This came to me via the ACM technews newsletter. Researchers at Penn State have interviewed 92 female IT professionals to find out what they want out of their IT jobs.
The typical recruiters sales pitch emphasizing job promotion and security acts to keep women out of the information technology jobs, according to a Penn State research study of 92 female IT practitioners.
Human-resources personnel need to recognize that women have diverse values and motivations throughout their careers and tailor hiring and retention practices to fit those needs, said Eileen Trauth, professor of information sciences and technology in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology, who authored the paper What Do Women Want": An Investigation of Career Anchors among Women in the IT Workforce.
While women represent almost 60 percent of the workforce, they account for only a little more than 32 percent of the IT workforce. Addressing women’s under-representation not only will help tackle the anticipated IT worker shortage but will help foster a diverse workforce, a cornerstone of both innovation and economic development, she added.
The study focused on career anchors, those thing important to a person in choosing a job. Researchers found that women aren't all the same -- that individuals have different reasons to take a particular job. Whew!
But I'm not posting this because the study is that interesting or new. I'm posting so that others can see the type of hostile environment that exists for the few women in the IT profession. If you follow the links to the article, you'll see the type of wacko, hatred-laced comments that other IT professionals make when anyone talks about why women are either opting out of or leaving the IT profession.
For instance,this bigot wrote:
"Geeze give it a rest some like it some don't the reason theres fewer women in IT is because its primarily a Man's job.
Why is nobody writing articles about how theres so few women construction workers? or too few women lumberjacks? Because some jobs are preffered by men others by women. Just because most women don't take interest in it is not a reason to write an article about it... honestly I dont even know why I read it. " [sic]
Then later
Submitted by Duke (not verified) on Fri, 2007-05-25 02:59.
Agree completely. The female mind thrives better where it can practice dissimulation, gossip, chicanery, etc. Women pounding out code are like bodybuilders in figure skates.
Not too bad, pretty much par for the course when certain IT professionals comment on the declining number of females in the profession. In fact, a national IT publication posted a letter to the editor in response to an interview with me on gender issues in IT that claimed that encouraging women to consider IT careers was the same and encouraging fat, aging men into becoming super models. Yes, not only did someone in the IT profession write such a gender attack, but the editor actually published it. I can't imagine the same editor publishing the letter if it compared IT careers based on race or religion. But I guess women are fair game. In fact, I run into this all the time - that some IT professionals believe that there is some sort of gender-based defect that keeps all females from being competent in technology. I hear it from bosses, from clients, and from friends.
To add insult to injury, the Canadian national press service put together a charming little article that was published in many Canadian newspapers on the decline in female enrollment in computer science and information systems programs around the world....and they included a nice transition between two of my quotes that read:
And it is a great way to meet men.
So all the work of many talented, senior level IT professionals across Canada had been reduced to some sort of hookup/dating/sex service for men. I was outraged, but, hey, that's the press service in action.
I don't think there is some magic number that would be the "right" number of women in IT. But I do know that many women are leaving and most IT educational programs around the world are seeing significantly declining numbers of females even considering entering their programs. When I was in school, it was almost 50-50 men and women studying IS, but these days it is down to 10-15%. That is the magnitude of decline.
But why do I think this is important? Not for some sort of equality, quota, or diversity goal in itself. I believe we need to fix young women's perception problems with our profession. It is not boring. It is not about keyboards. It is not about geeks and gadgets (Ok, I love my gadgets, but that's just me, not my profession). It is important that young women understand what's available to them:
- IT careers are well paying (no matter what you feel about your current salary, over all it is GOOD. )
- IT careers offer more flexible working hours and locations
- IT careers are incredibly rewarding (if yours isn't, then you need to find a better project or job).
- IT careers do require a good understanding of math subjects, but that doesn't mean it's an all math job.
- IT careers are fun.
- IT careers can make a difference in the world.
So all the bigots out there can scream about it being a feminist thing, or some sort of gender-presentation thing, or that somehow one must hire stupid people in order to encourage more women, or that there is some sort of natural obstacle to being female and in IT, but they are wrong, dead wrong. In fact, I have a much lower opinion of their own intelligence when the tell me that in order to increase the number of women IT they'd have to dumb down the job so much that no one would be able to even log in, let alone code.
It's time that we did something to fix this problem. I have lots of idea, some that work, some that I don't know if they will work. But pretty soon there will be so few women in IT that all our systems will be focused only on 'guy things'...if you use the same logic that the bigots do.
Let's do something to fix this serious problem.