Ask HN: How many females do you work with?

I work in the UK as a developer in an office with just over 100 employees. This covers Development, QA, Support, Product and Office Staff.

There are a total of 2 female employees, both of them have non-technical roles. And I really feel like this is a shame. I went to university with people of all genders and I feel like gender diversity is great for a team/office.

It's just a stark difference from my previous workplace which was very much evenly split.

I just wanted to get a little insight, how many females do you work with?

SW Dev seems to be male dominated for as long as I remember myself in it. Made a motto out of it that I hope I'm gonna pass to my kids: "steer away from any environment where the gender stats are skewed beyond 60-40. This is just not normal."

In terms of women in the office:

- 2 developers

- 1 project manager

- 1 QA manager

- 1 HR

- 1 office manager

It's a little low for this city and country. In most larger companies, the ratio is 60-40. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower.

Romania is a former communist country and the state did not make a difference between male/female. It didn't matter. You had to work. This kind of thinking has kind of continued.

It's starting to change though. Romania has extremely favorable laws for women. Pregnant women work 6 hours / day till 32 weeks at 100% pay. After giving birth, they can stay home for up to two years at 85% pay. Fortunately, most of them return to work after two years.

It's not down to companies.

Changing that requires a long term plan focusing on primary and secondary education. University is too late. In the UK many schools encourage pupils to develop interests in all subjects these days and to teach them that they can be whatever they want, so that girls may find that they like engineering and boys that they like nursing (for example). I think it's the right way forward but obviously it is a slow evolution.