Women in Computing To Decline To 22% by 2025, Study Warns (usatoday.com) 647
New research warns that at the rate we're going, the number of women in the computing workforce will decline to 22% from 24% by 2025 if nothing is done to encourage more of them to study computer science. From a USA Today report (shared by an anonymous reader): The research from Accenture and nonprofit group Girls Who Code says taking steps now to encourage more women to pursue a computer science education could triple the number of women in computing to 3.9 million in that same timeframe. Women account for 24% of computing jobs today, but could account for 39% by 2025, according to the report, Cracking the Gender Code. And greater numbers of women entering computer science could boost women's cumulative earnings by $299 billion and help the U.S. fill the growing demand for computing talent, said Julie Sweet, Accenture's group chief executive for North America.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
If women choose not to go into computing fields, why should they be forced (or even encouraged) to do so?
Why isn't there a similar push to get men into kindergarten education or nursing?
How about letting people pick the field(s) they want to go into without telling them what they "ought" to do based on a pointless metric or percentage?
Re: (Score:2)
Why isn't there a similar push to get men into kindergarten education or nursing?
Men in nursing has been increasing for a while, although the figures are still pretty small. The return on educational investment can't be matched in any other field that I'm aware of, and it also allows flexible scheduling, generous benefits, etc.
It's an attractive job. When you have an attractive job, you don't need to do anything to stimulate interest in it. The market will take care of it.
Men in nursing (Score:2)
Why isn't there a similar push to get men into kindergarten education or nursing?
Men in nursing has been increasing for a while, although the figures are still pretty small.
But rising at a pretty good rate: http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/releases/2013/cb13-32_figure1-hi.jpg [census.gov]
Garbage collection - less than 1% female (Score:5, Insightful)
http://amarillo.com/opinion/op... [amarillo.com]
Good paying jobs, and women just don't want them.
Re: (Score:2)
shhhhh don't let the secret out.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a relatively decent paying job too. Especially considering the lack of educational requirements.
Re:Garbage collection - less than 1% female (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a fair point. I don't know if there is much research into women in refuse collection, but it is worth identifying why so few want reasonably well paid jobs. It's not like they are averse to getting dirty - cleaning and various forms of nursing/care are dominated by women, literally cleaning up other people's shit.
Could be an image thing (like with men in nursing), could be a cultural thing.
The thing is though, it's a tough nut to crack. The starting percentage is low, historically there was little interest (women used to make up 38% of the CS workforce as recently as the 1980s) and it's typically not a field that attracts intellectuals who see the benefit of correcting the situation. Not that we should give up, I'm just suggesting why there is more effort being put into tech and science.
Re: (Score:3)
I guess the question is, do you believe that women are being unfairly kept from garbage collection, or do you think the lack of representation is a matter of their individual choices. If it's an individual choice, then we shouldn't be trying to social engineer someone away from free choices (say, encouraging people to become Mormons instead of evangelicals in order to balance the religions against each other).
So before we put effort into socially engineering people into roles we believe they should be in,
This (Score:4, Informative)
Women already make up nearly 60% of all college graduates. They already receive favoritism for things like financial aid, grants, and scholarships (except for sports). There are TV ads, commercials, and companies doing everything they can to get more women into STEM and it is all failing. So what, coercion and extortion are not working so we panic?
People should stop trying to bully people into a field and forcing an ideology that people simply don't want. There is equal opportunity, in fact it's white males who today are treated like shit by politicians, academics, and media and every other racial group and gender is receiving preferences.
Also, people in general need to stop pretending like biological differences don't matter. They do, and facts matter.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
If women choose not to go into computing fields, why should they be forced (or even encouraged) to do so?
It seems to me that most offices would benefit from having a sensible balance of both genders. For whatever reason, women tend to have a different approach to problem solving than men, which might add value in itself. It might also motivate people to be a little bit more aware of certain aspects of coexistence that are often somewhat neglected in an all-male office - IOW it might make the office-atmosphere a little nicer.
Why isn't there a similar push to get men into kindergarten education or nursing?
Isn't there? When I had young children I heard about that constantly; men can make a very valuable contribution to the traditional women's jobs. We simply have a different approach doing things (and it hasn't got a lot to do with the Trump approach to women either).
How about letting people pick the field(s) they want to go into without telling them what they "ought" to do based on a pointless metric or percentage?
An excellent idea - the problem, in many ways, is that we culturally condition each other to believe there are certain things we can't or shouldn't do. Boys learn that they shouldn't do "girl things", like playing with dolls or similar, and girls learn in the same way that there are certain things that are "boys only". This is, in my view, a stupid waste - one of my favourite examples is the amazing mathematician, Emmy Noether; I wonder how many brilliant women never got to excel in science simply because "science is a boy thing" and their interest wasn't encouraged.
It's worse than that (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that women are not choosing to go into computer fields. It's that they are being SCARED off by being told how horrible it is for women - even though I cannot think of any field in which women are generally treated better, and respected for knowledge.
I agree we should let people choose what interest them but women currently are being painted a very false picture of what being in the computer industry is like, leading to misinformed choice.
Re: (Score:2)
If women choose not to go into computing fields, why should they be forced (or even encouraged) to do so?... How about letting people pick the field(s) they want to go into without telling them what they "ought" to do based on a pointless metric or percentage?
My brain jumped to a few different places when I read these questions. The first is, in pushing for greater inclusion of women, I think there's an implication or assumption that women would like to get into these fields, but are not able to. It doesn't really seem true to me, but maybe some people have other experiences? My experience has been that most of the places I've worked (admittedly doing support, not programming) would have loved to hire more women, and made efforts to do so, but very few women
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
So the reason there aren't more women in computer science is because of something men are doing that's off putting and the reason more men aren't in education or nursing is because men are bad at it. Gotcha. Men are just bad.
Re: (Score:3)
No... it's just that men until recently have been reluctant to enter stereotypically-female professions because our culture devalues those professions because it devalues women. So there was a bit of a stigma against men entering those professions. Maybe not secondary and post-secondary teaching so much because they were never stereotypically-feminine, but certainly primary-school teaching and nursing.
Re: (Score:2)
Ecological operators are also predominantly male. Given that the job requires little skill or education, it seems a much more attainable target for short-term gender equality.
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly, my application to an ecological operator job would actually worsen the gender gap, so I'll abstain.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
I feel very, very bad for the people who are 'encouraged' to go into programming, if it was not their real interest. That is a person being set up for a very dis satisfactory career.
Programming is insanely boring to people who do not have a very high drive/interest in it. I can't think of many worse ways to spend your day, if you are not truly interested.
I work at a University. 70% female enrollment. Female chancellor, female leadership, etc. etc. If the computer science department is 85% men this is not a case of a 'boys club', this is a case of people being drawn to what they are interested in.
The Gender Studies department is about 95% female. They are very active and visible on campus. They spend a lot of time on 'outreach', yet they still can't crack 6% on male involvement. The computer science department also does outreach, and their numbers remain the same, year after year. The women's resource center has special programs to assist women in STEM...as does the computer science department. There is so much support for women in technology it is amazing.
Yet still they have a hard time getting women to graduate with a degree in computer science.
I wouldn't push the males into gender studies, and I wouldn't push the females into computer science. I would push them to study what truly interests them, and where they think they will excel.
At this point, on this campus, women are not avoiding computer science because they are being treated poorly. They are avoiding computer science because they don't have an interest. Pretending otherwise is avoiding the truth.
Re: (Score:2)
I feel very, very bad for the people who are 'encouraged' to go into programming, if it was not their real interest.
Before you go any further, define "real interest". You might wish to consider how outside factors must necessarily influence what your real interest is. Trivially before computers existed no one had IT as a real interest of theirs.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously you are going to define this as a problem that society has foisted upon women. No matter what the other arguments may be.
The opportunity is there. There are tons of programs to support women in IT. If there has been some boogeyman out there keeping women from programming, then we can't really do anything about that.
My daughters have had their interests supported as much as my sons. Even more so. I have never seen a 'get your BOYS interested in STEM' while my daughters have been exposed to many of those programs.
Those 'outside factors' you speak of are the boogeymen. You are putting the entire burden on us proving that women don't have these factors. But if the goal is to have equal access to these careers, it exists now.
You are asking us to prove a negative.
Re: (Score:2)
The Gender Studies department is about 95% female. They are very active and visible on campus. They spend a lot of time on 'outreach', yet they still can't crack 6% on male involvement.
I would classify that as a complete and utter failure. The problem is that they have created their own stereotype and now are struggling to overcome it. You can't spend your time bashing men(everything is misogyny and rape/sexual abuse) , and expect men to want to join.
Re: (Score:2)
I loved programming as a kid, I didn't have any consoles or money for games, I wrote my own. I've been programming since before I turned 5 years old. As soon as I could read there was a keyboard in front of me.
I had a passion for programming. Now I'm an adult and it is a job, I find it boring, repetitive, and often times more fiddly than fun. God help anyone who doesn't like programming to begin with.
well, of course there will be less females. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Growing Demand"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting aside yet another "WE NEEDZ MORE WOMENZ IN IT" crap, did anyone else think "H1B" when they read "growing demand?"
Companies are already doing everything they can to bring in cheaper talent. The "demand" in question has nothing to do with the number of competent and trained talent, but rather the number of competent and trained talent willing to work for peanuts. Encouraging more domestic IT/programming workers to enter the field will only exasperate that, regardless of their plumbing.
Re: "Growing Demand"? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Companies are already doing everything they can to bring in cheaper talent. The "demand" in question has nothing to do with the number of competent and trained talent, but rather the number of competent and trained talent willing to work for peanuts. Encouraging more domestic IT/programming workers to enter the field will only exasperate that, regardless of their plumbing.
Having more domestic workers looking for these jobs will increase supply and thus reduce the salaries they can expect (for the jobs that cannot be easily H1B-ed).
Not this again (Score:4, Insightful)
Women value stability in careers often because they are the ones left holding the domestic bag when the dude flakes on the family.
IT and stability are often at odds. I happened to be in California during the dot-com bust, and had to take scrappy contracts, some out-of-state, to survive.
One's skills are always growing outdated and you have to guess the correct "new thing" to get documented experience in or get left behind again. It's like being the news weather person before satellites: guess right often enough or get booted.
Re:Not this again (Score:5, Interesting)
Women's bias seems less about stability and more about work flexibility:
http://freakonomics.com/podcas... [freakonomics.com]
Let's be perfectly honest (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be perfectly honest with ourselves. Most people suck at programming. Most people suck at just about anything they do. Programming is hardly a glamorous job. Most people are non-technical, illogical and irrational, especially when it comes to their pathetic attempts to do whatever "business" they are trying to get done. For the most part, the only reason they're still in business is because their customers are clueless and their competition is even less competent.
A better question: why are there so many men left in computing? If I wanted to have morons yapping nonsense at me all day I could turn on the TV - no need to go into work.
Re: (Score:2)
you need the right amount of OCD, ADD and autism to be a good programmer...
therefore "left in computing" answers it self.. what else are you going to do :)
Re: (Score:3)
Money is the only answer I can give for myself. I'd much rather do a great many other things, but none offer the immediate gratification of a big fucking paycheck*. It gets harder and harder the older I get, but then someone writes a 5 digit "bonus" check and that keeps me motivated for another year.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:as a layperson, im a little confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not racism --nobody was yelling bigoted obscenities-- but the managers in charge of lining up bonuses and promotions came from an ancient era where brown people were still some subset fraction of an actual person. the ones that got promoted didnt see much of a raise either
That is literally racism you are describing. Racism is more than yelling bigoted obscenities. Regarding non white people as not fully human and denying promotions and raises is racism.
Re:as a layperson, im a little confused. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is, in fact, the very worst kind of bigotry, and it has a name; institutional racism. It's the kind of racism that even people who consider themselves non-racists can exhibit, where they, often unconsciously, stack the deck against some employees based on racial, ethnic or gender cues.
And then all the white males in the IT department show up on Slashdot and say "Well, maybe the woman and blacks don't wanna be computer programmers!"
Re: (Score:3)
If you're a manager and your making decisions on bonuses, promotions and pay and you're even unconsciously taking gender, race, religion or ethnicity into account, then you're a bigot.
Re:as a layperson, im a little confused. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're a manager and your making decisions on bonuses, promotions and pay and you're even unconsciously taking gender, race, religion or ethnicity into account, then you're a bigot.
Hang on now. There is probably nobody out there who doesn't unconsciously get influenced by those factors. We all have biases that we aren't even aware of - the very best we can do is try to take conscious steps to counteract those biases, or to evaluate a field of resumes without looking at the names, something like that.
Having a bias does not make you a bigot, it makes you a human. You only become a bigot when you believe that those instincts towards prejudice are appropriate and seek to rationalize and protect them. And you become a willing enabler of bigots if you try to pretend that bias doesn't exist.
Re: (Score:3)
I fully agree that institutional biases exist and are a problem. And in some cases, they are born out of unconscious bias. But you can't really blame people for having an unconscious bias - after all, it's not a decision they've consciously made. So, what a decent person would do is find ways to counteract bias, as scientists do with double-blind studies. Or, if that's not practical, find a way to test your own bias and then actively work against it.
Harvard has a pretty quick way to do that online: https:// [harvard.edu]
Follow the money... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Most baby boomers will be dead by 2030.
The oldest baby boomer will be 84YO and the youngest baby boomer will be 66YO in 2030. Most people are living 30 to 40 in retirement. Many baby boomers will live into their 90s and 100s.
Encourage curiosity, not coding (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3)
IT and CS need to be split up (Score:3)
Information Technology and Computer Science need to be entirely split up. This within itself will virtually entirely solve the problem. The problem right now is that they're treated as one in the same, with the same requirements for entirely different jobs. The programs in school focus specifically on short algorithm design for things like tree searching or solving various mathematical principals. In the real world, however, the primary focus is on finding solutions to either business logic problems or finding new ways for users to interact with their devices and the environment around them. The CS side focuses primarily on the mathematics of computing, while IT focus more on the logical side of computing. Developing a great and simple API doesn't require much of a math background, but needs quite a bit of logical thinking. But again, as stated initially, the schools are only focusing on the mathematical side, which correlates to an extremely small part of the actual tech sector, with the logical side being the majority of the jobs in the workplace. Schools need to finally get their shit together and teach the industry, rather than teach what some particular program is more or less forced upon them by a very few companies that dont fully represent the industry.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm a developer who can build a PC and fix a laptop. Mind you I don't have a CS degree.
Seems like the CS student no longer knows anything about hardware. I've been reassured by many Slashdotters that CS programs don't require the study of hardware. Real hardware is just an abstraction layer.
Comment removed (Score:3)
How (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this possible. There are dozens of government programs, corporate program, and not profit programs all pushing "Women in Tech". Millions upon millions of dollars have been spent encouraging women to join the tech field. In a society the is getting ever less sexist. And for all this the participation rate is going down?
Maybe these groups should reevaluate what they are doing and try to understand why women aren't interested in joining the tech workforce. It's seems crying sexism at every opportunity is not an effective strategy.
What about crab fishing? (Score:5, Insightful)
As an avid viewer of Deadliest Catch, I am troubled by the lack of female representation aboard Alaskan crab fishing vessels. Women should be encouraged to enter this lucrative filed where they are grossly underrepresented. Of course, that would involve risking their lives and destroying their bodies like men do, while being isolated from their families for months at a time, so I doubt the women's studies departments will be pushing for this.
I get the feeling that the people who are troubled by women's underrepresentation in STEM fields and C-suites somehow view this as women missing out on easy money, when that couldn't be further from the truth. These fields typically require huge sacrifices in terms of time and stress, not to mention isolation. Men seem more willing to accept these sacrifices because we're taught to do that from a very young age. We become providers (wallets) and sacrifice our time as nurturers within the family because it is expected of us. Women can't expect to take on these roles without the downsides that come with them, and the lack of women in certain fields is likely a reflection of women valuing family time over work time.
Isn't it just self-interest causing this? (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, I'm a little skeptical believing anything coming out of Accenture as a non-biased study, same way a Gartner magic quadrant rating is basically a paid-for advertisement.
Next, women are smart. They see programmers, admins, etc. being tossed out of work above the age of 40, having to constantly grind on skills training and being one mistaken specialization away from being out of a job. They also see industry offshoring every single job they possibly can in pursuit of lower costs. Women and men starting out in their careers need to be shown there's a future in tech or else no one is going to want to go into it. If you're smart enough to get perfect grades and perfect MCAT scores, there's absolutely no reason to not go to medical school and become a doctor. Medicine and some other licensed/regulated health care work is and will be the last protected, stable high paying profession left in the US. Why would you slave away in an IT or developer job only to be tossed out in 15-20 years, while your doctor friends are contemplating which boat will fit best in the dock next to their waterfront mansion? Right now the answer is that tech jobs do offer a decent salary for the work, but that stability thing is a killer. I'd rather be a licensed professional who's able to name their own price and whose competition will be kept to a reasonable number by law than be disposable.
Women are rational creatures, and want stable work for themselves and their families. I'm a little cynical, but it seems like Accenture might be trying to ensure there's a steady flow of new recruits. Their entire business model is shipping 25 year old "consultants" around the country, men and women, to project manage and direct their Indian techies to "do the needful" from remote. The company's business model is up-or-out, and it works just like school does, so it's tailor-made for fresh grads with no work experience. If that pipeline is stopped, Accenture's entire cost structure goes up because they have to start hiring experienced people.
BIG NEWS: Men in Nursing near 22% (Score:3, Funny)
New research warns that at the rate we're going, the number of men in the nursing workforce will decline to 22% from 24% by 2025 if nothing is done to encourage more of them to study nursing science.
This tragic result of institutional discrimination shows no sign of improvement in the immediate future. Beginning at childhood and continuing throughout the educational system, there is little incentive given boys to study nursing. Those who do are often discriminated against by employers and even patients. Legislators have failed to recognize the problem or offer incentives for equal rights for boys.
We're starting to see fruits from the SJW campaign (Score:5, Informative)
After endlessly repeating the message, "Women need to be encouraged to work in this field because they don't naturally have much interest in it", who could blame them for wanting nothing to do with it? No one wants the first thought people have of you to be, "Is this a professional or just the diversity hire?"
Could also have something to do with not wanting to work unreasonable hours just to eventually be replaced by an H1B.
I wish half as muc time and money... (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish half as much time and money was spent on men. We have male high school and college graduation rates at record lows and well below that of women which strikes me as far more important problem than a lack of women in a single field of business. Shoot, no one even talks about how few men become teachers when many studies show boys learn better from men than women (it's the same for female teachers and girls).
Dont get me wrong, having a good ratio of women in a workplace team is a good thing as it brings different perspectives, I just feel i hear a ton about the lack of women in computing and virtually nothing about a far more serious problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
>> The problem with male teachers is that they're automatically viewed as sexual predators.
Not just teachers, but all males. This is the REAL problem (just one of the many that PeeCeeism caused), that we need to fix in society, not some stupid "equal numbers only in male dominated fields" agenda.
Have you noticed how these same SJWs are not even slightly vociferous about the fact that nursing has only 4% of males, and in Pre-K/Kindergarten teachers, only 2.4 % male?
time to cut H1B's and the 60+ hour work week! (Score:2)
time to cut H1B's and the 60+ hour work week!
in EU the Working Time Directive is in place.
This is a simple question of physiology (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Oh noes!!!!11111 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Oh noes!!!!11111 (Score:4, Insightful)
Stories like this make me so angry because it casts women as unable to decide for themselves and we should be "correcting" their life choices.
Well, perhaps you should calm down, stop and actually think. Humans, ALL humans are influenced by outside factors. No man is an island etc etc.
Funnily enough that includes women.
Re: Oh noes!!!!11111 (Score:2)
I'm angry because this story casts their decisions to enter whatever they do instead of computer science as misguided. No one is keeping them from deciding to enter Computer Sc
Re: Oh noes!!!!11111 (Score:5, Interesting)
Outside factors are not an issue.
Bullshit they ain't. Summon Captain Anecdote!
I was talking to my officemate a couple of months ago about relational databases (she was doing a course on them). I prefer to think about things in a quite mathematical way, and I was trying t ooffer some insight in that direction. Turns out she apparently used to be decent at maths but dropped it after being told repeatedly in school words t othe effects of "maths isn't for girls".
So perhaps you'd like to go and explain to her how outside factors are not an issue.
. Outside factors help influence a decision
Wait... didn't you just say they're not a factor? Please do try to make up your mind.
It's just not the choice they prefer.
Aaaand we're back to it not mattering.
Honestly, you seem to be trying to rationalize something or other to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Choice is an interesting thing. We like to think that our choices are free because we control them, but important decisions such as career goals aren't really about all the possibilities. They typically boil down to risk/reward.
It is based on what we see as "risk". I fooled around with computers for years before college, and I excelled in math and science. There was low risk in going into CS, and high reward given its demand. But someone without those childhood experiences might have considered the ris
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
He's not complaining about choice, but that we're apparently telling women they are making the WRONG CHOICE.
And, oddly, blaming the men for making them choose wrong too.
Re: Oh noes!!!!11111 (Score:5, Insightful)
Outside factors are not an issue.
If every role model of a programmer you see until you're a teenager is male.
If computer programmer Barbie involves the girl doing some design, but the actual coding being done by boys.
If every children's TV show that includes both women and computers has the woman saying computers are hard and the man solving the problems.
If all of the clever boys at your school are encouraged into extracurricular activities involving computers, but the girls aren't.
I'm sure it would have no impact at all on you.
If you don't think that this is real, then sit down for a couple of hours this evening and watch two hours of children's TV. Count the number of male vs female lead roles. Count the number of times anyone builds anything and whether it's done by a male or female character.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, I see quite the opposite more often. A lot of TV shows are making quite an effort to change the gender stereotypes. Nowadays you see more females doing the tech or science jobs and roles on kids TV shows than you do males. Obviously not working, there are other societal factors at work, or kids are smart enough to realize those characters are exceptions meant to reverse the rule.
Re: Oh noes!!!!11111 (Score:4)
If every role model of a programmer you see until you're a teenager is male.
The only age-appropriate programmer role model I can think of offhand from when I was a kid and teen is the girl in Jurassic Park. And later on, let's see... well, there was Edward from Cowboy Bebop. I'm trying to think of a good male example as a strong character (not a pathetic clown), but nothing is coming to me. When it comes to positive computer programmer role models in the stuff I watched growing up, females are honestly the first thing I think of. Male programmers are usually portrayed, first and foremost, as creatures of pity.
Also, I'm curious if you are at all concerned about our profound lack of female sanitation workers? Female fisherman? Female homeless people?
Re: (Score:3)
Well, you could argue that the reason you have to push women to enter coding as a career is that they're also being pushed to aim high on the career ladder.
That was the thing that made me laugh at the whole Barbie "I Can Be a Computer Engineer" fracas. Oh, it was sexist alright -- against men. Here's how I construe that story: Barbie is an entrepreneur who obtains free commodity coding and sysadmin labor from her male pals and yet retains total ownership of the resulting intellectual property. It's a cyn
Re: (Score:2)
I already have a feeling that the answer is no, because you've already reached your conclusion and are just filling in everything else after the fact.
Re: (Score:2)
So if there were outside factors that biologically predisposed men and women towards different career paths
That makes no sense. A biological predisposition would be an internal factor not an external one. An external one is other people and circumstances influencing you.
Re: Oh noes!!!!11111 (Score:5, Insightful)
So if there were outside factors that biologically predisposed men and women towards different career paths or interests would you accept that those might result in something other than an even distribution of employment in certain vocations?
This doesn't make sense. The differences are either innate (biological) or the result of external factors. If they're the result of external factors (i.e. not biological) then they're likely to be amenable to change. The fact that the participation of women varies hugely between cultures (for example, in India, Korea, Israel, Iran, and Lithuania, Romania, it's a lot higher) implies strongly that external factors are far more of a reason why we have so few women than anything biological.
Re: (Score:3)
Here's one popular argument that I've heard before that offers an explanation for why IT and programming are predominantly male-driven: The incidence rate for autism spectrum disorders is about 4-5 times higher (there are plenty of
Re: (Score:2)
So if there were outside factors that biologically predisposed men and women towards different career paths or interests would you accept that those might result in something other than an even distribution of employment in certain vocations?
Studies have shown that female programmers write more efficient code on average than male programmers. Now, I'm not going to say this makes women better than men at programming, it could be, you have to be really focused to be a woman going into a male dominated profession.
However, it does show that there is definitely reason to doubt that males are biologically better at it.
Re: (Score:3)
Am I missing something? That article was about the number of pull requests at GitHub that were accepted, it mentioned nothing about your statement that "Studies have shown that female programmers write more efficient code on average than male programmers". If you are going to be that dickish in your reply, you should at least post something that supports your argument. Just because a pull request is accepted does not mean it is more efficient and a self-selected group (GitHub users) is a poor source for
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand why they should be "encouraged" to study computer science to just keep up some random statistic vs. encouraging them to do whatever their hearts tell them they should be doing? Stories like this {snip} cast women as unable to decide for themselves and we should be "correcting" their life choices. Whatever...
I came here to post the same thing, except for the "makes me angry" part.
Re: (Score:2)
You're right that we shouldn't care about some random statistic...but we should be interested enough in these random statistics to ask the question "Why is that happening?" I mean, if someone told me that 25% fewer men were going to choose to become doctors, that would make me wonder why. That's a pretty big shift regardless of gender or profession.
Personally, I don't think we're doing such a bang-up job in the IT field. Take the frequent reports of mass compromises. Take the latest DDoS by video camera
Re: Oh noes!!!!11111 (Score:5, Insightful)
And what if the conditions of work are preventing them? And I'm not just talking about the "usual" conditions like a lack of affordable daycare and the like which often keep women from better employment. What if there are certain groups within this industry, or in any industry really, who are hostile to women being there?
Re: (Score:2)
ack of affordable daycare
I don't see this as a problem for women who work in software engineering as much as women who work in lower paying professions. In this field it is still profitable to use day-care and work, at least for the few years that you need day-care before school starts.
What does hurt is taking time off for maternity, to a small degree, or taking a few years off for child-rearing to a large degree. That is a more fair criticism, technology moves very fast and the women who are in it do hav
Re: Oh noes!!!!11111 (Score:4, Interesting)
The barrier doesn't exist. Computers are ubiquitous. There are tons of free development tools, tutorials, forums to ask questions. If you really want to get into it, you'll already be playing around with code.
The fact is that programming is a shit field over the long term. If I had to do it over again, I would have just kept it as something to toy around with.
Doesn't matter how many women you try to push in the field - the vast majority change to another field within 10 years.
Over the long term, it's better than being forced out in 20 years by the beancounters because you're perceived as too old (both sexes) and they can get someone younger cheaper.
Re: (Score:3)
That's true for every field in one way or another. In the long run, every job is something that can eventually be outsourced, replaced by robots, or both. Getting ahead financially is about playing the percentages, picking something that pays well and that you can stand, and saving up as much money as you can for the inevitable drought later.
Can't outsource or robotize human bodies. (Score:3)
You can't outsource or replace with robots services catering to humans and their bodies.
Nor can you outsource or robotize salesmanship, leadership and all the other -ships.
And there will probably always be legal reasons why legal services and public administration can't be out given out to foreign employees or machines.
But speaking of services for humans...
Education and health services are about as female dominated as manufacturing tends to be male dominated.
Actually, slightly more... 74.65% for E&H vs
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Alright, anecdotal evidence is always dodgy, but here's mine.
I have an intern working with me right now who is a bright, talented, hardworking young woman. She's been interviewing at a variety of shops and found one that looked really good for a junior software engineer. Lot's of flexibility about the kind of work you do etc.
She was talking to one of the HR types and they felt the need to inform her that there were multiple generations of engineer there, and that some of the older engineers sometimes said
I call BS on "doesn't belong" meme (Score:5, Interesting)
Alright, anecdotal evidence is always dodgy, ... She was talking to one of the HR types and they felt the need to inform her that there were multiple generations of engineer there, and that some of the older engineers sometimes said things like, "Women don't belong in programming." ...
I'm perfectly willing to accept isolated incidents. But the widespread existence of such a sentiment, I have to call BS. As you say, its just an anecdote
I am an old engineer and in 30+ years of software development at various employers, small, medium and large I never saw that sentiment. Were there occasional inappropriate jokes, well from a PC/SJW perspective yes, but the women I knew could give as well as take. And when in a female majority environment the non-PC jokes targeting men came from the women occasionally too, All these jokes whether from males or females, while admittedly not PC, were not offered with malicious intent and were more in the nature of friendly teammates joking around with each other. Everyone, male and female, had their day where they thought something was not funny. Even so, when a team transitioned away from an all male team as that first female member joined, there was either indifference or a supportive sentiment, not a hostile sentiment, when we males got together and talked when we got the news; even in the old days of the mid 1980s.
Were there excessive dating invitations, excessive as in "how many times do you need to hear no", yes. One time I had to have a serious talk with a peer from another team about taking "no for answer" when I found a team member in her cube obviously pissed off about something and she confided in what it was.
I have to admit that one day I made one of my female team members cry. I got her to follow me out of our cubicle farm and into an empty office and I closed the door for privacy. I then told her that of all the people I had worked with these last four years at the company she was the most reliable person I knew. That if it were possible to get something done she was the person I learned to trust more than any other. And the fact that she did this while having to juggle hours around occasionally to take care of things related to her two kids, school events, doctor's appointments, etc made her even more impressive. She cried, gave me a big hug, and then I went for my exit interview with HR since that was my last day. By the way, this was not my unique opinion, she was a highly respected engineer among her peers and management. As I was getting ready to leave I realized I had never shared my opinion with her.
I agree that women have faced challenges over the decades. For several years I dated a female engineer, she worked on embedded software, so I have her perspective to add to my own. And while these many challenges still exist to this day to one degree or another, the "women don't belong in programming" problem is not something I've seen myself or had 30+ years of coworkers mention that they had seen. I'm sure it happened somewhere but such a sentiment is an anomaly not a widespread problem like being asked out on a date too many times.
My opinion as to why the low representation of women exists, I think it is simply that fewer are exposed to it. I initially imagined programming boring, then I had to do a little in school and I discovered it to be a lot of fun, interesting and that I was also good at it. It was literally a life changing revelation. I expect that fewer females are given the chance to make such a personal discovery. So maybe there is a "women don't belong in programming" sentiment, but it would seem to be at home with their family, parents, aunts, uncles, etc than in industry. FWIW that girlfriend I had who did embedded software, her dad had a small manufacturing business and her and her sister grew up around people who made things. Both had the same opportunities to explore, but only she had the curiosity, her sister did not. Programming
Re: (Score:3)
I've worked in IT for over 2 decades. This may have existed back in the late 80's, possibly even into the very early 90's, but since about 1995 has been a fallacy perpetrated by those with an agenda to cast this industry as somehow sexist or backwards. If there are any people left who are still truly hostile to females in IT that haven't been weeded out through attrition, harassment claims, or other HR procedures, they must be really good at hiding how they truly feel and therefore it isn't really an issue anymore.
Stop being disingenuous and perpetrating "what if" scenarios to further a divisive agenda you know is going to lose, anyway.
I tend to agree with you that harassment in the workplace is significantly less than what it used to be. The stigma still lingers, however. It doesn't help when geeks make presentations with sexual parts in conferences, either (and no, the answer is not to develop humor or grow thicker skin, but to be less of a pervert.)
Harassment in academia and in other STEM fields still exists, and it is serious enough to make students switch careers and not pursue work in Academia. I've seen it.
Re: (Score:3)
No problem of this nature is fixed by forcing people to change. The only way is to stick it out in the hostile environment until you are a majority. Then you can change the situation simply by acting differently. When you're the majority, you set the tone.
That's assuming there's a problem to begin with, of course.
Re: Oh noes!!!!11111 (Score:5, Insightful)
No problem of this nature is fixed by forcing people to change. The only way is to stick it out in the hostile environment until you are a majority. Then you can change the situation simply by acting differently. When you're the majority, you set the tone.
That's assuming there's a problem to begin with, of course.
The Civils Right movement says otherwise. Sometimes you have to force people to be less of an asshole.
Re: Oh noes!!!!11111 (Score:4, Interesting)
Any problems that still exist in IT still exist in any "traditionally male" industries and occupations. And it's not just females that are affected, it's any special snowflake.
We can't single out IT and say how sexist and terrible its constituents are when I'm sure there are still much worse places (harassment-wise, etc.) for snowflakes like refineries, steel mills, oil rigs, railroads, heavy equipment repair, and probably almost any other blue collar job where you get dirty or risk your life.
Saying that the snowflakes get treated worse in a cube farm full of programmers than literally any of those other places is doing a disservice to the real women working in those other fields every day busting their asses. The difference? Your average millennial snowflake doesn't want to be a millwright, work on an oil rig, repair railroad tracks or become a tradesman. Why? Because (unlike tech) it isn't perceived as glorious, you have to deal with extremes of temperature, you can't become famous doing it, you can't sit on your ass and tweet all day about how oppressed you are while doing it, you probably won't get rich (but you'll earn a very comfortable living) and you sure as hell can't be a SJW idiot if you want to survive (literally, in many of those places) the first month on the job.
Yet, women have been working in all of those jobs for generations now. The problem isn't sexism or discrimination or harassment (which again, the HR departments and years of sensitivity training have pretty much taken care of), it's the softness of the last two generations of humans. They've been taught that feelings must be preserved above all else, above self, above country, above safety, and above security. In the traditional blue-collar industries I've mentioned above, anyone who makes it past training and the first week on the job will realize, right quick, that the safety of you and your crew is the number one priority. Feelings be damned. Does it matter if someone hurt your feelings if they got you out of a serious jam alive?
Now, in IT, it may not be life or death, but you might make a bad decision and decide to preserve someone's feelings and lose your career or promotion over it. You might lose your business a ton of money if a critical system goes offline or worse. And that isn't cool, we shouldn't have to lie to people and tell them they're good at something they aren't if they actually aren't good at it because of some protected status (or worse yet, feelings). There are plenty of women throughout history who have found great success in traditionally male fields. There are probably a lot who (for whatever reason) couldn't cut it and decided to move on. We are at a critical juncture right now where we decide what's more important: feelings or honesty. Hurting someone's feelings isn't always malicious, unwarranted, nor is it discrimination, in fact, it's one of the few things that even to me (as a man) can reach me when I'm sure I'm right and I'm really not. It's part of growing and being an adult.
So, are we going to embrace being an adult, growing up, and being responsible for making good decisions? Or are we going to embrace a permeating culture of perpetual adolescence where everyone gets a trophy and we base someone's worth not on what they produce or they can create or build, but on how many oppression points they can collect for themselves or how many times you signal your virtue to those holding those points? Women should work wherever they want to work, it shouldn't matter what percentage of them work where, it's their decision to determine whether they can cut it or not in a certain field. And saying they somehow shouldn't be left to decide their own future and destiny for themselves is positively the most sexist thing I've ever heard.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I suppose your company totally gets it and there is never any of the mini-aggressions and put-downs that can erode a female technologist's confidence in her abilities or desire to work at your company, or in the industry in general?
And that never happens to men right? Both men and women are occasional recipients of the joke gone wrong. Both men and women have to deal with a-hole coworkers who try to elevate themselves by denigrating the skills of others. And by men I am including majority white straight men. Everyone gets their feeling hurt one day or another, and its something that should be avoided regardless of gender. But lets not try to manufacture a PC/SJW explanation for the problem of female underrepresentation, assuming that
Re: (Score:2)
It's ridiculously-hard to become a male nurse. In many cases, there are only a handful of male nurses on a medical campus--I've seen as low as two at one school. Somehow it was decided they didn't have girlfriends; none of the girls would date them, because they spent most of their time on-campus and didn't have many prospective young men to pick from.
You can imagine the demands on time.
Re: (Score:2)
Have you talked to any nurses? There's a large demand for male nurses.
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose by letting everyone choose whatever career they desire.
Re: (Score:2)
Affirmative Action was never about anything other than political correctness dressed up as a statistic that can be changed by government.
There are women in Construction, but the overwhelming members of that industrty are ... men - No outcry ... women. - No outcry ... men. - No outcry
There are men in Nursing, but the overwhelming members of nursing field are
There are women in police and fire, but the overwhelming members are
The terrible thing is, that when we tell women "You can be whatever you want" and the
Re: (Score:2)
In other news....we're also seen SEVERE declines of men entering the workforce as Hooters waitstaff.
Hooters need to hire more lady boys to fill out all those hot pants.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
So the answer to the question is "Yes, we're a back of sexist assholes where I work, so women should just put up with pricks because 'spines'!"
Re: (Score:2)
Can you explain why a perceived or actual lack of females in IT matters? Is the economy worse off? Are women raped more often because of it? Is it the cause of Trump's rise to power? Is it causing the moral decay of Western Civilization?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
no, because men can still choose to be house husbands.
Re: (Score:2)
Biased, yes, but not how you think.
Big Tech are colluding to deflate wages by trying to get more people into competition for jobs. Diversity is just a buzzword to get everyone to do their work for them. H1Bs are not quite the gold mine they were hoping for.
The lack of women in tech has mostly been because of natural aptitude/interest. Whether that's mostly cultural, or due to divergent brain development based on hormonal differences. You can't really convince someone to become interested - only nurtur