Coping Strategies for Women in IT 648
Ian Lamont writes "Female workers are losing ground in the IT profession, reports Computerworld, citing statistics which show a sharp drop in the number of female CS grads since the 1980s, and a decline in the percentage of women in the IT profession since 2001. According to the article, causes include pervasive stereotypes and the locker-room atmosphere found in some IT shops — attitudes which some readers may recognize from the comments in a Slashdot thread last week. The IT professionals interviewed in the Computerworld article discuss a variety of strategies for coping. They range from trying to 'out-boy the boys' to watching what you say, as one Sun Microsystems executive describes:'It's not unusual to be the only woman at a meeting, she says, and because of that, there's often a tendency to remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say. "As one member of a small group, you feel you have no right to be mediocre ... You're not just representing yourself; you're representing [females] with a capital F.'"
Been there, seen that... (Score:5, Insightful)
I say we just give any and all female hires shiny new Sig sidearms with a license to shoot anyone (especially upper management) that harasses them. Seriously though, as one who has had to instigate actions against individuals senior to myself for sexual harassment of colleagues, the issue of unwelcome environments is well known. Fortunately, things are getting progressively better as I have been seeing an uptick in the number of seriously qualified individuals who happen to be women among the alpha users of the IT community (PhD candidates in Computer Science). But in the interim, I would discourage women from feeling that they have to "out-boy the boys" as that behavior simply compounds the problem and makes legal issues more complex leading to the likelihood that if problems do arise, everybody gets fired. Besides, the type of person that would engage in locker-room behavior may in fact be encouraged by a woman stooping to that level. I would also encourage women to be as vocal as necessary in meetings and not reserve comments for those times when you think that what you say is representative of genius. Just do your job, be professional, ask questions when necessary and remember that you do not have to tolerate any bullshit that your male colleagues do not have to endure.
Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly though I don't really care if someone in the I/T field is male or female as long as they can do the job. The moment they prove to me to be an idiot, regardless of gender, I have to start looking at them with a more critical eye. And I have met women who treat that as if they were being singled out when they truly aren't.
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Can you blame them? They are not totally without cause in that analysis when the history of women in male dominated professions is considered in a more general sense. You may be the exception, but how do they know that?
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Can you blame them?
Sure, sometimes. When they fail to realize that I abuse everyone equally, I blame them for personalizing it.
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I think the worry of many women is that individual screw-ups are magnified. There is enormous pressure in the enviroment that average is not good enough. If you have a company with 500 programmers she will be much more looked down upon being the 250th best programmer, than any other average j
Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:4, Interesting)
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That's not a troll, by the way... (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:5, Insightful)
But see? That's OK. The men have had it wrong all the time. They must once again, bend and change....to bury their natural instincts so that women can feel more comfy in a work situation.
In fact, change everything to accomidate everyone's needs....in this new PC. world. No more locker room camaraderie for men in groups, keep to yourselves, watch your language....avoid things that previously made the group function and fun.
I think I heard a really good one...that a muslim trying for a job in an American grocery store, refused to scan or handle in any way pork products. Now, I never heard the resolution of that one...did they hire a special person to come an scan pork products for him? Did they quit selling pork?
I mean, good Lord....if you want to do a job...be prepared for the environment that is there. If you work in a sewer, expect it to stink. Grow some thicker skin, and just go in and do your job.
Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who told you that it's bullshit that male colleagues don't have to endure?
I recall reading somewhere that as workplace equalty increases, men have come to see women as peers, and what that implies is that they are placed in a level game where the sorts of abuse that men perform on other men are being experienced by women. Women have more at stake now than they ever did, and what that means is that your average office bastard sees them as potential threats to their activities.
At my workplace we have several women working in IT positions. They are all treated very well; the locker-room mentality only happens in male-only subgroups. The one reason why I think that there's not as many women as there could be is becase the job is simply not rewarding to most female personality types. I don't know how many want or can stand to be on-call, or handle high-stree meetings with enraged customers who want to see their servers working NOW. Not to say that women can't handle stress, just saying that the stress that emanates from an IT environment may not be the one they can handle best.
If your biggest employment issue with females is that other employees treat them like crap, then you've either have the problem of asshole male employees (happens, but then again I wonder how the hell you're managing to have a decent IT infrastructure with those people), or submissive females, who are not few, and who end up meeting the same fat as submissive males.
Women paid more than men (Score:5, Interesting)
from: http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2007/08/double-standa
Here's some interesting news I read in the Star Tribune. In big cities, it seems that women's paychecks are outpacing men's:
The study by Queens College demographer Andrew A. Beveridge shows that all women from ages 21 to 30 living in New York City and working full time made 117 percent of men's wages, or a median wage of $35,653, and even more in Dallas, 120 percent. Nationwide, that group of women made much less: 89 percent of the average full-time pay for men. The findings were first reported in Gotham Gazette, published online by the Citizens Union Foundation.
The bad news for men?
Though the analysis showed women making strides, it also showed that men were in some ways moving backward. Among all men -- including those with college degrees -- real wages, adjusted for inflation, have declined since 1970. And among full-time workers with advanced degrees, wages for men increased only marginally even as they soared for women. Nationally, men's wages in general declined while women's remained the same.
The article quickly puts a kibosh on the good news for women by stating:
Typically, women have fallen further behind men in earnings as they get older. That is because some women stop working altogether, work only part time or encounter a glass ceiling in promotions and raises.
Well, if you stop working or work only part time, of course you don't make as much money--duh. What I find amusing or ridiculous--take your pick--is that many women's groups think women should make as much as men even if they have a family, don't work or work part-time. This is nothing but a sense of entitlement. And if women are single and working full time in the cities, then decide to have a family and move to small towns and work part-time or not at all, of course their wages will go down. That is called a trade-off, not necessarily discrimination.
If men's wages are declining, is this ever called discrimination? No, of couse not. Does anyone care about the reasons that men's wages declined while women's stayed the same? No, probably not. What I find interesting or perhaps hypocritical is that if women earn more than men, the reasons given are justified--smugly, women are seen as go-getters who have advanced degrees with the gumption to move to the big city to avoid the country bumpkins. But if men earn more, it is often because of rampant gender discrimation and not because of particular circumstances that would cause one to earn more such as working harder and longer hours, going where the opportunities are ripe etc. If women start to pull away from men in the earning department, I wonder if we will see any interest in helping men to increase their earnings? I won't hold my breath.
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The whole "gender gap" in lifestyle expectations goes quite far in explaining the "gender gap" in wages.
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It is a large group of women as a class are making more than the same class of men.
That does point to some kind of discriminatory mechanism. Perhaps automatic raises for women while men still have to ask. I know schools are somehow discouraging males or at least providing a lot more encouragement and support for females.
It is a tragedy in the making. And it hurts women too (well straight ones) since women still seem to require that the guy they marry is taller and makes more money than they do s
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I have, by far, the easier job.
What bugs her the most is when some woman that makes her job a higher priority than her children patronizes her and says, "I wish I could stay home with my children." As if financial discipline and and 24/7 parenting are easier than luxury and day care.
Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:4, Interesting)
Most women especially hate the on call part.
I.T. is not a fun job, lets face it if you are in any level of authority, you have lots of responsibility.
I spend half my time trying to avoid disasters by planning infrastructure, and the other half of my time going to school and climbing the academic latter, and I am 40 years old now.
I do not see this changing anytime soon.
When I was a CIO I was under huge gorilla sized amounts of stress, and as the technical leader for my organization everyone turned to me as the "answer guy".
That much attention and responsibility and dedication to ones job in all facets is not something the typical women likes to do.
I think this is a social issue though, not a genetic one.
Western society is trying to equalize that but it will be a couple more generations before women are born and are educated with the mindset required to really want to do I.T. work at the dame depth as males right now.
Not a bad thing, women just are more interested in contributing in different areas at the moment than in the scientific or technical areas.
Furthermore, I don't see it as a "shame" or a bad thing.
-Hack
Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:4, Interesting)
She then emigrated to the remote end of Ireland, where for 30 years or so she taught IT and computing a the local RTC (Regional Tech College.) She was telling me fairly recently that the level of casual sexism, and the air of intimidation and of it being a male domain meant that whereas 10 or 15 years ago there were actually more women/girls on the courses than men, it was now overwhelmingly male dominated. Of course she's done what she can to push that back and keep it open to women but... she's just retired.
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Of course she fails to see the obvious reasons. A lot has changed since the 60s; which really got rolling in the 40s. When she saw lots of women, lots of women had been given a free pass. Accordinly, lots of women were in lots of fields; dese
Does it go both ways? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe being the odd man out back then has made me more tolerant today. Or maybe not. Who am I to say?
Anyway, this does not make IT special; it's true in any field with an uneven sex ratio. They're just being sensationalist because they can. You don't see "Coping Strategies for Men in Archaeology" on archaeology websites.
Not entirely (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when the world was separated into "men's work" and "women's work", it was so because the general view was that women were not as capable as men. Those things that were classified as "men's work" from hunting to warmaking to running a business to performing surgery to studying math were seen not just as things a man should do, but as things that women were simply incapable of doing as well as a man. Whereas those things that were "women's work" were never seen as things that a man couldn't do. Men could clean and cook and knit they just wouldn't because that was "women's work" and the man should be using his superior capacities for grander pursuits like killing people from the next country over.
So a man going into a woman-dominated field has to fight against the social stigma of going outside their gender-role. A woman not only has to fight the social stigma, they also have to fight the thinking behind that stigma which is that they aren't as capable of doing "manly" things. And if you've read any slashdot threads on this kind of subject before, you can easily see that this way of thinking is alive and well.
There are of course exceptions. I think nursing was one of those areas where men were not just seen as outside their role (they should be the doctor, of course, with the subservient female nurse to assist them), but also as lacking the nurturing and compassionate instincts for the job.
I really couldn't tell you where archaeology falls into this, or why there was a predominance of women. I'm also not saying by any means that you shouldn't try to increase male enrollment or that your SMA organization is ill-conceived. I'm just saying that there is a very real and valid reason why getting women into male-dominated fields is seen as both more important and more challenging than getting men into woman-dominated fields.
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The very odd thing about nursing is while those obstacles exist for men, men often perform longer periods of service in these jobs. The "lack" of compassion allows as a buffer to burn-out and depression. Performance-wise,
Insecurity and incompetence (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Insecurity and incompetence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very male way of looking at something: you assume that you just have to be professional and go with the flow.
Unfortunately the workplace (esp male dominated) often runs on competition and "winning", and getting things done in a very aggressive way. I'm not saying women can't handle that, but it's not a very friendly atmosphere, and I don't even like it myself (and I'm not a woman).
The problem with this is that men and women have different styles of thinking. It's not black and white: women always do this and men do that, but in terms of solving problems women like the collaboration whereas men often see it as a means to an end. There are subtle sex differences that do make a difference. The vast majority of IT people are men.
For instance, women tend to nod more when listening to a presentation to show that they are listening, and men tend to stare more and not make any gestures. Nodding can be interpreted as agreement when it's not. Women use "yes" more as a way of indicating the want for discussion, whereas men use "yes" as a "sounds good, now I'm leaving". These differences can lead to huge misunderstandings esp when the management is mostly male and almost everyone else is too.
Add the social ineptitude of most people working in IT and it makes for a pretty damn cold and uninviting place, except for those who have similar traits.
That's perhaps due to sex differences in interests as well, so I'd guess that IT will always have more guys, but the point is to make the environment as friendly as possibly for the women that actually do want to go into any male dominated field.
The workplace is a complicated place with complicated social structures and politics. It's not jut about "I'm the boss, I say what goes".
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Sigh. It's exactly this kind of attitude that's the problem: "it's all good for me so why should I care about anyone else?". The problem is that many women (and some men) are going to be turned away from IT just because people like you don't care to make a bit of effort to accommodate others and be more cordial.
Remember, thi
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We have one of those. Her communications are overly elaborate. I wonder if they're all like that...
Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:4, Interesting)
Even though you jest here are you suggesting that we give women special privileges in the IT Business world? I certainly hope not, having tutored both males and females in the CS field for a couple of years I found that the females were particularly gifted compared to males in the same class.
I think a more important study here isn't looking at numbers but looking at how many females go into IT then drop out due to an uncomfortable atmosphere.
This argument has been debated way too much, I don't think there is an issue in IT any more than there is an issue in the military, autobody shops, Department Stores, Support staff members (secretaries), Janitors, or any other profession that is tilted one way or another. I think what pisses off the feminists here is that IT is a well paid field and people want a bite of the pie and if the only way to do that is to get special privelages then go for it.
Personally I loved talking to my female friends in college who started off in Engineering so they could get all the scholarships while they worked on there general courses. Or my american buddy who just happens to have a korean heritage, but raised by white americans from birth, in a white suburb, in middle class. Yet gets thousands of dollars to go to college as a minority.
The solution here is not to grant special privelages to individuals the solution is the education of people already in the field to accept the minorities.
It is just a peeve of my to hear about solutions to force people into fields rather than just letting things roll out the way they do, each gender has things they are better at, fact of life we will never be equal and thank goodness because if we were the world would crash. Each life is worth the same but all have different gifts. If you wish to debate this then go find a Nature vs Nuture forum.
Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:5, Funny)
Gotta go, I have a meeting with HR, not sure what about. Shouldn't take long, though.
Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Been there, seen that... (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, but I also have guns [utah.edu] and ground support aircraft with even bigger guns [utah.edu] and million dollar microscopes [utah.edu] and cars [utah.edu] and more cars [utah.edu] and hot women [utah.edu] on my blog.
I'm quite comfortable with who I am, but are those links man enough for you?
More than just The Chubb Corp. (Score:4, Funny)
- The well know pen island at www.PenisLand.net [penisland.net]
- The Royal Tit-Watching (Ornithological) Society Of Britain at www.Nice-Tits.org [nice-tits.org]
- Dickson's temperature equipment at www.DicksOnWeb.com [dicksonweb.com]
- The well known scaffolding company, www.MammothErection.com [mammotherection.com]
- Big Al's Fishing company, www.BiGalsOnline.com [bigalsonline.com]
- Web One at www.WeBone.com [webone.com]
There are tons of women friendly companies out there!Re:More than just The Chubb Corp. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don't forget.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No... women are leaving IT in droves because they're taking one look at what kind of career path they can look forward to and saying, "Screw this".
Re:Don't forget.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we please put this one to rest? If you have a job that expects you to put in ridiculous hours, you have a crap job. Period. Any job that demands that you sacrifice your life for the sake of some company in which you have no stake is not sustainable. You will burn out and quit -- or worse, you will burn out, start passive-aggressively acting out, and get fired. IT geeks need to stop listing their long hours as a point of pride. Willingly putting yourself on the burnout track does not make you a superhero. Rather, it makes your life hell, and it makes every one of your coworkers' lives hell because you set unrealistic expectations and fail to voice your genuine employment concerns to management.
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Good for you if you can choose jobs from a menu.
Some people are not so lucky and, still, they have to eat.
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That is not true at all for nursing. Nursing schools (and their eventual customers) would love to see more males take up nursing. Males tend to be stronger than females, and nursing often requires moving heavy people and equipment around. Also, many people (males) are uncomfortable with female nurses poking around their private areas and would much rather have a male nurse. For some patients it's a religious issue. All in all, there is a large dem
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Frankly, if you're on call 24/7 for janitor pay you're either a doormat, not very skilled or not very good at marketing yourself. Figure out which it is and try to fix it.
Different (Score:5, Insightful)
Won't somebody think of the childr...err...women!
Maybe, just maybe, the different genders gravitate to the fields that they like. Or, gasp, are suited for.
That's not to say that women aren't suited for the IT field. Men and women are different, even if the politically correct people don't want you to believe it. So it makes sense that they just might be predisposed to liking different things...including professions.
But forget that, let's just force the different genders into the professions that politically correct-driven math says that they should be, and not what they want to be in.
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absolutely! And I want mention the under representation of men among mothers. Why is there this prejudice against men having babies? I would love to give birth, but I can't. I'm not allowed to. I want to sue, but noooooooooo! I'm a man and men have it made and therefore my case won't go to court. And is it allowed for my wife to impregnate me? Nooooo
Re:Different (Score:5, Funny)
Where's the Fetus going to gestate? In a box?
Re:Different (Score:5, Insightful)
Now don't mod him down just because you don't agree with him. He's right, at least partially. Men and women are not only built differently, they think differently. He's absolutely, positively right. Studies show that men are more linear thinkers while women tend to think in circular patterns. Men are more big-picture thinkers, women pay more attention to detail.
This is not wrong. This is 100% right.
Now, are women less interested in IT? I doubt it. I personally know many women in the IT field, including many that are in it because they have always had a sincere interest in IT. I've also known several women who said they'd be interested in IT, if only they knew more about computers.
The fact is that girls and young women are not encouraged to pursue IT or computer science, so they don't. Career women are pointed towards administrative, HR, or other areas where women dominate. This isn't just due to interest, it's due to societal pressure on them to not learn tech skills because appearing too geeky would make them unattractive or get them to be socially shunned.
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Maybe Lisp can finally get a foot hold... Of course since women are also better at writing and grammar, they might question why they have to use so many parenthesis.
Re:Different (Score:5, Informative)
A minority? Sure, I can live with being a minority. I'm pretty used to it. And I know full well my interests and talents skew differently than those of most women I know. But that doesn't mean I should be treated with hostility simply for existing.
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I'm just not even going to go into it... All I want to know is, have any of these guys for one second ever had to stop and consider what the impact of having a child will be on their career? Whether or not they have kids now, did it ever even cross their minds to wonder? Most guys I know, it's not even a blip on
Re:Different (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, are you serious? I'd say it's probably one of the top 3 considerations for men when even _thinking_ about having a child. I'm not in a place where I'd want a child even remotely (24 with a competitive, fast-track job), but of course I've considered what the impact of having children would be on my career. Truth is, it would be disastrous, and I definitely wouldn't be able to continue on the track I'm on.
Graduate school? Right out. Working exceptionally long hours, traveling? Not unless I wanted to screw up my children as badly as everyone else in America seems happy to. I would say it is easily the #1 consideration against having children for me right now. I certainly have the money, the security, the opportunity, and the social pressure to start down that path, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out what the effect of a child on a working father's career is.
Most women that I know, on the other hand (almost all of my friends are women) -- they are genuinely eager to leave the work force and have kids. They're not exclaiming "Oh no,I might miss out on this career opportunity if I have a kid," they're saying "ugh, work is terrible, I can't wait to get married and have babies." That last is almost an exact quote.
We're not so different, you and I!
Re:Different (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, but given the number of women I know who have no trouble with technology, I seriously doubt that it's some sort of crippling emotional or intellectual problem that's keeping women from being comfortable in IT departments or at engineering firms.
Here's a hint: Ve
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Stereotypes (Score:4, Insightful)
Just as a side note; for females who are reading - want to know how to get on with your male collegues - take the piss, have fun, take the piss out of yourself, go out to the pub and drink with the boys - and maybe realise that if you present yourself as an equal rather than a 'weak and frail women' you might actually get included as 'one of the boys'. Socialising is the key.
I mean, I've worked in female dominated jobs, and believe me - females do not make it easy for males to merge themselves into the company culture. Heck, they're not even nice to their own sex! my sister was in a very similar situation - her rule, never work with females. This is a female who can't stand working with females. I think that speaks volumes.
When there are millions of females 'getting on' in male dominated situations, I think those who do complain have no legs to stand on. Like I've said, I've worked in male dominated jobs, and those females who do knuckle down and work - socialise and act like 'one of the boys' actually enjoy themselves.
Don't try to 'feminise' the work place - realise that its rome, and its up to you 'to do as the romans do'
Re:Stereotypes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stereotypes (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two different meanings for the word "respect". Women should certainly be respected as in, not treated condescendingly, not being treated as a potential mate more than as a coworker, etc.
But "respect" as in, "I respect his/her coding skills." or "I respect the way he/she can motivate his/her underlings." must be earned, regardless of one's sex.
Re:Stereotypes (Score:5, Interesting)
Men and Women never have affairs in the workplace.
They follow the examples of our fine congressmen and senators.
And it helps that women never wear V-neck shirts that show off cleavage and then complain when we look at it. And they never wear shirts that expose their midriff either. And they never wear skirts slit up the side to mid-thigh. Guys of course wear revealing pants and those racy polo shirts (if not sheer dress shirts and jacket with tie).
And they never ogle that cute bodybuilder guy or talk about him at the coffee bar like he was an object- or at least they stop once a guy comes around the corner.
Because women are perfect and focused on work.
Women never get married and then suddenly quit a job as a low-level manager and guys do all the time because they want to be house husbands and raise the kids.
---
Yes it's a wonderful, wonderful world of unreality out there.
Re:Stereotypes (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure that this is unique to tech, if it really still exists and is as bad as you say it is.
For example: Have you actually been "shouted down"? If that ever happened to me, in any job that doesn't directly involve shouting, I'd be gone.
Assuming you're a secretary? Takes but a moment to correct that one. Or find a place with a semi-casual dress code and start wearing ThinkGeek shirts to work. At least then, if they're staring at your boobs, they'll also be staring at "Bow before me, for I am root."
If you want to be socially accepted in any group, you're going to have to do something.
It doesn't mean you have to "act like one of the boys." It does mean you have to loosen up, learn to take a joke (even a *gasp* dirty joke), and so on. It means you have to act like you belong.
No one gets respect automatically. You have to earn it.
And it doesn't matter whose responsibility it is. If they won't magically behave the way you want them to, then you're the one who has to change -- because at that point, if you don't change, no one will.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, it just is what it is. No matter how much you whine on Slashdot, geeks are going to continue to stare at your boobs until you force them to respect your intellect, your sense of humor, your personality.
And it is possible for you to demand respect, but you do it by acting like a really and truly interesting human, and not playing the female victim all the time. You may really be a victim, but stop wallowing in it and do something about it. (And do it yourself, don't talk to the boss -- tattling is bad, no matter what social group you're in.)
I suspect that if you can make that work, you wouldn't have anything to complain about on Slashdot.
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You are male. Men are fearful of shouting down other men so it doesn't happen to you. Understand? Besides, shouting down someone isn't necessarily screaming at the top your lungs. It can be someone simply talking over your voice as if you're not there even though you started speaking first. That happens a lot in group meetings, so if you quit over that you'll be c
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Of course some people will never get it...
Just because your getting rid of the male locker room humor doesn't mean your 'feminise' the workplace. You can find a happy medium between the two or at least try.
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for females who are reading - want to know how to get on with your male collegues - take the piss, have fun, take the piss out of yourself, go out to the pub and drink with the boys - and maybe realise that if you present yourself as an equal rather than a 'weak and frail women' you might actually get included as 'one of the boys'. Socialising is the key.
And here I thought it was only a problem in Korea [nytimes.com]
All right, I'll bite. Why on God's green earth should a woman need or want to be included as "one of the boys"? You're saying in so many words that it's a man's world, woman have to learn to live in it? And you don't see a problem with that? Well, I sure as hell do. Let's flip this around for a second.
In my previous job, I was the lone IT/office support worker for a six-or-seven employee non-profit. The one other man left after I was there a few months, s
Need Good Looks (Score:2, Funny)
Its kinda sad, but true. I've worked in IT for 10 years. Of the dozen or so women I've worked with the successful ones are attractive (or sometimes slutty instead). The ones that are less than attractive seem to have a more difficult time.
Dont get me wrong I've seen a couple non-attractive women who REALLY know their stuff do very well. And I've never seen an attractive bimbo get far in IT. However for the middle-of-the-line types, the attractiv
Re:Need Good Looks (Score:5, Informative)
Looking good as a career booster is not limited to womenses.
Errr, no... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, they show a sharp drop in the percentage of female CS grads. I'd bet that the number is way up since 1985.
Slashdot, as always, does its part to demonstrate that men aren't so great at math either...
Where's the problem? (Score:2)
Whilst it'd be great to have more Women to work with, why is everyone throwing a sh*t-fit over it?
The outlook may be part of the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
"you're representing [females] with a capital F"
Then I'd say she has an issue. My personal experience of working with a lot of women (and yes, even more men) is that if people of either gender behave in a straightforward way, they'll be treated by the vast majority of their co-workers in an appropriate manner.
If someone starts to think they're representing more than themselves, maybe they need to look at their own self-image.
Re: (Score:2)
This may be unique.. (Score:2)
Slashdot... (Score:2, Informative)
Advice for EITHER gender: (Score:2)
Advice: You can balance an IT career with your home life, but it means making choices that are true to your priorities and understanding the trade-offs. "Having it all" is a fantasy.
True for all humans everywhere.
Advice: Join a networking group specifically geared for [your peers], to meet people in similar circumstances who can support one another.
Um, duh.
Advice: [People] in senior IT positions have grappled with issues similar to yours. Find a [person] in a leadership IT role who can be your role model or mentor.
Again, totally obvious.
Advice: Be very clear with your employer on your priorities and the schedule that works best for you. The same goes for your family. Ask them for help in making changes that will work better for you. For many [professionals], it takes courage, personally and professionally, to tell people you need help.
Completely simple, straightforward statement.
Am I missing something?
kids (Score:4, Insightful)
I prefer to have women bosses and administrators.
The largest problem I've seen for women is having families because they are stuck with bearing the kids -- that's when women get taken out of the loop. There are always exceptions but often the women -- having born the kids -- often become comparatively more family-oriented than the man who will keep pushing through the industry and stay on top of things. The IT business moves fast. Having a kid can cause you to effectively be taken out of the race. No matter how much it sucks I've seen it happen a lot.
The biological clock factor doesn't help either because you have a limited time, often which could be peak career time, to have kids.
The best coping strategy I found... (Score:2)
Learn to deal with Nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to increase the number of Women in IT I suggest changing your focus. Rather than looking to colleges, try recruiting grade school teachers. They're used to dealing with people who have underdeveloped social skills. At a previous job we had 2 former school teachers they were both able to deal.
Departments (Score:2, Informative)
The article does make some good points. I've seen this in the college level, where the female students just didn't seem to fit in with the res
The reasons women go into IT (Score:3, Insightful)
Shouldn't meeting be like this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't meeting be like this? Otherwise they go on for hours and hours without much being accomplished. Also, if you think your corp hired someone mediocre when they hired you, you really got more to worry about...
My dream was crushed (Score:2, Funny)
Where are the articles for coping with that, huh
Let me start it with a joke (Score:2)
"The last time I checked, the majority of pages on the web were actually concerned with women. Or, rather, displaying them."
So. While I dodge now the slings and arrows of the feminists out there, let's try to find out what's going wrong here. I mean, we "geeks" pride ourselves that we don't fall for stereotypes, that we don't care about what a person looks like, or how he dresses, but suddenly, when facing a female of the species, everything's forgotten and we actually
i'm not sexist but... (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My wife's experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm 38. I was raised to treat everybody equally. I don't trash talk others, and I paid the women who worked for me equally to the men. I gave nobody special favors, and I was nice to everybody.
But I've noticed that women just a few years older than me seemed incapable of believing that my statements in the last paragraph were true. They were mean, never smiled, treated me like a child, expected special treatment when their kids were sick, and so on. My policy was that if your kid was sick, you could take a sick day once a month. Any more than that, you had to make it up or lose the pay. I thought it was pretty generous, and it was the same for the guys too.
But what I got was a bunch of angry women treating me like I was Hitler, because they had to take care of their sick kids for more than a day a month. Excuse me, but I am not Hitler because you can't work it out with your husband that you *share* responsibility for the brat. If your husband makes you clean house, cook dinner, earn a paycheck, stay home with the kids, and suck his dick, it's not MY fault.
I'm not oppressing you, and it won't kill you to smile, tell jokes, and just quit scowling at every man in the office.
Is that what you meant?
Re:My wife's experience (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a guy, and it kind of does sound like you were Hitler. Suppose both the husband and wife worked for you. Then they would have a grand total of two days a month to take care of their sick children. Suppose your employee was unmarried -- suppose her husband died in Iraq. You would be placing her at a disadvantage vs. all your other, married employees (who would have the option of balancing, the way you suggest). On the whole, your policy sounds unfair and, with the realities of our society, clearly gender-biased toward men (who are less likely to be single parents or, indeed, be expected to take care of the kids).
Children get sick. Chicken pox takes about a week to run through. No, it's not life-threatening, but it's just not appropriate to leave a six-year-old at home, alone, unsupervised, with a fever, for a week. What would you propose a parent do? Presumably you paid your employees enough to hire a babysitter for 40 hours?
out-boy the boys (Score:2)
I'm famous... I guess. (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, the irony (or technosocial fiasco if you prefer to look at it that way) of electronic talking Barbie back in 1994 was one of those memorable moments for me because I had just started teaching. Between "Math is hard" and "Let's go shopping" my students and I shared many classroom discussions over related topics (stereotyping, bias, patronizing comments, etc.).
Best coping strategy = get out and do other stuff? (Score:2)
Because women are more willing to settle for lower salaries? While that's a _fact_ (go google for it), lower salaries, strange hours, higher chances of being outsourced are not helpful to women (or men anyway).
So to the women out there, only go into IT if you are really interested (or you get a great offer) - it's not the worst career path but it's not that gre
My coping strategy was... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can say all the biological determinism (yeah right, men are biologically programmed to be in IT... ugh) stuff you want, the reality is there is a major social bias. Some of it is the whole environment from top to bottom, the solution isn't just to have some postercard companies hiring 20% female workers, it require a much larger shift than that, a shift in people's willingness to engage with a gender analysis. Like, even if you are "a nice guy" or you "support women in IT", maybe you have certain behaviours and ways of organizing/managing/participating that alienate women and you need to address them personally. Maybe you need to criticize your male peers when you are talking in the washroom (er. locker room) What do you expect of your women co-workers? There are lots of men who are completely incompetent in IT but manage to have full financially rewarding careers in it, is that true for women?
I don't know how to bring it about but it requires men from all levels of the workplace to be able to critique themselves and the work environment and be willing to change, not just get all confused when they see the stats. It isn't really a discussion if it's a problem, or why it's a problem. We, as women in tech, are telling you there is a major problem and there are many many eloquent papers/reports/studies/etc. that explain what that problem is and that suggest some strategies to approach it. Men can call us whiners for pointing it out, or they swallow their ego and start trying to address the issues.
Ladies? (Score:3, Informative)
Not to discount your views, but $DAUGHTER is doing graduate work in exactly this subject (sociology of gender in the technology workplace) and none of the simple answers seem to hold water. It's a real puzzlement.
OTOH, I'll tell you now that if you contact her (/. DarlingDaughter) she'll be very interested in what you have to tell her.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
With the skills you listed, I'm not sure how you can escape that "geek chick" stereotype. So why wouldn't you want to have recognition for what you've done?
Yeah, welcome to the world. Life's a bitch, ain't it?
I'm a guy, and I feel like 24/7 I have to prove I have a right to be here,
Maybe because it sucks? (Score:5, Insightful)
It could be that women, even if they are attracted to technology, see what a terrible quality of life is to be had in IT and opt out. Women don't go into IT because they are too smart to fall for it.
A better topic (Score:3, Funny)
My experiences with women in the workplace (Score:3, Informative)
All of them worked like anyone else. They all seemed to be treated just fine. And most of them were management, too... VPs on down to various sorts of middle management.
I've never seen the "glass ceiling." To the contrary, I've seen a disproportionate number of women handing out the orders, when compared to their population. I've never seen a low-ranked woman busting her ass 24 hours a day to be "taken seriously."
I realize this is an anecdote and not data.
Who cares, I thought women and men were equal? (Score:4, Insightful)
For instance, how come we aren't worried about a lack of female lion tamers? A lack of asian sports car drivers? A lack of male midwives?
If we are going to be a truly egalitarian society, we need to stop separating people out into groups based on something as silly and inconsequential as what sex organs somebody has. What's next, an article decrying the lack of green-eyed, brown-haired bellhops?
Women: You're not representing anyone but yourself. Men really don't look at one woman and judge your entire sex based on that one person. That is a misconception you have, its all in your head. Get over yourselves. Just do your job to the best of your ability. Same goes for all you "i'm being held back by my race" people. Maybe if you concentrated on your job and improving your skills, and spent less time worrying about abstract concepts like whether you are being viewed as a representative of your demographic, you'd find more people around you concentrate on your job and your skills.
Where are all the albino theatre ticket takers, anyway?!?!
As a female IT Director... (Score:5, Interesting)
Two years ago, I decided to get my pointy-haired-boss on and go to business school. I elected to go to the only all-female MBA program in the country. Why? Because the biggest weakness I had was that I did not know how to deal with *women* in the work environment, and my boss was (and still is) a woman.
It's not easy to be in IT regardless of your gender. If you dislike foul language, well, good luck--I've thrown my share of f-bombs around when firmwide printing dies or the HVAC springs a leak and pours water through my servers and switches. Do you hate being around people who are angry? Heaven forbid you ever answer a support call. Do you like a complete night's sleep every night? Well, don't take a job that touches a data center or users who work in different time zones (don't have kids, either).
Because of IT's difficulty, we behave differently. We have a harder edge, but we laugh more as well. The jokes might be off-color or at someone's expense, but without the laugh, there's no pressure valve. Most of us drink fairly heavily, because we don't have much downtime and enjoy the relaxant effect of EtOH. Now, I don't know if we behave differently because we are predominantly male, or if we have different pressures, but most of us do behave this way.
Now add in technology's complexity, and you have a complicated situation. Most folks are in IT because we think (or at least used to think!) that technology is really cool. Not everyone does so. And, frankly, little boys are socialized to think technology=cool much more than little girls are. We are a product of our upbringing to some extent.
So how do I make IT work for women? For anyone? It's a question of alignment. If who you want to be aligns with your work environment, then stay. If something has to change and you can change it, do so and stay. If not, leave your job, or leave the industry, if you have the freedom to do so. If you do not have the freedom? Well, have a drink...
Re:As a female IT Director... (Score:5, Insightful)
And, frankly, little boys are socialized to think technology=cool much more than little girls are. We are a product of our upbringing to some extent.
That is the problem. Our society encourages the girls to play with barbie, dolls, and tea pots while the boy gets lego bricks, plastic water guns, and skateboards. Until it is solved at that level, issues like this will always come up.
Truth of the matter... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's an idea.... (Score:3, Insightful)
A woman's brain is just as capable of making an IT-Type decision as a man's brain; let's stop pointing to one individual and going "See, she's can't do it therefore no woman can" we just look stupid.
I don't buy it (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think that the environment scares women enough to chose a different career path. I think the answer lies in a more cultural factor. Studies have proved that parents are unconsciously biased in the way they explained something to their kids. They emphasize the emotional aspect when talking to girls "Isn't it beautiful ? Wouldn't you like to have one ?" and the rational aspect when talking to boys "Isn't it beautiful ? Do you understand how it works ?". Making boys more technically inclined. In fact, when you study tastes of secondary school students, girls feel more uncomfortable with science than boys. I am sure most of us remember this trend. Girls are supposed to be more into literature.
You can not act as a colleague, you can act as a parent. Girls aren't naturally repelled by technology, they mainly are because their parents think this is how a normal girl behaves.
Re:Feminism Confronts Technology ---- by Judy Wajc (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing I really like about IT is the refusal of most geeks to put up with this kind of navel gazing bullshit. People who're always on about "power struggles" and "ignorant of diversity" never make good programmers, because computers aren't likely to be bullied into behaving like the whipped men in their lives.
When I read "I've struggled with gender politics" what I see is "I'm a lousy programmer and people keep treating me like a lousy programmer because I'm a woman."