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Women are bailing out of IT

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Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#21

Post by skybrian »

minus1 wrote: post #11
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…

Thanks, skimmed too quickly. But after reading it, I see that all their statistics comes from another paper: "The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology" by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, et al, which Harvard Business Review will sell you for $300:

http://app.post.hbsp.harvard.edu/athena/athena13/landingpage...

There's a summary here:

http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v9/n10/full/embor2008178...

This might be a more accurate summary: "Although SET companies are struggling with a shortfall of skilled workers and can ill afford such a brain drain, roughly 52% of women between the ages of 35 and 40 leave their jobs largely because of 'hostile work environments and extreme job pressures', according to the study." Regardless of whether they go on to another company, it's alarming that there are that many hostile work environments out there.

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#22

Post by hello_moto »

MartinCron wrote: post #16
hello_moto wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the correlation between smarts and developer might be strong, with a few exceptions. The thing is, people stop learning after University and stick with what they have known and learned.

On top of that, most developers tend to be stubborn because people have been telling them that they're "Special", that they're "Smart" throughout their live (a decent University CS major usually would require the students to take a lot of Math, usually up to 3rd year Math and Stats, and Science courses. Students who excel in these subjects tend to be perceived as "Smart").

It's hard for anyone to be humble when they had been brainwashed.

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#23

Post by skybrian »

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…

Compare "I doubt this is a problem" with "Alarming if true. How can we determine whether this is really a problem?" Both are expressions of skepticism, but one shuts down further inquiry and the other encourages it.

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#24

Post by dotBen »

For me it comes down to two factors...

1) In this specific case, I wonder if the geographic location (she moved to Mid-West) had a lot to do with it... ie workers not accepting of a strong woman in the workplace. In other words nothing particularly to do with IT specifically.

2) In general, women just don't particularly gravitate to IT related fields, perhaps because behaviorally logic-brained people are statistically more likely to be men than women, and those are the type of people who get ahead and successful in IT-related classes and careers.

Here in SF, I do think we could do a lot more to be accepting and encouraging of women but I think things are a lot better than other places and the main issue is lack of interest by women rather than them being pushed/kept out.

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#25

Post by minus1 »

petercooper wrote: post #20
minus1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Frankly, I don't think we are that far apart in our thinking, yet we are reaching very different conclusions. I should admit my bias... I have a two year old daughter. She means everything to me. I hope that if she were interested in pursuing a career in computer science there would be nothing to dissuade her. Unfortunately, given the lack of women in the field, the perception is that this is primarily a career for men.

I should stop here and mention that the counter is true with many careers. You mentioned elementary education as one example. I would add nursing to the list.

My father went to school to become a nurse. My grandfather was ashamed. When asked what his son did he would say he was a medic in Vietnam, but never mention the fact that he later became a nurse.

It cuts both ways, but neither is right. We should make the extra effort to make women comfortable. To welcome them to the field so that in the future this is not an issue.

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#26

Post by ahoyhere »

mkramlich wrote: post #17
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…

I am so anti-crying-sexism it hurts, but your logic and the OP's logic make no sense.

Ask those male kindergarten teachers if they WANTED to stay in the industry, and if so, why did they leave?

I think there are lots of women who leave IT because it's a nasty, brutish and short industry, with less job security/respect than most intellectual professions, where you must constantly work in your off-hours to stay up to date, and where you're likely to be upstaged by a 16-year-old who's willing to sleep under his desk because he has no social life or responsibilities except code.

The theoretical sexism is just the icing on the cake.

That's probably why women are flocking to bio engineering, etc., while dropping CS. It was true in the day of the Microserfs book and still true now: where a degree is a true requirement, you are insulated against 16-year-old upstarts.

I think women, on the whole, are more "reasonable" than men with their pursuits. Whether that's a good thing depends on who you ask, and from what perspective you look at it.

(Oh yeah, and I'm a woman.)

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#27

Post by silencio »

mkramlich wrote: post #3

I'd say less than 1% of all programmers I've met/seen have been female. About 50% of the project managers I've known have been female. In about 90%+ of the cases where I've been in a meeting at work with programmers and a project manager, IF there were only 1 female in the room she was the project manager, not a programmer. So, extrapolating... assuming enough other males have experienced approximately the same thing…

But surely you encounter women outside of Great Clips. Maybe there's even one or more living in the same household as you. The context is changed, but the women are still women. Why should the context dictate how sexist someone should be to someone else? (And I say someone rather than 'a woman' because men face the same thing in other industries that women feel in CS/IT.) A reasonable reaction is being surprised/shocked that a man is cutting your hair at Great Clips. That is not discrimination. Unreasonable and discriminatory is to then start to say derogatory things about him and his work in the context of his working in a majority female workplace and then tip him like shit afterwards. It's pretty fair to say the woman in question was encountering some of this at work.

My pull-out-of-my-arse statistics: there are lots of men in CS and IT that I've talked to, met in person, drank with, worked with, and even slept with some. Most men I know are really nice and reasonable, and in a good way (read: good friends!). A few of them are awkward, but again, in a good-to-acceptable way (making wrong assumptions or stepping on toes, but learning). But it's the few that I can count on my fingers that I will remember as treating me like complete shit that will be the reason why I'd want to switch careers altogether if I were to work with them regularly.

Some of these can be explained away by culture differences, age differences and more. But you know what. When you're sitting in a room with 5 other people and only one is female and she's the developer working on what all six of you met to discuss...and you outright ignore her when she's trying to talk to you...that's sexism, that's bullshit, and no amount of culture clash explains that away. And that and more is what I put up with once in a while, and most of that related to this industry even though programming is maybe half of what I do on a regular basis.

I've even got a story about a dev at one office that wasn't even an acquaintance that stared at my tits all day long and tried to grope me. :P Him I'd have to categorize as a general creep more than geeks-gone-stupid though, it doesn't happen often and it was probably just coincidence.

Anyway....it may be part of life, but it doesn't mean I have to put up with it more than necessary. It's pretty funny people explicitly mention other fields like bio-anything being women friendly and women heavy...chem and BME are some of my other interests, and I sure don't get that crap there. It's very tempting to go specialize/switch to something where I get less of this discriminatory behavior from others.

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#28

Post by Tycho »

If you calculate some sort of mean aptitude for IT work for each gender, you end up with a meaningless statistic. All men and women are individuals capable of individual contribution and for any large 'group' of individuals to be discouraged/lost is not a good thing for any profession. For selfish reasons I want more women to consider applying their talents to IT/computing.

I'm sure sexism and other factors have an effect, but people have a knack for overcoming things like that... I think the problem is much deeper rooted.

Anecdotal evidence, but ten years ago the pupils in my year at school were asked to pick from Computing or Administration as one of their subjects for the next year. We ended up with about 2 girls picking computing in the whole yeargroup, whereas the Administration class (secretarial work) was much more evenly dividied.

Computing was a harder subject but the girls in my year were just as academically accomplished as the boys (if not more). So what gives? That is the root of the problem IMO

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#29

Post by petercooper »

minus1 wrote: post #25
petercooper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Frankly, I don't think we are that far apart in our thinking, yet we are reaching very different conclusions. I should admit my bias... I have a two year old daughter. She means everything to me. I hope that if she were interested in pursuing a career in computer science there would be nothing to dissuade her. Unfortunately, given the lack of women in the field, the perception is that this is primarily a career for m…

I have a two year old daughter. She means everything to me. I hope that if she were interested in pursuing a career in computer science there would be nothing to dissuade her. Unfortunately, given the lack of women in the field, the perception is that this is primarily a career for men.

I have a one year old daughter, but I think my bias is one of a gritty commoner brought up surrounded by gritty, strong London women. Whatever my daughter ends up doing, I'd hope she can fight, drink, argue and cuss any of her male compatriots who dare piss her off under the table.

Most of the women I know and respect in our field are ass kickers. They have strong personalities (even if they're not outgoing) and speak their mind - most don't freak out about gender issues, even if they've had problems in the past, they nip things in the bud. I love these guys not because they're women or "feminine" but because they're being themselves, getting on with life and not using their gender as an excuse for doing anything differently.

Given this, I don't think we should make an extra effort to make women comfortable. We should make an overall effort to make people comfortable (I suspect most men don't like the bawdy "manly" behavior either), diminish the concept of gender and gender roles, and be more tolerant of each other.

Re: Women are bailing out of IT

#30

Post by minus1 »

petercooper wrote: post #29
minus1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I don't think we are that far apart in our thinking, yet we are reaching very different conclusions. I should admit my bias... I have a two year old daughter. She means everything to me. I hope that if she were interested in pursuing a career in computer science there would be nothing to dissuade her. Unfortunately, given the lack of women in the field, the perception is that this is primarily a career for m…

I have a two year old daughter. She means everything to me. I hope that if she were interested in pursuing a career in computer science there would be nothing to dissuade her. Unfortunately, given the lack of women in the field, the perception is that this is primarily a career for men. I have a one year old daughter, but I think my bias is one of a gritty commoner brought up surrounded by gritty, strong London women…

Why do you think it is that most of the women in the field are "ass kickers"?
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