Women Are Fleeing IT Jobs 578
Lucas123 writes "An alarming number of women are currently abandoning IT jobs that require workers to be on-call at all hours, according to a story in Computerworld. One study cited in the article states that by 2012, 40% of women now working in IT will leave for careers with more flexible hours. 'I think women in that regard are at a real disadvantage,' said Dot Brunette, network and storage manager at Meijer Inc., a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based retailer and a 30-year IT veteran. She noted that companies can fail to attract female workers, or see them leave key IT jobs, because they fail to provide day care at work, or work-at-home options for someone who leaves to have a child.'"
Re:I thought IT workers can telecommute to work? (Score:4, Interesting)
To be fair, there is some rationale to that... if it only takes you 3 hrs/day to do all of your work you can for the day and another guy in your department 4 hrs/day to do his work, then the company can get rid of one of you and still get the same amount of work done in an 8 hr day.
Women and men are different... (Score:5, Interesting)
Women Belong In The Kitchen (Score:2, Interesting)
In our sexist society (biased towards the female gender), they've never had it easier. They enjoy freedom of choice in the job market, or can opt to stay at home and raise children (or do both). They are perfectly free to use marriage and divorce as businesses, enriching their personal fortunes by doing nothing more than providing sex. They are allowed to manipulate men with sex and tears to get whatever they want. They have been granted permission to usurp traditional male jobs yet still -- with bold-faced hypocrisy -- expect men to finance their social lives. They can choose to serve in the military without fear of losing their lives in combat. They expect to be able to denigrate the male gender and treat men like emotional punching bags without protest. They force men to endure "sensitivity training" to pressure them into becoming more like women.
In short, they are pampered, coddled to, and told that they deserve everything without any implication or obligation of giving anything in return.
what women want
Modern women demand all the privileges afforded their sisters in bygone eras, yet still insist on the freedoms granted by a liberated society. In other words, they want to have their cake and eat it, too; they want equal rights until the check comes.
At the heart of this mess is so-called "feminism." The post-war culture of the 1950s and '60s spawned an affluent, egocentric culture of "consciousness-raising" and liberation, spurred on by such seminal feminists as Betty Friedan (who saw the traditional wife and homemaker as a prisoner chained to the stove, hobbled by men from achieving success in the business world).
Almost overnight women wanted to work and go to college; they decided their husbands should help with cooking, cleaning and child care. Liberated women lobbied for gender equality: equal pay for equal work, equal educational and career opportunities and equal treatment under the law.
They no longer wanted to be seen by men as "sex objects," but instead as individuals independent of their gender; persons in their own right.
On the surface, this was all well and good. In a modern society, women should be treated with equality; they should be allowed to pursue whatever course they choose.
But feminism made one crucial mistake -- it failed to take into account the fundamentally self-serving nature of the female gender. For the average woman, "feminism" shortly became nothing more than a convenient excuse for getting what she wanted (usually from a man's hard work). Women began expecting to have things handed to them on a plate just because they were born female.
The battle cry of "feminism" abruptly changed from "equal pay for equal work" to "you go, girl -- you deserve it" (no matter how you get it). Suddenly it was all about "me, me, me" -- the self-indulgent bawl of a spoiled brat.
And this is exactly the problem. Modern women have demanded -- and won -- equal rights and equal pay. But they're too greedy, too materialistic, too self-absorbed, too immature, and too accustomed to using men to do anything with these rights but shoot themselves in the foot with them.
It's all come too easily for them, and, like children who have been handed everything on a plate, they've matured into abusing their privilege and demanding more and more and more.
from the mouth of a feminist
Feminist author Susan Maushart (What Women Want Next) writes: "Now that women have been more or less successfully mainstreamed, the achievement feels unexpectedly hollow. For one thing, we are tired. If doing what men do on top of what women have always done is Having It All, most of us have decided we'd prefer a smaller portion."
Feminism has fizzled; it's crumbled under the weight of its own shaky foundations. So does this mean that women should go back to the kitchen? Is this where they belong, forever chained to the stove and the bedpost?
The answer -- fundamentally -- is "no." But a very cautious "no."
Re:I'm not female, but (Score:1, Interesting)
If you're not getting paid for that, then your employer is quite possibly breaking the law. Server/infrastructure support isn't deemed to be exempt work, at least not by any rational reading of the Fair Labor Standards Act - and the exemption for "computer professionals" doesn't necessarily apply, either.
My current job doesn't require me to be on-call, but, my last one did, and I was paid a weekly stipend to be on-call, in the first place, and was paid overtime when I did get called.
If you're working a full standard business week, and not being paid to be on call, etc., then you're being abused by your employer, in my opinion, as one that knows better.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I thought IT workers can telecommute to work? (Score:2, Interesting)
On a side note, If I was manager and had to go in to babysit the IT staff during an emergency, I would probably be riding their ass for the system breaking. This could even be my fault because I haven't replace aging hardware or something. But I would still be riding you about it breaking and having to go in on my off time. Is this something everyone really wants?
sigh (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Women Belong In The Kitchen (Score:4, Interesting)
I do realize that there are quite a few single mothers out there (of course, one could also blame the teenagers that are having sex at such a young age). In fact, I recently discovered that two of my former gradeschool classmates (like, from 4 years ago? I'm senior in highschool now) are pregnant, and one of which for the second time!
I personally think retribution is going a little too far for sexism. I mean, look at these women who marry millionaires and famous actors, then divorce, and NEVER get another job so they can just soak up their divorced husbands money. However, these are the women that do not care about equality, but rather themselves. Many of the women that are concerned about equality are those that do not have it.
Unfortunately, some take equality to the extent of give us everything so that we dominate males.
I do not think that daycare is something the business should have to pay for. You should be PREPARED to have a child, and not already knowing of a neighbor or a daycare center in the area is a serious lapse in judgement. But who am I but a senior in highschool. I say it as I see it.
I'll probably get modded to hell for this... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not restricted to IT (Score:5, Interesting)
No surprise that women are leaving IT when the jobs suck more and more.
Re:Maybe it's because Women are Smarter than Men (Score:5, Interesting)
I am male and am interested in engineering, computers and math. Why? Not because I am trying to impress people, but because that's my skill. I am good at fixing things and seeing how things are supposed to work and like to do that. If I wanted to impress people I'd become a jock, not a nerd. I do what I do because I like it.
On the other hand, most women I have seen dislike their jobs and do them just to make money. They are mainly interested in social activity for pleasure, while men tend to be interested in accomplishments in their jobs (be it working for a company or just trying to do something no one else has).
Therefore, it's understandable why men would stick to a field they like, even if it is inferior, where women would go to something else just because it pays more and expects less. They already don't care what they do.
Then again, I only got this from observations, and I have seen many exceptions, this just seems to be the norm.
Re:It is called political correctness, it is evil (Score:1, Interesting)
It was also about increasing state control over all citizens by breaking down a rival institution that obstructed the uninhibited state indoctrination of children. Besides, the state could foment animosity between men and women and step in as an arbitrator, thus further enhancing its powers. During the past few elections in Sweden, there has been virtually no debate about mass immigration, but a passionate debate about "gender equality" in which almost all contestants call themselves feminists, and only debate which ways to implement absolute equality between the sexes.
Mr. Huntford demonstrated how, when it was decided that a woman's place was not at home but out at work, there was a rapid change in the language. Page 301:
"The customary Swedish for housewife is husmor, which is honourable; it was replaced by the neologism hemmafru, literally 'the-wife-who-stays-at-home', which is derogatory. Within a few months, the mass media were able to kill the old and substitute the new term. By the end of 1969, it was almost impossible in everyday conversation to mention the state of housewife without appearing to condemn or to sneer. Swedish had been changed under the eyes and ears of the Swedes. Husmor had been discredited; the only way out was to use hemmafru ironically. Connected with this semantic shift, there was a change in feeling. Women who, a year or so before, had been satisfied, and possibly proud, to stay at home, began to feel the pressure to go out to work. The substitution of one word for the other had been accompanied by insistent propaganda in the mass media, so that it was as if a resolute conditioning campaign had been carried out. Very few were able to recognize the indoctrination in the linguistic manipulation; in the real sense of the word, the population had been brain-washed."
For my own part, I find it interesting that the same people who, in the 60s and 70s, broke up the traditional family structure in Western countries and warned people against the dangers of overpopulation, telling people to lower their birth rates, come back a few years later and say that we have to import millions of immigrants because we have such low birth rates.
Betty FriedanAuthor Daniel Horowitz has written about the highly influential American feminist Betty Friedan, whose 1963 book "The Feminine Mystique" is widely seen as marking the beginning of the Second Wave of feminism. Horowitz documents how Friedan had for decades before this been a hardened Marxist. It is revealing that she tried to hide her background, presenting herself only as an average suburban housewife. In the early drafts, Friedan quoted Friedrich Engels, but these quotations were cut out before the book was published. In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had called for the abolition of family. Friedan denounced the American suburban family household as "a comfortable concentration camp."
Roland Huntford noticed that the teaching of history was severely curtailed in Swedish schools because it was "impractical." Religion, and Christianity in particular, was presented as superstition designed to fool the masses, which had been liberated from this ancient oppression by the Labor movement.
As he noted, "Scrapping historical knowledge deprives pupils of the instrument for criticizing society here and now. And perhaps that is the intended effect." Journalist Christopher Hitchens later wrote that "For true blissed-out and vacant servitude, though, you need an otherwise sophisticated society where no serious history is taught."
Ingvar Carlsson"
Re:News Flash! (Score:3, Interesting)
In 1997 about 150,000 women held non-traditional jobs in the construction industry, Women and Nontraditional Occupations [work4women.org] Production and craft work, operators and so on.
But there isn't much incentive for women to enter a market where wages are depressed:
Women posted a net increase of 1.7 million jobs paying above the median salary, while men gained a net increase of just over 220,000...according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report for the years 2000-2005. Women outpaced men in obtaining work that pays in the top quarter of all jobs, primarily positions in the health-care, financial and managerial fields... At the end of 2005, 1.1 million more of those jobs were held by women, while 200,000 fewer men held such jobs as widespread layoffs cut manufacturing employment. But the wage gap persists...
During the study period...the number of construction jobs grew by nearly one million. Though construction is often thought of as providing higher-earning jobs, the report showed construction work accounted for many of the new, lower-paying jobs filled by men.
Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said an increase in unskilled, immigrant labor might explain the downward trend in construction wages. Women Outpace Men In Number of New Jobs [careerjournal.com]
Re:I thought IT workers can telecommute to work? (Score:3, Interesting)
(The distinction is actually important -- I've only worked in one IT shop where remote access was tightly managed and most IT people didn't have it. If you work 8-10 hours a day on-site, mgmt doesn't have a problem with you going home and working again -- it's just that it's a bonus).
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Because civilization depends on having children (Score:2, Interesting)
>>"Replacement" fertility rate--i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller--is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?
Yes. They are torn by wars. Beside fertility rate, there are such things as child mortality rate and life expectancy.
Check out http://tools.google.com/gapminder/ [google.com] for data views. Basically we get around 200/1000 child die in Niger, versus around 7/1000 in the US and Estonia. Niger also has about half the life expectancy compared to any of them. If those people didn't breed at that rate, they'd be extinct by now.
It has always been that nations with low life expectancy and high mortality rates have high child birth rates. Else they wouldn't be around.
As regards the more peaceful parts of Africa and Asia (and the world in general) check out http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92 [ted.com] , as well as http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/presentations/
Re:Women Belong In The Kitchen (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess you may have meant American's in your post but we bread rather well Granted US "culture" is such a shit hole right now that I wish more Americans wouldn't do that for the world's sake if nothing else.
Re:Careerist women get hit the hardest. (Score:4, Interesting)
I am so sick and tired of people asking when I'm going to have children. My former gynecologist - a FEMALE gyno- refused to even discuss the option of a hysterectomy with me despite my very firm decision not to have children and a family history of various cancers- because I would "change my mind about having children." Sorry, no. Even if I did, there's adoption.
Now when people ask about kids I tell them I already have two- their names are Foucault and Raistlin, and they have adorable pointy ears and and fuzzy tails. Then I drag out the cat pictures. If my coworkers and every other person under the bleeding sun is going to make me look at their snotty brats they can bloody well look at my kittens.
Re:Careerist women get hit the hardest. (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorry, it wasn't universally available back in the 70's and it's even less available now in many places.
Re:Women Belong In The Kitchen (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Careerist women get hit the hardest. (Score:2, Interesting)
Keep in mind though that it works on the other side as well; I've found in several positions that people get taken aback when (as a man) you mention to people at work that you're over 30/35/40 and don't have any children (or worse, are not married). I had a female colleague (who also is not married nor has any children) tell me once that in her experience employers/management love to hear employees mention one or more of the following:
a) they're getting/got married,
b) are buying/bought a house,
c) are having a/another child
The real reason of course is that the employer/management isn't really happy for you; they're happy for them, because all of these occurrences give them more reason to think you (financially) need your job even more than before and thus are in less of a position to accept unfair expectations on their part/demand more compensation on your part/leave your current employer. It's also been my experience that people who don't have "socially complex" lives often don't get promoted into positions of responsibility because they're considered by management "not to have as much at stake". The real issue is of course that they know they can't really "squeeze" someone who can flip them the bird and walk out the door.
just read this journal entry of yours. (Score:3, Interesting)
my how hyppocritical you are, comming from a political position with pundits like bill "STFU" oreilly, whose debate technique consists of shouting people down, and fox news, which apparently operates under the strategy of "speak a lie long enough and everyone will think its true". I think its time for you to actually read "lies and the lying liars who tell them" instead of WSJ's reviews of the book.
I'll give you rational liberal arguments against conservatism major point by major point:
1 - reaganomics, also known as "supply side" economics.
any economic policy which benefits companies or owners at the expense of their workers ignores two important economic concepts(which are not stressed enough in econ curriculi). The first is moral hazard. Conservatives call liberals "blind idealists" but ignore the fact theyre giving huge financial gains to the wealthy and idealistically counting on them to pass that along instead of hording it in their own circles (these people make more than they can ever spend.. giving more to them simply drains that cash from the economy). Moral hazard asserts, and correctly so, that given the opportunity to abuse someone's trust with little to no consequence, a party will.
The second is the GDP equation. The most important factor to economic expansion in that equation is consumption, because once you boil it down it's only consumption which contributes to profit. When you try to "boost" the economy by adopting these policies you attack consumption by pushing wages through the floor, and in the process attack your own long term profits. Thus the reason why every time reaganomics is put into effect a recession follows shortly (a couple years) upon it.
2 - smaller government.
we had a smaller government for about 170 years before basic safety nets and proper labor standards were put in place. The result of complete government nonintervention was a horrible standard of living(median housing didnt have insulation or indoor plumbing), gilded age political machines, and eventually horrific depression. The provision of basic safety nets and labor standards gave rise to and keeps preserved the most important factor to economic growth and a healthy democratic state, a large and stable middle class (who have both money to consume and free time in which to spend it on things like education). Additionally, it reduces the disincentives for those who might otherwise not risk starting a company for fear of becomming one of the statistical 2/3 entrepreneurial failure.
Granted, it's being abused (by both government and the public), but the solution is not to toss it out. When your computer gets infected with spyware, you fix it, you don't just reject technology and go mennenite.
as for pork.. i think both parties can get behind elimination of pork.
3 - religion.
contrary to popular conservative belief, spirituality does not require religion, nor does morality. religion should not be enforced by or even endorsed by the state, it should be treated like eating habits.. that is accomodated as is necessary and otherwise left alone. most importantly it should be divorced from all state actions. the government is not a person, it is a mechanism for governing the nation, and unlike their human counterparts machines do not worship god.
4 - "family values"
in a nation premised around the idea of every individual's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", no amount of legislation or government action will magically make those you consider "amoral" change their way of life. this thought brings us to...
5 - foreign policy.
republican approaches to foreign policy are the real reason our government is so huge and expensive. military spending, even for wwII, was breaking even within a few years of a war's end, and part of this was because we only went to war when we actually were threatened, rather than just paran
Re:Careerist women get hit the hardest. (Score:3, Interesting)
This issue produces conflict when the demands of creating and raising children require people to decide between maximum job performance and maximum child rearing performance.
However, there is a sort of solution to this problem: hysterectomies. Women can get them in their 20's, when they still believe that it is not their concern that our genetic heritage dies with them. The government could issue these women special certificates of eligibility for involved, technical jobs in which they could then be counted on to reliably attend. Of course, this would force women to make the choice between motherhood and employability in high end jobs where cutthroat competition necessitates male-normalized culture, which is clearly unacceptable.
Alternately, we could recognize that women just tend to fucking disappear - and for very good reasons, and pay them accordingly.
Perhaps we could all chip in and help to pay the difference in these employee's salaries so that they could feel affirmatively equal if it's so fucking important to us. Or, all women could get hysterectomies and we could have one generation of equality.
*sigh*. After writing all this schlock, I realize that I also want kids, job be damned. God damn you, empathy, emotions and DNA!