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Women are bailing out of IT

womensenews.org

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Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#11

Post by minus1 »

skybrian wrote: post #5

The report is apparently not online, though you can give them your email address here: http://www.ncwit.org/resources.thefacts.html [Edit: actually it is, just click "no thanks"] There's another article here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/06/ncwit-report-... "The NCWIT report contends that 56% of women in technology companies leave their organizations at the mid-level point (10-20 years) in their career…

You can skip the email request (click "No Thanks") and it starts the download for the "Women in IT: The Facts" report.

EDIT: Here's the pertinent section. They are saying they leave the field, not company, mid-career:

"In 2003, only one-third of women with a computer science bachelor’s degree were still employed in a science, engineering, or technical (SET) job two years after graduation. According to a study by the Center for Work-Life Policy, 74 percent of women in technology report “loving their work,” yet these women leave their careers at a staggering rate: 56 percent of technical women leave at the “mid-level” point just when the loss of their talent is most costly to companies. This is more than double the quit rate for men. It is also higher than the quit rate for women in science and engineering."

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#12

Post by petercooper »

Only 2% of kindergarten teachers in the UK are male (1). Further, the overall number of male elementary school teachers in the UK has fallen significantly in the last 30 years (2) - men have been "bailing out of primary education" for decades.

Are the majority of cases due to bullying or being "forced" out of the role? I doubt it. It's more likely to be related to opportunities and different types of people gravitating to what sort of jobs suit them best. I suspect if women are crashing out of IT, it might be because it's not a particularly appealing or novel career anymore (back in the 90s it was portrayed as super high paid and "cool" - far more appealing than the very sexist financial industry at the time) and women have better opportunities to do other things than ever before (e.g. finance, management, legal) whereas males in IT are probably there because they picked it from the start as a calling rather than a career.

Update: As one of the respondents says, yes, let's make IT more inclusive. But let's not 1) assume IT is a special case, or 2) go OTT by doling out blame or restricting the largely innocent (i.e. "men" as a group) by redefining acceptable behavior to be a tiny gamut of unnatural neutrality and inoffensiveness.

1: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7838273.stm 2: http://www.askamum.co.uk/News/Search-Results/Current-news/Pr...

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#13

Post by hello_moto »

fizx wrote: post #2

IME, the presence of women has mostly been a signal that the workplace is healthy. For the most part, women won't put up with the same shit men will to get ahead. Whenever someone says "women are bailing," I read "working conditions are poor."

I don't have data, I don't do research, I never read news regarding job/working environment in IT industry, however, I have a very strong feeling that you are correct sir

(I'm not joking nor trying to be sarcastic).

Most developers I've worked with don't have great personality and usually the women are the one who "break the ice", sharing their lunch ideas, vacation stories, etc while men are usually about video games and how .NET sucks, SVN sucks.

Maybe it's just my personal experience... but most developers I worked with tend to be more negative than their women counterparts.

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#14

Post by hello_moto »

MartinCron wrote: post #4

This is a subject that I care about, as my wife is also a software developer and has felt out-of-place in a male-dominated field. Two things struck me about the linked article. 1: It sounds like her Midwestern co-workers were just assholes, seriously. Having asshole co-workers is a problem for men and women alike. One key distinction is that men don't immediately relate abusive bevahior to gender. I am sure it often…

Contrary to popular beliefs (that business people are assholes), there are plenty jerks that work as developers and they play quite good "politic" games in the office; they are smart individuals after all.

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#15

Post by minus1 »

petercooper wrote: post #12

Only 2% of kindergarten teachers in the UK are male (1). Further, the overall number of male elementary school teachers in the UK has fallen significantly in the last 30 years (2) - men have been "bailing out of primary education" for decades. Are the majority of cases due to bullying or being "forced" out of the role? I doubt it. It's more likely to be related to opportunities and different types of people gravitati…

I think we should be careful not to get too defensive over this issue. I don't think most women are bullied out of their role, but neither do I think there are gender differences that account for the full disparity between women and men in IT. If there is a way we can make the IT field more inclusive, that is a good thing.

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#16

Post by MartinCron »

hello_moto wrote: post #14
MartinCron wrote: post #4

This is a subject that I care about, as my wife is also a software developer and has felt out-of-place in a male-dominated field. Two things struck me about the linked article. 1: It sounds like her Midwestern co-workers were just assholes, seriously. Having asshole co-workers is a problem for men and women alike. One key distinction is that men don't immediately relate abusive bevahior to gender. I am sure it often…

Contrary to popular beliefs (that business people are assholes), there are plenty jerks that work as developers and they play quite good "politic" games in the office; they are smart individuals after all.

Yeah, I have been around enough to realize that smarts and virtue aren't in any way linked.

Also the correlation between smarts and being a developer isn't as strong as I would hope.

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#17

Post by mkramlich »

petercooper wrote: post #12

Only 2% of kindergarten teachers in the UK are male (1). Further, the overall number of male elementary school teachers in the UK has fallen significantly in the last 30 years (2) - men have been "bailing out of primary education" for decades. Are the majority of cases due to bullying or being "forced" out of the role? I doubt it. It's more likely to be related to opportunities and different types of people gravitati…

Yes, clearly the female kindergarten teachers are discriminating against them!

Thanks for bringing this up. I've seen so many articles and discussions complaining about the lack/decrease/discrimination of females in stereotypically male fields/roles. And yet when the shoe is on the other foot, it's never treated like it's some conspiracy or sexism. It's treated like, "Oh, well that's just an obvious gender difference thing. Duh!"

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#18

Post by [deleted] »

fizx wrote: post #2

IME, the presence of women has mostly been a signal that the workplace is healthy. For the most part, women won't put up with the same shit men will to get ahead. Whenever someone says "women are bailing," I read "working conditions are poor."

[deleted]

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#19

Post by mkramlich »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #8
skybrian wrote: post #5

The report is apparently not online, though you can give them your email address here: http://www.ncwit.org/resources.thefacts.html [Edit: actually it is, just click "no thanks"] There's another article here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/06/ncwit-report-... "The NCWIT report contends that 56% of women in technology companies leave their organizations at the mid-level point (10-20 years) in their career…

I read that as 10-20 years since the beginning of their career (i.e., age 30-40 if it's their first career). Makes me wonder whether women are more likely to switch careers (though they say men trend to less risk-aversion), or more likely to take parental leave and not return. I agree that many years at a single tech company would be very surprising, even outside the valley.

guessed pregnancy/parenting was a possible factor too.

What I love about any statistics-based argument or complaint regarding gender differences is that they always seem to start from a mindset that there are NO differences, physically, between males and females. Then they see a difference somewhere in their statistical data set (a 17% versus a 31%, or a 57% versus an 80%) and suddenly the hunt is on to try to find some way we can blame the difference on sexism or a conspiracy of some kind. It's like, "Hello, did you get the memo? Can we say: Breasts! Babies! Different body parts in the nether regions! Brain structure differences! Skeletal! Different hormone mix! Metabolism diffs! Maturity rate diffs! Aging diffs! Hello!"

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#20

Post by petercooper »

minus1 wrote: post #15
petercooper wrote: post #12

Only 2% of kindergarten teachers in the UK are male (1). Further, the overall number of male elementary school teachers in the UK has fallen significantly in the last 30 years (2) - men have been "bailing out of primary education" for decades. Are the majority of cases due to bullying or being "forced" out of the role? I doubt it. It's more likely to be related to opportunities and different types of people gravitati…

I think we should be careful not to get too defensive over this issue. I don't think most women are bullied out of their role, but neither do I think there are gender differences that account for the full disparity between women and men in IT. If there is a way we can make the IT field more inclusive, that is a good thing.

If there is a way we can make the IT field more inclusive, that is a good thing.

I agree. I'm no fan of discrimination, because we all have characteristics that could be discriminated against by our colleagues and most of us know that being hated on sucks.

That said, I have two issues: 1) that IT is a radical edge case of men-vs-women, when, really, the majority of industries have this issue, and 2) the male armchair feminists going OTT with the dehumanizing "men must never say or do anything a woman could find vaguely uncomfortable" attitude.

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