Women in IT: Really?! Where?
June 30th, 2008 | by emontero |Women’s absence in information technology (IT) has always been the norm rather than the exception. The exact reason behind this situation is still eluding many of us:
And teenage girls are less interested in computer science than they are in other scientific fields. Only 12% of the finalists in the 2005 Intel Science and Engineering Fair, a national competition for high-school students, were girls, compared to 54% of the finalists in biochemistry. Similarly, only 15% of the high-school students taking the AP computer science test in 2006 were girls compared to 48% of the students who took the AP calculus test.
Clearly something is happening before women even reach the workforce to discourage them from pursuing IT careers. Slade doesn’t know what it is. Neither does the Business Technology Blog.
I have experienced the shortage of women in IT firsthand. Out of 45 undergrads back at my alma mater in Dominican Republic (i.e. INTEC), 4 were women (yes, less than 10%!). Before I graduated, I had been eagerly hoping things would be different in the professional realm. I was lying to myself. Check out some numbers:
- Population of female employees in the IT department at my first employer: 1 (group size: 14).
- Population of female employees in the IT department at my second employer: 4 (group size: 40).
- Population of IT/CS female students I have met at RIT while pursuing my MS degree: 3 (number of male students I have met: lost count).
I took a renewed interest in the subject when a friend shared an article from ZDNet News, adequately titled (what else?) The lack of women in the IT industry:
For years now, the IT industry has been dominated by men – women deterred by the geeky image of an anti-social, geeky teenager who hasn’t seen daylight in weeks, working in the basement of his mum’s house, programming away to some complicated code. On the flip side, you have the perspective of a woman in the IT industry somewhere, where they’re sat behind a desk filing away, writing reports and performing general secretarial duties, whilst flirting with the other employees as she stirs their coffee, whilst imitating something sexually deviant with her tongue.
The author summarizes everything with a much-needed optimistic outlook:
When researching for this article, I came up with many pages, articles, interviews and talks. I spoke to the other ZDNet bloggers, and my colleague, Jennifer Leggio, who also writes a personal blog. As well as being an active member of NCWIT, she wrote an article about how the industry needs to change, and how women need to empower themselves to make things happen and speak up, and get the companies to lose the stereotypes.
In summary, there are a good number of women working in IT, technology, and the computing industry, but it’s not nearly enough as most other industries. Whilst the opportunities are there, it takes the corporations, organisations and businesses to highlight some of the better and indeed more accurate perspectives of the industry, to the younger female generation. With enough luck, work, hope and effort, this very male-oriented business will open itself more to women over the coming months and years, as more and more girls and women realise their potential in making this world a far happier, better organised, and more diverse.
The negative impact of stereotypes and general misconceptions is undeniable. Nevertheless, I wonder to what extent this sort of blog post adds insult to injury:
Computer programming is a low prestige profession. This is evidenced by the fact that people from affluent families rarely go into computer programming but instead will seek out the more prestigious professions such as law, finance, and medicine. Of course there are some exceptions. There was a programmer who worked for me whose father was a doctor. But more typical was another programmer who never finished college and whose favorite hobby was hunting.
Personally, I think the industry would benefit tremendously if the female number in the ranks is increased. However, to the detriment of the field, the status quo will probably remain immutable in the foreseeable future since colleges keep experiencing a heavy downturn in CS/IT applications.
It’s a shame.
3 Responses to “Women in IT: Really?! Where?”
By xmonk on Jun 30, 2008 | Reply
I don’t know. I don’t think the lack of women in IT, is cause of lack of empowerment by their part. Also the image of the geek or nerd sitting in a basement, writing complex code, is as far as you can get from IT. As you already know, IT it’s not like that, you slave but seldom it’s a satisfying complex problem, it’s more like: “WTF? was the dude that wrote this thinking?!”
In the other hand, I’ve met quite a few very smart, capable amazing female programmers, that duke it out in the business but it’s a labor of love, and like their male counterpart, they either get assimilated into the corporate black hole, or move into contract work.
Now, my personal believe is that women collectively are smarter than us, and they realized what some of us, realize after years in the IT business. If you are an administrator, or interested in that type of work, IT is a very good place to be, but if you are a creative individual, as whole IT is the worst thing that you can do to yourself, regardless of the field.
You may not agree but I have been in the IT field for 20 years now, and worked for some very prominent companies, and my experience is that if you are not interested in becoming a manager, there is no growth options for you, no matter how good you are, no matter how smart you are, or your gender, you will be cast aside as someone that’s “afraid to grow” or as “immature”.
So if you love science, and you love math, the only way to go, is research. Think about all the great things we have in IT:
* Networking.
* GUI.
* Unix.
* etc..
All are the products of individual researches (Unix,C), or a combination of the above and companies research facilities (Xerox PARC, Bell Labs), if you look into the Xerox PARC papers, you will see they, worked in what today would be a care free manner, very little managerial activities if any going on. Just smart people making cool stuff.
It goes with out saying that their is a business side to this, but the people in the labs, with the exceptions of the heads, have little to no interaction with the business side, unless they wanted too or cared about it.
So to sum it up, I think women interested in science are looking for more full filling lines of work. Those that are business oriented well, those rather be in other industries than IT, and it would be interesting to know why is that.
Like I said you may not agree, and that’s fine.
By emontero on Jun 30, 2008 | Reply
@xmonk,
Your comments, as usual, provide valuable insight into the subject at hand my dear friend. I concur with you on the research aspect of our field (ultimately, it’s in that area where the “coolest” and “totally badass” stuff is developed — both in software and hardware). However, I don’t think women are smarter (or dumber, for that matter) than men. Kids (both boys and girls) don’t want to study CS/IT because, well, how many programs or reality TV shows you see out there where the main character is a programmer or CS major? The field is in desperate need of a major PR overhaul.
Good food for thought. Thanks for sharing!
By Ivan on Jun 30, 2008 | Reply
Damn, monk, you never cease to amaze me. I never thought about it that way, but it makes so much sense, I completely agree with you.