playing video games and programming my whole high school life. I had always used a computer (seriously, my family got a n Apple IIe when I was like 1 yr. old), but never done any programming before college.
Re:It's just too hard for them (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:It's just too hard for them (Score:2, Interesting)
I've seen employers expect less of people based on sex, age, race, nationality, etc. I'm lucky enough to be a white (mostly... a little Asian, but most people don't seem to notice) male, but unfortunately too young. I'm 21, and I generally get the feeling that my bosses are surprised whenever I deliver any results, whereas the older people in our company are generally assumed to be exeprienced professionals, yet not all of them are necessarily that good at what they do.
Just trying to give this discussion a little perspective. The world isn't fair. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about it though.
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't remember where I read this, so I can't cite my source, but most men who drop out of engineering (either to take something else or to drop out of school entirely) have averages in the D's or below. Most women who drop out have averages in the A's and B's.
Re:As a woman in IT, I somewhat agree with the par (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps it is some sort of backlash from the 50s when scientists were considered gods and the 60s where they became devils. I guess the concept of "balance" just never occurs to some people.
As for fewer women in IT? Sure if that's what the numbers say. All I know is there are more women in IT in my current department than I have ever encountered before. And they are damn good at it.
-WS
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:3, Interesting)
> who use computers to do their job rather
> than technical IT positions?
Sorry, I know you probably didn't mean for this statement to be interpreted and picked on, but this kind of elitism is precisely part of the problem.
Now, I agree there are different degrees of knowledge and expertise amongst people working in IT, and calling yourself a programmer, because you can use formulas in Excel might tick off those of us with a lot more time and experience on the job. However, don't discount those other areas of expertise. Just because you don't consider a job to be 'worthy' of the title of IT, doesn't mean you're right.
Lets go back to my Excel example for a minute...
What if you've got a female administrative assistant who uses Access to keep track of materials, and has developed a front end for the database to track all of the data, and simplify entry. What if this same person makes word and excel templates that automate typical business processes, and standardises presentation formats. What if this woman has worked with a programmer in the office to cooperatively produce an application processing system.
Does she count as 'IT'? She's pretty technically savvy, but she's just an 'administrative assistant' to everyone on the programming staff minus the one guy she's worked with who probably appreciates her knowledge and expertise (including technical know-how).
Is she a 'programmer'? Probably not. Is she an IT worker? Hell ya.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
As a woman . . . (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm not in IT - I'm a geologist. (I love, and work with, 'puters, though, that's why I'm here.) I think my field is analagous to IT, however - male dominated, with lots of passion and dedication necessary to keep up with trends and developments, lots of overtime, etc.
Although I think the statistical analysis in TFA was pretty poor, I think they did get across a trend that is not just affecting IT, but science and math as well. Women ARE leaving the sciences and IT in droves, and there's some head scratching going on all over the world to explain this.
As the article said, domestic responsibilities are a great and simple answer for this. As a woman, I've been told over and over again that you CAN juggle children and a career. They didn't tell us women that one - and usually both - priorities would probably suffer in the process. I think what we are seeing here is a social shift from women trying to juggle both to women realizing that you can have one or the other, but you can't have both and be the best you can be. But unfortunately, it's a two paycheck world. So what do these women do? Choose less challenging jobs.
However, I'd like to bring up a potentially inflammatory point. I work in the oil field. During the 90's, there was a huge push to even up equality in the oil patch and bring in women. I shrudder thinking about these women - heels, no coats, couldn't tell an oil trap from an Ackbar one. So great. Now, not only do I have to work against traditional male views about female usefulness, I have to work against the damage these women did to women. I know quite a few women - excellent geologists - who have left because they couldn't take it anymore. I'm wondering if the same thing happened in IT.
Yet I'm not going to complain about having to "prove myself." You get off a helicopter on an oil rig, it doesn't matter if you have 5 legs or you're a male - you're going to have to prove yourself no matter who you are. But it does get tiring having to prove yourself twice - that you know what you're doing, and that you're a women who knows what you're doing - and then not screwing it up for the other women out there.
I'm saying this here because this is a place I once saw someone refer to biology as a "chick science." There have been some excellent points brought up here today. But I guess you could also say the struggle continues.
Re:It's just too hard for them (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's just too hard for them (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's just too hard for them (Score:3, Interesting)
*That's* propbably the important social phenomenon here! There's a certain arrogance that's required to be a good programmer IMO, to always think "it's software, nothing is impossible", and I'm not buying the other social arguments in this thread. If you have the confidence to do programming well, you're unlikely to be discouraged by idiots (heck, you'll never make it a year in a large IT shop if you're discouraged by idiots).
OTOH, having *some* ability to socialize at work is a pretty important requirement in life, and without a certain critical mass of women in the field, that could be quite a barrier.
There must be something else at work, however, as at least in my shop most of the female programmers choose the management career path, while most of the male programmers choose the tecnical track.
Re:Looking at the distribution ... (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, during the dot-com era, some of the bigger consulting companies were crash-training whole classes of non-technical people to do IT. Can a former art or literature major with 3 months of technical training develop quality software? Generally not, but we're talking about companies like Anderson or PwC that don't mind solving problems by throwing more bodies at them, since that equates to more they can bill.
When the tech market took a downturn, a lot of these people got forced out of the market. Some discovered they had a real talent or love for IT and stuck with it through the thin periods, but most went back to whatever it was they wanted to do in the first place.
I think this kind of crowd was proportionaly more women than men, and their departure is what the statistics are really showing. I've met some great women in the IT field who do it for much the same reasons as most of the men you'd meet in the field, and those women aren't going anywhere.
Re:Women aren't interested. (Score:2, Interesting)
My fiance is one of these statistics. She is awesome at software design and development, but just hates it. So she is quitting and going into floral design.
I work with a good number of female SE's too, and most of them don't like it. The woman who sits in the cube next to me wants to be a nutritionist. She plans on going back to school to be one as soon as her kids get out of college.
There are 3 women down the hall that all work part-time. Not for medical reasons. Not because they watch thier kids. But because they just don't want to do it.
What they all have in common is that they were pushed/pulled into this field. My fiance was pushed into a CS degree because she was good at math and she didn't know what she wanted to do. The industry was itching to get women because they were taking a lot of flak for not having any. Also, the boom had a lot to do with it. You want your daughter to get a good paying technical job so she can be a modern woman and financially independent? Send her to college for computers; there was an endless market for IT pros.
But the truth is, they get into it and find out they just don't like it. I see this exodus as a good thing. Thousands (millions?) of women are finally getting out of a job they hate to so something they will truly love to do (well, hopefully they will love it). And that is more important than making a ton of money or having a equal balance of men and women in some arbitrary workforce.
And pls don't reply with "but I am a woman and I like it!" Obviously these are generalizations and I know there are a lot of women, esp here on slashdot, that love computers and/or software.
actually, it doesn't work that way (Score:3, Interesting)
It more like means that is that you'll be pushed in a stereotypical, but crap paid job.
Like receptionist. Nothing says "equality" to some companies like having a black and/or woman as receptionist. It's right in the front, so, hey, everyone can see how equal they are to women and minorities.
Or like waitress, dish washer, supermarket cashier, etc. I think you'll find more women pegged in that kind of low-pay jobs than in offices.
And outcry about shortage of men in _crap_ high-stress low-pay jobs like teaching? Well, gee, that's so discriminated. I soo feel sorry for poor you, being denied that job and having to do with a high-paid office job instead.
Or nurses. Well, gee, males are so unfairly discriminated. They get to be the well paid doctors, while those lucky women get to change bedsheets and bedpans for a fraction of the pay.
I mean, gee, that must be as discriminated against as the whites were on the southern plantations. I mean, all those lucky blacks got dream jobs like picking cotton, while the poor whites were pegged into roles like plantation owners and merchants
That was some heavy sarcasm, if anyone can tell. And disgust.
Now seriously: If you think there's some sexist conspiracy that keeps you from teaching as a male, go apply for that job at some inner-city school. You might find that they'll take you in an instant, and noone will start harrassing you because you're male. And noone will ask stupid gender-related questions. Nor ask you to work twice as much as a woman teacher to be considered equal, in spite of your "obvious" gender handicap.
Dunno, whenever I see this kind of "waah, but they have all the (insert crap low-pay work) jobs" and "why don't they also take the (insert other crap line of work) jobs, then?" demagogue rhetoric, it just makes me wanna puke. I've heard it about women, I've heard it about blacks, I've heard it about foreigners, etc.
It invariably just means "but I really want to keep getting an undeserved privilege, not for any personal merits, but just because I happened to be born the right gender/race/nationality/whatever. And I'll scream and moan against any comparison of _merits_ and _skills_, instead of that undeserved privilege." Which is just disgusting.
Re:It's just too hard for them (Score:2, Interesting)
how many in IT are 25 to 35 now? (Score:5, Interesting)
About 45% are home atleast a year -- "55 percent [nwsource.com] of women who gave birth between July 1999 and July 2000 returned to the labor force within a year of having their babies". "Of the 41.8 million kids under 15 who lived with two parents last year, more than 25 percent had mothers who stayed home, according to a Census Bureau report."
Some might think this is a bad thing. But "You're not how much money you have in the bank."
Re:It's just too hard for them (Score:3, Interesting)
Misogyny (Score:3, Interesting)
I never once heard him address her ability (or inability) to do the job. Now I don't consider myself a feminist, but I was left speechless by his complete lack of professional (and social) competence.
Not helping employability (Score:3, Interesting)
Living in DFW you'd think it would be easier for her to get a job but despite her skillset and companies "wanting" to hire college graduates it still has not happened.
Geek and proud... (Score:2, Interesting)
Consider a job in the earth sciences (Score:3, Interesting)
More of them are getting out of their parent's basements and are coming out into the cold light of day.