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While women still represent only a fraction of IT workers today, some experts believe that cloud computing will offer the wedge in the door that women need to equalize staffing numbers. ITworld
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Why do people act like this is a real problem? If women don't want the jobs, then they don't have to take them, we don't need equal amounts of men and women in any industry. It's not like we hang a "no girls allowed" sign on the doors to our offices, women just tend to choose different careers. I've never seen anyone worry about there not being enough men in something like nursing (I don't have numbers to back it up, but I'm fairly certain women outnumber men in that career).
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There is an actual problem of sexism in IT, as there is in any profession that is male dominated (military, police, firefighters, etc). Any time you have such a stark predominance of one gender in a profession, you end up with a de facto culture that, at the very least, makes the other gender feel unwelcome. Sometimes it's even actively hostile (google up some stories from women who've attended DefCon, for example).
And, for the record, I'm guessing that the reason you don't hear about the shortage of men in nursing is that you don't read the publications or hang out in the forums of that profession. Yes, nursing is very much a female-dominated profession, but it's also one that regularly requires heavy lifting, which women are simply not as well suited for as men, as a general rule. There are other issues as well, but the lack of men in the profession is considered a problem.
You are correct, though, that it's fundamentally a question of self-selection and a broader cultural bias that funnels each gender toward certain professions and away from others. I see it in action with my own daughter. When she was little, she had a definite interest in the stuff I did. As she's grown older (she's now 12), that's changed. It was around age 7 when computers and math started to become "boy stuff" in her mind, despite my best efforts. IMO, her elementary school teachers were absolutely complicit. When a young girl is spending 5-6 hours a day with an adult woman who freely -- even proudly -- proclaims that she's no good at math or computers, that's absolutely going to have an affect. If there's a place we should be looking for the solution to this problem, that's where we need to start.
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But I still don't see where it becomes an actual problem. Is a program going to be any better if it's made by a mixed gender team? Is a network going to become more reliable because both men and women were involved in setting it up?
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If all you're looking at is setting up the physical components of a network, then no, gender doesn't matter. However, that's a VERY small part of everything that falls under the umbrella of "IT", and is in fact basically useless on its own. That network exists to serve a larger system which allows people to accomplish useful things. Some of those people are women, and they think and work differently than men. Do you honestly not see how a female perspective might alter the design of that system? I'm not just talking about the color scheme of the UI, but it can reach down into even the basic functionality the network needs to support. Women tend to be more socially oriented, and more inclined towards collaboration, for example, so perhaps a system designed by a woman would emphasize those features, where a man might not consider them to be important. Or, they might both want those features, but have very different ideas about how they should work. What are the consequences of those decisions in terms of, say, the load your network needs to support?
There are other differences in the work environment that change as you alter the gender mix as well. For example, I've noticed that all-male departments/companies tend to not celebrate birthdays. Add a woman or two, though, and suddenly cards start getting passed around for everyone to sign, along with a collection envelope to buy cake and ice cream. You can dismiss that as just a distraction, but I think there's a strong argument to be made that it's really a team-building experience, which has a positive effect on morale and camaraderie, and there are numerous studies out there which show those generally increase important things like productivity and employee retention.
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RASPeter wrote: Women tend to be more socially oriented, and more inclined towards collaboration, for example, so perhaps a system designed by a woman would emphasize those features, where a man might not consider them to be important. Or, they might both want those features, but have very different ideas about how they should work. What are the consequences of those decisions in terms of, say, the load your network needs to support?
That's not necessarily better or worse, just different. (However, I would imagine socially oriented features would increase network load, which may be viewed as a negative.)
As for the point, I personally don't like those kinds of things, but I can see the value. It doesn't require them to be in IT though, we have someone in our office who does those sort of things and I believe she's part of human resources.
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There have been all sorts of new technologies that have come along in the last decade. Has not helped women much, why should Cloud be any different!!!!! Especially true since companies have been working hard to make the cloud appear transparent.
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When I started computing, women out numbered the men. Not just as data entry clerks, job control supervisors, mainframe operators (which used to be considered 'women's work') but also as managers, programmers, business analysts and other technical roles (which were not considered to be gender specific). In fact, the first significant OS I used (GEORGE III) was written in a large part by women (they were colloquially known as the 'pregnant programmers' as they were able to do the work from home whilst on maternity leave and whilst nursing their new-borns); and (in those days) were cheaper to employ than men.
In many shops, the prevalence of men is due not to discrimination but due to the longevity of service and the lack of recruitment. Despite equality, men stay in a role longer than women (it is rarer for men to leave to raise children and less common for them to leave to go with their partner when their partner's job changes) and they usually retire later. I work in a 100% male office simply because we have had no new starters in the last 18 years and all of the women (who outnumbered us 18 years ago) have left.
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jsc42 wrote: I work in a 100% male office simply because we have had no new starters in the
last 18 years and all of the women (who outnumbered us 18 years ago) have left.
I am sure that is true for some software shops (COBOL, maybe?) but nowdays both men and women tend to change their jobs much more frequently. It is pretty hard to find someone who stays on a same job for 10 years. Big companies (Microsoft, etc) tend to keep people longer, but even there they change groups quite a lot.
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Nemanja Trifunovic wrote: Big companies (Microsoft, etc) tend to keep people longer
I don't know if that's necessarily true... but I do agree, everyone seems to change jobs more often nowadays. People just don't work in the same place for that long anymore.
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As jsc42 says, the computer staff was almost exclusively women at that time.
I became interested in computers in the mid-late 60's. Two of my girl friend's sisters worked for AT&T in the computer department, one as an systems analysist and one as a programmer.
Both had started as operators, they were promoted & trained from within, one of them eventually left to raise a family, the other one retired early. Both were replaced by men even though the company actively looked for women.
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Sounds like an assertion pulled out of someone's backside.
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Why should "equalize staffing numbers" be a desired goal?
And how would it be achieved? Put a gun to womens heads and tell them they no longer have a choice? They have to be in IT?
There is also a gender gap in elementary school teaching and nursing. What can men use as a "wedge in the door" to these professions?
More importantly, why would you think this "gap" is anything other than freedom of choice?
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It's not really freedom of choice when facing a boys club trying to move into a profession. Looking at the big picture it becomes a quality of living issue...average teachers salary is what 50K, and they cap out around 60K. A programmer can start off at that salary right out school, and make over $100,000 quite easily depending on location and skill set. Someone else talked about nurses, and how do you compare $12 to $14 per hours to what a good programmer can make.
Now I'm not saying that I'm a programmer because of the money, but I like taking good care of my children, and work from home. As a programmer and a mom and a wife, I took the steps necessary many years ago to put my math degree to good use and become a programmer.  But even as a math major I faced many professors that didn't give women A's in both Pascal and Math, and what's worse they told us this the first day of class. Albeit this was in the early 90's.
With all of this said, I encourage ALL of my children (2 boys and 1 girl) to know the ins and outs of computers and how to write at least basic scripts. Maybe one will follow in Mom's foot steps and become of programmer.
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A boys club in IT? I'd love to see the evidence for that. I've missed out on the meetings... My team is two women and three men.
Quality of life is purely personal. People sacrifice pay to have a job they enjoy more, which results in a better quality of life, right?
I don't know the numbers nation wide, but in CA, average teacher salary is $60K and caps out around $88K. Average nurse salary is $72K. Average starting pay for a software engineer just out of college is $66K. Network admin / PC support personnel make less. Teachers and nurses are in the top 20% of all wage earners in the nation.
So, is it a girls club keeping men out of elementary school teaching and nursing jobs?
Men are even more dominate in the auto mechanics profession.
Gender disparity is not evidence of a problem.
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Ok boy's club has a much worse connotation than I intended...LOL Because the only time I have had issues was in college, and occasionally on forum boards.  And obviously I am only basing this on my experience...so it is very statistically inadequate, but in the last 20 years I have met possibly 5 women in the various facet's of IT that I have worked in. Everything from help desk to development.
So I often feel like the odd girl out. That left out feeling has a lot to do with why women don't go into IT. I love problem solving and I have always been very good with computers...I started programming on a commodore 64 and Qbasic.
So now that I have waffled on my stand, I will leave. I do wish that teachers and nurses made that much from Colorado to New York...they definitely deserve it.
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I don't think cloud computing will make any difference. I've worked in companies where I was the only female, and then others where it was equal. What I have noticed is more women whom are not from the US, seemed to be more interested in IT over American woman. In some cases, I know they found it was the best paying job in their country than other professions so more pursued it. We do so much outsourcing, its a good deal for them.
I've tried to convince my female friends that complain about not making enough to pursue a degree in IT and they look at me like I'm nuts. They take one programming class and get turned off to it. In that case, I wonder if is because working IT is not that glamorous, or only for "nerds". Most women don't want to be classified as being a nerd.
In either case, I have not found it to hinder me in finding jobs, and I don't have an issue with working with a majority of men. As long as an employer is not denying me a job because of my gender and my pay is equal, I don't care about the ratio of males to females. In some cases its been more enjoyable. Men don't generally have PMS.
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The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was built by Raytheon and used approximately 4000 discrete integrated circuits from Fairchild Semiconductor. Spanning nearly a decade of project development, the AGC began as a research project at the MIT Instrumentation Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The lab was home to the world's foremost experts in guidance and control, where Polaris and Poseidon missile guidance programs were developed. However, until Apollo, all computations for the equations of motion in these systems were performed by analog computers. In April 1961, NASA contracted with MIT to study the feasibility of a digital control system for the Apollo program.... The speed, power, and size requirements for the AGC drove an entire industry.
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The AGC would not have driven the electronic industry. Might have driven the industry for military systems. This is fringe stuff. Way too expensive. What drove the industry was building factories that could product stuff inexpensively, not hand build electronics. If you cannot manufacture it economically, the technology will only be used for niche applications.
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Clifford Nelson wrote: What drove the industry was building factories that could product stuff inexpensively, not hand build electronics.
I beg to differ. What drove the industry was figuring out the processes that would allow for factories to be built that could produce chips inexpensively. I'm not sure what the percent is nowadays for a new chip design on an assembly line for the first time, but IIRC (and I probably don't) Intel's rate of working chips was less than 1%. IIRC (again probably not) even on a tuned assembly line, the rate of working chips was around 5%. Anyways, the point is, the failure rates were (and probably still are) ridiculously high. To improve that rate, the industry struggles with the processes, and that drives other industries as well.
Marc
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I beleive that the failure rate depends on the complexity. For the most complex chips, especially memory, there will be much higher failure rates, but for simpler chips, it is significantly lower.
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No. More complex chip designs (particularly die shrinking) require more sophisticated fabrication techniques. Refining fab techniques is what reduces failure rates (and costs as yields increase).
Director of Content Development, The Code Project
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Even though more than 20 years have passed, I still remember wondering what it would be like to finish university and start working. Up until that point, I had pretty much spent my whole life in school, with only a few, non-programming summer jobs thrown in. My expectations of what it would be like to work as a software developer were mostly correct, but there were a few surprises in the first few years, and here are the top five. Wait, they actually expect the code to run?
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Better title: top 5 reasons why business programming sucks.
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Number 3 didn't surprise me in the slightest, I've never felt any non-trivial program was 100% complete even before I started working (including personal projects, which is why I tend to get discouraged and stop working on them).
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