Women In IT Are On a 283-Year March To Parity, BCS Warns (theregister.com) 197
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: It will take 283 years for female representation in IT to make up an equal share of the tech workforce in the UK, according to a report from the British Computer Society, the chartered institute for IT (BCS). BCS has calculated that based on trends from 2005 to 2022, it would take nearly three centuries for the representation of women in the IT workforce -- currently 20 percent -- to reach the average representation across the whole UK workforce, currently at 48 percent. BCS's annual Diversity Report also found that progress towards the gender norm was stalling in IT jobs. Between 2018 and 2021, the proportion of women tech workers rose from 16 percent to 20 percent. But there was no change in 2022, according to BCS analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics.
Julia Adamson, BCS managing director for education and public benefit, said in a statement: "More women and girls need the opportunity to take up great careers in a tech industry that's shaping the world. A massive pool of talent and creativity is being overlooked when it could benefit employers and the economy. There has to be a radical rethink of how we get more women and girls into tech careers, and a more inclusive tech culture is ethically and morally the right thing to do. Having greater diversity means that what is produced is more relevant to, and representative of, society at large. This is crucial when it comes to, for instance, the use of AI in medicine or finance. The fact that 94 percent of girls and 79 percent of boys drop computing at age 14 is a huge alarm bell we must not ignore; the subject should have a broader digital curriculum that is relevant to all young people."
Julia Adamson, BCS managing director for education and public benefit, said in a statement: "More women and girls need the opportunity to take up great careers in a tech industry that's shaping the world. A massive pool of talent and creativity is being overlooked when it could benefit employers and the economy. There has to be a radical rethink of how we get more women and girls into tech careers, and a more inclusive tech culture is ethically and morally the right thing to do. Having greater diversity means that what is produced is more relevant to, and representative of, society at large. This is crucial when it comes to, for instance, the use of AI in medicine or finance. The fact that 94 percent of girls and 79 percent of boys drop computing at age 14 is a huge alarm bell we must not ignore; the subject should have a broader digital curriculum that is relevant to all young people."
who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cuz "equity" durr.
These idiots are social constructionists. They do not believe genetic differences exist between male and female, unless that fits another of their imbecilic agendas.
They don't believe it either. (Score:2)
But so long as women's freedom to choose results in different choices, those who squeal about it being men's fault will never be out of work.
Re: They don't believe it either. (Score:4, Informative)
That's the single biggest flaw with things like affirmative action. They just assume that for any given occupation or activity, equal numbers of every demographic will be equally interested. And when that doesn't happen, they assume that there's some sort of institutional problem that needs to be addressed, even when it can be proven that none exists at all.
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Re: who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
If women wanted to be in IT, they would be. What about Masons? How many years until women have equal representation in masonry work? What about train track welding? Those are $200k/year jobs. Quarryman? Journeyman? Many professions are not equally represented per capita. Now let us kindergarten teachers. Nurses. Nutritionist. Runway model. Host(ess). There are reasons for the disparity: men and women are different. Government fiat or forcing round pegs into square holes is not an improvement. Neither is strait equality. But, if you are going to go down the path of equality: masonry work first. Thanks.
You are not wrong - there are solid reason for the disparity. I worked with a number of women in STEM - engineers and scientists. But the difference between them and most women was they thought like an engineer, not as a female engineer. Their work was not female. It was engineer.
STEM careers are not something that is not female or male. The idea that we must change it so that it fits a generalized female model is counterproductive and stupid. It is a way of thinking, and it appears it fits more with a male way of thinking.
The ladies I worked with were competent. But they were outliers, not the general.
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What you describe as male thinking is just sucking at engineering. I've seen so many things built with no thought for the end user, no consideration for anything but profit or being technically correct.
These days it feels to me that engineering is a humanity with a lot of maths.
Engineering always starts and ends with human factors. Things are built because people want them, and ultimately only because people want them for some human reason. Budgets exist and are set as a result of human factors. A design th
Re: who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
What you describe as male thinking is just sucking at engineering. I've seen so many things built with no thought for the end user, no consideration for anything but profit or being technically correct.
I'm not saying those are things that only women can do, but they are things that turn women away from STEM when they see that it's not really about doing good work or making the world a better place.
It is strange that females haven't banded together and done this good work and making the world better already. It would prove you correct.
But apparently women are easily dissuaded from anything that does not conform to what they want.
That's the problem with whatever wave feminism we are in at the moment. At its very core, women are simultaneously strong and independent, and also so weak that any adversity harms them terribly.
I don't think women are weak. Most of the time they just gravitate towards careers they are interested in, not what they are told they should be interested in. The ones who want to be in STEM, go for careers in STEM.
How about your thoughts on how so many more women go into careers in the business world, where corruption and sex is rampant?
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Culturally women aren't attracted to STEM because they're "nerdy" and not cool in high school [...]
This is just conjecture.
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It makes a lot of sense. There were a lot more women in tech before personal computers became a thing.
But yeah I’ve never seen anything more solid than that to back up the theory.
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It makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, that's why it's a reasonable hypothesis. Now, someone needs to test the hypothesis for it to be scientific.
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Well yeah but i dont know how you are going to test for why women lost interest in CS after 1984.
I dunno a lot of people see women getting denied an opportunity for a good career but its shit work and gets worse every day. I would rather be a clown or career criminal if I had to do it over.
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Culturally women aren't attracted to STEM because they're "nerdy" and not cool in high school [...]
This is just conjecture.
And STEM probably does not qualify as a subject of study in a cheerleader scholarship either.
Lots of reasons the pipeline leaks (Score:3, Insightful)
The book Unlocking the Clubhouse is based on extensive fieldwork. The tl;dr version is that every stage of youth and education is another obstacle. We're losing girls who are fascinated by math and technology.
My personal experioence (Score:4, Interesting)
What loses them is when STEM-topics require actual boring work on a topic and involves more than just gathering social approval. Those feel-good campaigns are just a waste of money.
Around the globe and across time, women went in more into STEM only in countries where they were forced to by economic necessity. Check out Eastern Europe during communism, India, China. In countries with most gender equality, like the Scandinavian countries, women tend to avoid STEM careers if they can choose.
My personal experience confirms this: my daughter had the grades to go into STEM and decided against it, my son went into STEM. She was actually more qualified than him, but she didn't want to waste her life in an office in front of a computer.
Re:who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's true what you said, but the IT industry has a talent shortage problem. We can either outsource or import workers from India and China (where a lot more females are in IT), or we can tap into half of the population and train more talents. Culturally women aren't attracted to STEM because they're "nerdy" and not cool in high school so that's something that we could work on. There needs to be more female role models for young girls to look up to so they can decide to get into STEM. Ignore all that equality stuff. We have a talent shortage at hand.
As I have noted - we really need to force women into STEM. I worked on a campus, and any woman engineer or scientist had to participate in youth recruitment efforts of females. It failed hard. Actual women who enjoyed their careers could not persuade young ladies who were not interested in STEM into STEM.
As kumbaya, as it is to think that we need to make STEM something the cool kids want to do, or that they are being kept out of STEM by the misogynists that work there now. It seems that the young ladies are simply not interested. By the way, for all of the blame given to men as the cause of this disparity, we bend over backwards to keep the ladies that work with us happy. They are paid as much or more than the men, they are fast tracked in promotions. And heaven help a male that upsets one. You can lose your job. But for the most part, we get along pretty well.
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No, what you need to do is show young girls that they can enter the profession. Girls take societal cues from people around them. If they see women scientists, they'll get the notion they can be a scientis
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I challenge you to produce some kind of proof for this
Re:who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, what you need to do is show young girls that they can enter the profession. Girls take societal cues from people around them. If they see women scientists, they'll get the notion they can be a scientist as well.
Sorry, but the people aside from me were Women scientists
Your narrative is old, creaky, and believing that nurture trumps nature is a failure and has been a failure for a long time.
I've worked with a pretty fair number of women scientists and engineers, and they disagree with you as well.
Becoming a scientist takes something akin to an obsession, a drive. If you have that drive, you have it. In no case is it something that you see someone that looks like you, so you think - I want to be that.
If all they see is male scientists, they'll think it's a male occupation and skip it.
Then you do not have the drive. Explain to me how the female scientists and Engineers I work with all have the drive, just like the men I work with. Explain how they are wrong. Then explain how when they work to attract young women who as you claim must see women or they won't want to do something - don't do that something after seeing women in the jobs we're trying to attract. These ladies are unquestionably women
Explain how the women scientist/engineer/HR run efforts to get young girls interested do not even move the needle. They are seen, as you claim is needed, they speak with and encourage, as would seem to be needed.
You can spout the feminist talking points that the cause of a lack of women in STEM is the patriarchy all day, but in the end, your talking points and narratives fail. They've been failing for years, why would they start working now?
Would not an approach of a female only STEM company be a better idea? Then there would be no men around them to discourage these passionate young ladies. They might even be better at STEM then the men, then your narrative will have a stunning victory.
So no, you don't force girls into STEM if they don't want to.
Then you will never achieve genital parity. Gotta deal with it, You might as well believe in trickle down theory, or Lysenkoism, or flat earth. We've been trying your way since the 1970's. You'd think there would be at least some success.
But you show them that they can go into STEM if they want to and it's a perfectly normal occupation.
Of course we expose the young people to potential career choices. Don't even try to paint me with what you need for your narrative, because I agree with that past sentence.We offer the experience, and if the young lady finds it something she wants to pursue, we should aways support her.
Yes, some girls do want to enter STEM, but if all they see are men, they'll believe they're in the wrong and pursue something else.
Explain why the female scientists and engineers I work with are successful, and weren't turned away by seeing males.
Then explain why business - which has a lot of males, has not turned women away. And by the way, the business world isn't as bad as the movie industry, but having to fuck the boss to get ahead is not at all uncommon, and the business sphere is pretty sketchy. Yet lots of women gravitate toward business careers. Strange, huh?
I do know of two female engineers that did fail miserably. Their mental state was simply not proper for the task. It was hella awkward having her cry on my shoulder from time to time, she was miserable. In a weird ending of her engineer career, she started a day care ce
Re: who cares? (Score:2)
Women were also excluded from politics, medicine and law but somehow that didn't stop them entering those professions.
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Maybe young ladies are not interested because there are not many young ladies in those fields they can be held up as role models?
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe there is a talent shortage problem because:
1. IT work is hard. You have to be smarter than average to get good at it. Educational opportunity is only half the equation here.
2. The job is unpleasant, for most people. Natural nerds like it, but they are a small percentage. Normal people find it unpleasant so they never get good at it.
3. The job is stressful. You wind up under a lot of pressure to figure out what's wrong in a hurry, you get blamed for bugs despite the high degree to which factors beyond your control contributed to their creation, sometimes your mistakes can actually cause huge service outages or security breaches with real financial and legal consequences, and so on. Seriously, this really is too much responsibility for many people to take.
4. The job is demanding. The demand for health-destroying and life-sacrificing long hours still runs rampant throughout the industry.
5. The job is a dead end. You get promoted to "senior architect" or similar, and that's it, you are topped out. Your only options are to stay stuck for most of your career or exit the career to management (which is less demanding, less stressful AND pays better). So most people either burn out at that point or stop being IT workers to become managers instead.
7. The industry is agist. Even though agism is illegal, it also runs rampant. Nobody hires old IT workers, thus artificially lowering the labor supply.
8. The pay is mediocre. Yes, it pays more than a lot of non-knowledge-work jobs, but a lot less than many other knowledge-work jobs that are less bad in the above ways. Employers think IT salaries are egregiously high, but they do not consider all these factors that make it this way.
Right now, in general, pay for such work is just not enough to motivate more people to enter the field. Only people who truly love it are willing to put up with all of this to do it. No amount of outreach to women or whatever is going to change that. Either make the job a lot easier to bear, or make it pay a lot more.
Seriously, the industry leaders need to put up or shut up.
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A lot more women are in IT in China and India because they are very, very poor per capita, so people tend to make career choices very much based on income.
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Mathematics and science may be "nerdy" in school, but unless the curriculum has changed enormously the "computing" which TFS talks about people dropping aged 14 has until that point been "How to turn on a computer" and "How to make a document in Word". I think I've still got a certificate somewhere which says that I know how to make text bold or italic in a DTP. It's nothing to do with IT or CS.
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WHY??
Equality of outcome is mandatory. We must have a perfect distribution of people of all types in all positions, by choice or not.
"The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, earpiece radios for the intelligent that broadcast loud noises meant to disrupt thoughts, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic."
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
and on that note cool, when are the breathless protests about kindergarten teachers being like 98% female or the NBA being 90% black slated to start?
it's the double standards that make it absolutely magical.
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I'm the UK we have schemes aimed at getting men into primary age teaching. Or we did, before everything was cut to the bone.
That's why there are no protests. We are doing something about it.
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That's certainly an issue, yes.
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And you don't think that this might be the problem?
Ain't it kinda sexist to think that a guy who actually wants to work with kids MUST be some kind of molester because, hey, why else would a GUY want to work with KIDS? That's so un-manly!
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no can't be the problem. Men just naturally don't want to. It's impossible for massive external effects and social and social pressures to have any effect. You see once I talked to a bunch of men who had already decided more or less what they wanted to do about switching and NONE of them wanted to. See?
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You act like there haven't been efforts to get women into STEM jobs. And I'm not talking about half-assed government posters showing just how awesome it would be (because yes, we had that "men should work in primary education too" posters here, too. It was at best a token effort to say "yeah, we're doing that, too", and only after schools had to cut down activities to the bone because they barely had the personnel to at least teach the hours needed).
We're talking about programs that went from elementary all
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Everything except charge the culture, apparently.
That's why most efforts fail. The people who think they benefit from the way things are work hard to keep things that way.
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How do you want to "change a culture"? By force? You'll get a lot more fake smiles and a lot more people avoiding talking with each other so they don't say anything wrong, but that's not a culture change, that's a culture erosion.
The only thing you can do in this case is to open up your own company and hire staff that fits your idea of a perfect culture. Judging from the people I know in the field, though, I have a hunch that you'll have trouble attracting talent.
Not because we're "misogynist". But because
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Leading by example helps. Change company policies and encourage people to take advantage of things like flexible working and parental leave.
It's not the sort of thing you can really force.
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The first thing that we'd do if that becomes effective is to switch to 100% WFH. On principle, anyway, so we don't have to waste resources on masking, but also because we don't want to put up with more CoC bullshit than entirely necessary.
I already waste way too much time pretending to be human, I really have no interest in wasting even more on trying to pretend I care for the feelings of humans.
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that's not Asperger's, that's psychopathy.
I've met and am friends with plenty of odd people diagnosed and not. I know what picking up social cues is and isn't. It's unrelated to weather people give at shit about other people, frankly.
Aspergers doesn't make you an asshole.
Re: who cares? (Score:2)
Absolutely agree
I have a very good friend and colleague who has Asperger's
He cares how his actions and words affect other people because he's not an asshole.
Most of the time he can figure out these interactions just like any other engineering problem.
And if he's unsure he just asks.
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Asperger can make you an asshole if you at some point simply stop giving a fuck about humans in general.
The point is where they stop wanting to fit in and be part of humanity and instead just want to watch the world burn.
I sometimes think I'm done trying to fit in. I really don't think I want to anymore. I tried for 50 years. I guess I failed.
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Read a book sometime.... it will help with that whooshing noise you keep hearing as concepts pass over your head.
In this case, just a short story: "Harrison Bergeron", by Kurt Vonnegut. Maybe ask someone to explain the relevance.
Important so we have more talent (Score:2)
There's a chicken and egg problem on "who wants to do those jobs" when young girls don't see role models to follow.
Then their brothers crowd them off the home computer, then the culture tells them tech is for smelly nerds, and so on to a death by a thousand cuts. All the effect of discrimination without it ever being explicit.
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>"There's a chicken and egg problem on "who wants to do those jobs" when young girls don't see role models to follow."
That isn't why women *choose* not to enter those fields. It generally just doesn't interest them. And there is nothing wrong with that. Looking at different choices/outcomes and decrying it is always some problem *is* mostly the problem.
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Excuse me, but care to point to what "role model" I had as a kid in the 80s with an affinity for computers? It was certainly not in the TV shows of the time or the people that were paraded out as the "successful go-getters".
On TV, the heroes were some jocks and ladies men, and if "nerds" existed in those shows, they were usually in the fashion of Murray from Riptide, some geeky comic-relief character that acted a lot like the dog companion of the five man band trope than a full-fledged member of the team.
An
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Yeah yeah no role models boo hoo.
I grew up in the 80s top. Nerds were not in favor. Not entirely. People still knew NASA scientist was an impressive thing and that carried a lot of weight. So nerds aren't lauded, but there were available forms.
And so there was still plenty of stuff for budding nerds with technical toys etc etc which all my relatives magically knew to get for me. My sister always got dolls. She fucking hated dolls.
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But women now need a role model? Are women in any way inferior to geeks in the 80s?
Sexist pig!
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why is parity even important here, many professions are dominated by females or males and it is simply a choice of who wants to do those jobs, As long as neither sex is barred from entry or specifically discriminated against then equal numbers is completely unecessary.
I remember a guy who was taking nursing in undergrad, he definitely got made fun of a little for pursuing that. The thing is, from female nurses I've known having the occasional guy nurse is actually really helpful when you need a little extra help lifting or simply need to deal with a patient who has a problem with women.
Did the female-only nursing stereotypes and ridicule amount to "specifically discriminated against"? Probably not.
Would nursing benefit from a higher percentage of men? Probably.
There's a
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Most high paying and prestigious jobs are dominated by men. The ability to carry a child is treated like a huge disadvantage in many industries when it should be celebrated. Ultimately we have a cultural problem where employees are treated like expendable resources rather than partners in business. If we keep running things the same as we always have, then it probably shouldn't be too surprising that change is glacially slow.
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>"The ability to carry a child is treated like a huge disadvantage in many industries when it should be celebrated."
It absolutely should be celebrated. It is a super-power, for sure. But it is not the "ability" to carry a child that hurts women's careers, it is that many *do* have children, and that *does* hurt their job performance. And many will want to take a lot of time after, too, which further impacts their careers. Life is full of choices and differing outcomes from those choices. And many pe
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Why exactly should we celebrate that? Last I checked the species isn't critically endangered. Quite the opposite.
Re:who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know why every group has to perfectly represent the general population. It is like accountants have been put in charge of society. If more woman don't want to enter IT are we supposed to drag them kicking and screaming into the field? Maybe they don't like it and are the sensible ones.
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The US is below the UAE and Qatar in gender equality?
Yikes.
Easy Solution (Score:2)
30 of the men should declare they are women trapped in mens bodies.
Problem solved 50-50 representation.
Even 30 % representation for LGBT.
This is harmful thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
the solution to this made up problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Women who want to do this as a career care. The fact that men don't complain about this stuff is just an example of how we let ourselves get exploited when we should be demanding better.
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It's not about quotas, it's the fact that women tell us they want in but are put off by various things. Fixing those things happens to be good for men as well, but for various reasons we don't demand them ourselves.
Story Time (Score:5, Informative)
I went to a fairly decent polytechnic school in a country where the majority of your education fees are subsidized by government. The only barrier to entry is a high school diploma, and they will train you with real life skills on how to be a electrician, a plumber, a CS degree, a nurse, etc.
Our computer science classes took place directly across from the nursing stream. I got to watch as a 100% female class (nursing) let out adjacent to our 98% male class. (No one seems to champion more males in nursing, though very underrepresented).
Of the 60+ students, 3 female students in our CS degree, one dropped out, 1 switched streams to programming stream, one I think graduated.
Equality of opportunity DOES NOT equal equality of outcome.
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But women are the same as men in every way! How can that be?!
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Because equal opportunity doesn't mean equal outcome.
I know, a lot of people struggle with that. But it's time we learn that equal opportunity is what we should aim for. If we try to enforce equal outcomes, we should probably first read Harrison Bergeron [wikipedia.org] first to see what might well be the result.
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>Equality of opportunity DOES NOT equal equality of outcome.
As long as we occasionally confirm the first is in place... absolutely, we need to start teaching people this.
The Bell curves of various aptitudes of men and women have a lot of overlap, but are not identical. The Venn diagram of things men and women tend to do has overlap, but not to the point of being anywhere near a perfect circle.
As long as you're not barred from or driven out of something because of your genitals, it's OK.
Re:Story Time (Score:5, Interesting)
I went to a fairly decent polytechnic school in a country where the majority of your education fees are subsidized by government. The only barrier to entry is a high school diploma, and they will train you with real life skills on how to be a electrician, a plumber, a CS degree, a nurse, etc.
Our computer science classes took place directly across from the nursing stream. I got to watch as a 100% female class (nursing) let out adjacent to our 98% male class. (No one seems to champion more males in nursing, though very underrepresented).
Of the 60+ students, 3 female students in our CS degree, one dropped out, 1 switched streams to programming stream, one I think graduated.
Equality of opportunity DOES NOT equal equality of outcome.
At some point, we really do need to come to an understanding that the sexes are not identical in all ways. There are some career paths that attract more women than men, and vice versa.
We don't see many females working as roughneck oil rig workers, nor lumberjacks, not trash collectors. Why not?
I spent part of my career working to attract young ladies to STEM careers. These programs were things like the Take our Sons and Daughters to Work Day. The "sons" part was token - it was all about the young girls. And it failed hard. On our campus it was organized and run by women, so we can't blame the male perspective. After the tours and everything involved, they polled the young folks as to what they were interested in doing as a career. Many of the boys were interested in engineering, science and computers - a lot of technical interests, and a fairly normal grouping.
The girls? That was really different. There was nursing and veterinarian in the mix, but up at the top? Pop singer/diva. STEM? at the bottom. This was long before all the excuses for passionately interested girls leaving STEM because of something the bad males did could be applied. They simply were not interested.
In the end, I came to the opinion that in general, the different sexes have slightly different thought processes. I support any woman with the ability and the interest to go for any career she wishes. But if this parity is considered important, we aren't going to achieve it by dealing with personal interest - we will have to delete men and force women into the positions. Otherwise we'll be struggling forever.
We're losing interested ones along the way (Score:2)
That's documented, I mentioned a book about it elsewhere in these comments.
How old were the children in your outreach program? The pipeline has holes all along starting really early.
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How old were the children in your outreach program? The pipeline has holes all along starting really early.
Quite. People are holding up examples of trying recruit on college campuses, i.e. a time when for most people their general direction is already set. For some reason their inability to undo the previous 15 years of culture and society in a 5 minute conversation is evidence that there is in fact nothing untoward. That's a quite astonishing level of arrogance.
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How old were the children in your outreach program? The pipeline has holes all along starting really early.
Quite. People are holding up examples of trying recruit on college campuses, i.e. a time when for most people their general direction is already set. For some reason their inability to undo the previous 15 years of culture and society in a 5 minute conversation is evidence that there is in fact nothing untoward. That's a quite astonishing level of arrogance.
The example I give is of children, from around age seven to high school. Perhaps we need to play pre-recorded narrative whilst the young fetus is in the womb. But that is just one example, and hella longer than 15 minutes.
Arrogance? Your narrative is so strong, and the efforts to enforce parity so regularly fail, perhaps it is time to stop blaming the people you are blaming and look for a different answer.
And here we have the difference. My roots are in science and technology. It is important to under
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we will have to delete men and force women into the positions.
WW3 it is, then!
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"Otherwise we'll be struggling forever."
It doesn't take much of a tinfoil hat to suspect that's the point.
As long as people are fighting, there is a lot of power and money to be made leading the fight one direction or another.
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>"Equality of opportunity DOES NOT equal equality of outcome."
Correct. By today's definitions, equality of outcome is called "equity." And the only way to have "equity" is to have unequal opportunity.... and that is accomplished by punishing excellence and achievement, usually done through identity quotas... all those 'isms and 'ists that are so bad.
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Why does this outright false stupidity get +5 every time.
Yes there are drives to get more men in nursing. You are absolutely categorically wrong.
I will get modded down now for pointing out trivially verifiable facts. I've got karma to burn.
The path forward (Score:2)
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Hmm.. ok, let's try to figure out what happens when we implement that.
Men in STEM will be unemployed in pretty large numbers because they cannot find another employer, at least until enough women have been hired. Now, let's assume that 80% of STEM people are currently male, this means that the workforce would shrink by about 60%. Let us assume that companies will somehow manage to at least retain most of the good male personnel and that not all good male STEM workers are misogynist assholes, then the qualit
Story Time 2 (Score:5, Informative)
15 plus years in to my IT career, worked with literally 100's of people here is my experience with 100% of all women who have joined me in my life:
2 were the bosses daughters, they stuck it out quite a while due to nepotism. Didn't really fix computers just did spreadsheet stuff. 1 had a kid and never came back.
1 older lady, basically one of founders of the company and had to be force retired due to age and inability to do much critical thinking beyond basic helpdesk level. Useless but paid more than me due to seniority.
1 was hired for a week, but lied about all her qualifications and basically quit in disgrace because she would not accept help from a man when she already knew everything (even though this is a fluid industry with skills and procedures changing near daily)
1 was hired by one of our clients as an IT CIO type role (diversity hire). Same story as above, had no real it skills, Hadn't used a windows machine in her life, yet was hired to oversee the IT infrastructure of 2000 + windows centric users. Stuck it out a year but basically quit in frustration. But not after she basically ruined our relationship with the client and got us fired from one of our largest contracts because WE were the ones doing everything wrong (10+ year contract going fine till she came along)
Similar story for another client. Their SQL guy retired, I was involved in making recommendations for their replacement. 2 candidates stood out, one male one female. Male was qualified, real-life experience. Knew what he was doing. Was passed over for diversity reasons. Female hired. Knew nothing. Given plenty of time to get up to speed. Did nothing all day. Blamed us for the issues with her responsibility and systems. Basically got us fired. Quit a year later to have 5th child.
2 more were accountants so don't really count as "Women in IT"
That's it bros. 100's worked with and for in IT roles. 8 were women. and 100% were negative experiences. Point of story? Isn't really one except to say its hard to recommend diversity just for the sake of diversity. It has overwhelming, 100% negative real world repercussions, in my lived experience.
Anecdotes? (Score:3, Interesting)
OK.
Every single incompetent I've ever worked with, including the one who didn't know the different between a bit and a byte, has been male.
Women in bricklaying on infinite march from parity (Score:2)
.... and nobody cares.
Why is IT different? The goal makes no sense.
men in Nursing (Score:3)
How many years before men have parity in Nursing?
Why are we measuring this? There is no conspiracy to keep women out of tech. Personally, I hire people that are qualified and I don't care what you look like.
News Flash (Score:4, Insightful)
Women never predicted to reach parity with concreters.
Men never predicted to reach parity with primary school teachers.
News flash, Men like things and women like people.
Re: (Score:2)
So why had the number of men in primary education plummeted then?
Men were there why not any more?
And is women don't like things why were there so many more in competing in the early days when it wasn't regarded as such a desirable job?
Not every human suits every job. (Score:4, Interesting)
We hear no yowls for parity for septic truck drivers, roofers, masons etc.
Not every human is suited to coding or even suited to real computer literacy. Stop wanting that because it just destroys meritocracy with no useful return. It's cruel to pretend everyone should want to code thus diverting their limited effort from other options.
Business needs a flood of serfs today. Will it need the same in twenty years?
Time for Harrison Bergeron'ing then (Score:2)
Unless you make the sexes equal, they won't be equal.
Even assuming it's not genetically determined, the mere fact they are the ones who get pregnant pushes women towards a social/nurturing mindset. Even if a culture could be shaped to counteract that, there is a good chance that culture would have very poor fitness and would survive even worse than the current one.
Until you fix the biology, you likely can't fix the inequality.
Re: (Score:2)
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Humans keep dying of old age and disease, being born disabled and torturing and killing eachother. There is room for improvement.
I wonder... (Score:2)
What is the duration of the march men are on to achieve parity in nursing?
Crisis Hunting (Score:2)
Maybe "women" generally do not like tech. My wife thinks is boring as hell. These social justice fascists' and their constant crisis hunting seem to think everything has to be the same everywhere. The fact is there are biological differences between males and females - again, generally speaking. Genetics and billions of years of evolution do actually create differences in proclivities. A few years of social liberalism screaming
If that is on your agenda (Score:2)
I will instantly discount everything you say. This goes for individuals. men and women, as well as companies. There has never been a bigger, redder red flag than the pretense that there is something wrong with fewer women than men working in tech.
So? (Score:2)
What about parity in, say, firefighters, janitors, truck drivers, etc? No?
It is all bullshit anyways. "Fixing" the numbers is beyond stupid. We have now that women can get into all of these (and computing) without facing special hurdles. That is all that counts. And from what my female CS students tell me, there are no special hurdles for women, it is just a relatively tough subject to study.
Re: (Score:2)
What about firefighters you say?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk... [theguardian.com]
Women just don't want to be targets of rampant harassment. It's impossible to fight fires without bullying anyone in the minority don't you know?
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously, this is just a result of skewed numbers. With 50% firefighters being women, this would surely vanish, right?
Re: (Score:2)
I know I've won the debate when someone moves the goalposts so far that they're on the moon.
Thanks for playing though.
Fuck the manhaters (Score:2)
No amount of anti-men legislation, or discrimination in college admissions and recruiting will change that.
Fuck the feminazis and their jealous manhate.
Just not going to happen (Score:2)
So...how is the march to equality doing in construction work? Garbage collection? Why is this only a topic in IT? Not even STEM in general - where I live, for example, women are 60% of new doctors. It's only and always a call for equality in IT.
Equality in IT is not going to happen. I have known a number of talented women in IT. All of them regarded it as "just a job" that stops when they go home. The talented men I have known (and I modestly count myself among them) tend to be more obsessive: we program f
pointless (Score:2)
On one hand, you complain many IT jobs will be taken away by AI, on the other you complain there are not enough women wanting to pursue careers in IT. Do you really want their jobs to be taken away by AI?
1950s and 60s (Score:2)
In the 1950s and 60s there were many women in what qualified for IT back then. Why was that and why isn't it any more?
If we can answer that, we will know what to change.
My guess would be: Pay in IT nowadays is very good, so many men want to work there.
So: Reduce pay and the number of man will decrease which means the percentage of women will raise.
-> success (or not?)
Re:1950s and 60s (Score:4, Informative)
In the 1950s and 60s there were many women in what qualified for IT back then. Why was that and why isn't it any more? If we can answer that, we will know what to change.
You're not wrong, but you have to realize that the 50s and 60s were a very different time. Lots of women worked as secretaries and typists. Along came computers, with their hunger for data: it was an easy move from typist to data entry or typing up punch cards. Technically that may have been IT, but it was really just pounding a different keyboard.
Of course, there were also women programmers and researchers, but they were a minority. The very fact that there are specific lists of prominent women programmers (see Wikipedia, for example) shows that they were exceptions to the rule.
In 283 years, AI will be IT (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The moment a "code of conduct" is required is the moment you've hired too many SJWs at your company.
Re: (Score:2)
Just about every company has a code of conduct or some equivalent. It's usually called the "company handbook". Turns out that on the whole letting people be complete knobs to each other is often not good for business.
Re: (Score:2)
Teach your daughter resilience instead of avoidance, she will do much better in life. The path to success is covered in obstacles and some of them you need to deal with head-on rather than avoid. When the world puts an RMS road block in your path you need the skills to cope.
Re: (Score:2)
You know, when a company thinks they need to put up a CoC, I don't want to work there either...