Reasons less women are in tech/IT than men

I'm jw what everyone's opinion here is.

A google employee recently was fired over a rant he made on internal google boards about how he feels that there are less women in IT/software development than men because they lack interest in the subject.

He then went on to say that trying to bring the number of women employed in these respective departments to parity with the human population was counter productive because less women naturally belong in IT/software development because less are interested.

What are your thoughts on what the ex-google employee said? Do any of you guys work in IT/software development and feel the same way? Or the opposite?

I work in IT on the data modeling side for a large company and I definitely feel like there are less women in the field than men. I also feel that the women that ARE employed here are quite good, but there are not many. Of the women that I know, very few to zero are interested in my area of expertise, but I'm also a very small sample size.

I think many people who read the employee's rant misinterpreted it as some sexist statement saying that women suck at IT/software development, but that wasn't the case. I think women are equally as capable of being good at software development or IT, but if you HATE something really bad, even if you could be good at it, you would probably choose to do something else, right? That was what the guy's argument boiled down to: Are women less interested in technology than men are.

I'm gonna go and say it simply.

Lack of interest.

Good thing about my field no women want to do it so no talk of discrimination. hell most Americans don't so we employ almost all latino males. Awesome workers.

If I were to go to college I'd do Architecture. Wonder what that ratio is.

I never really had ambition to go tho. I make plenty of money and love my job. Out doors all day in paradise making ppl happy. (we build pools and landscaping contractor)

Coming from computer science classes myself, where I was in class consisting 95% of females, only 1 of them from around 35-40 liked computer science stuff, others took those classes because they had to, and they hated it.

Concerning technologies, I think you will find more women not in programming and simmilar boring stuff, but as web designers/professional art/animation/studio/music software users and simmilar.

It is simmilar how hard you will find female oil drill workers or female construction workers. Not saying that there aren't any, but its a rare thing to see here.

There are 14 people on my particular team. One is female. There's another who manages my manager, but she's pretty far removed.

I see far fewer women doing ground-level IT work than managing those who do. They usually end up managing IT folks through lateral moves from unrelated areas. It's fine, really; at a certain level of IT, your technical knowledge/experience is less important than your managerial (people or project) skills. Same for all fields, I imagine.

That's not a dig or a statement or intended to paint a broader picture, it's just been my experience over 10(ish) years of doing IT.

As to why there are fewer women doing the nitty gritty in the first place, I can speak to that. It's absolutely a cultural problem- but not a malicious one. I've seen it happen over and over, and I'm seeing it now with our newbie.

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Lady joins team

Team is almost ecstatic, as there's a lady on the team! No one wants to be seen as indifferent or discriminatory towards the only lady on the team.

Lady is just regular lady with regular level of skill,

But expectation is that lady surely must have mad skills in order to break into this field! (this is where my team is at)

Expectation does not meet reality, feeling starts to fester in the team that lady is just there because shes a lady.

Lady messes something up, or misses a couple days of work, or needs a bit of help with a project.

Team starts to resent lady, as she clearly isn't working as hard as the rest of us.

Lady picks up on resentment, and probably leaves on her own.

There's many permutations of that situation, but the gist of it is "expectation doesn't meet reality, so expectation bails." I'm honestly not sure what to do about it.

The fact that women don't want to drive a car if a man can do it, is it cultural too? They choose not to do it, because they don't want to do it. So, they don't want because they were taught that they don't like to drive? I don't think so, because if we can, we do what we like to do. And it is really unlikely that we have so many cases in so many different countries, and in ALL the countries it's a "cultural" thing.

I used to work heavy construction in my early 20s, concrete and steel construction, and the ratio was more like 300:1 male/female. The company I worked for hired mostly White males. I'd say there were 6 White males per colored person. Most of the work I did was with rebar. Ironically, they were union. But the pay was several dollars an hour more than the average for that job. The pay was $18/hr for an entry level position, when I'd be lucky to have gotten $12/hr at a non-union place. Some of the guys working there made $35/hr.

When people say "Americans don't want these jobs", it's about the pay, not the task. Money talks and bullshit walks. It's my personal opinion that if someone can't afford to pay a fair wage, then pack your shit up and take it to China, don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, or close your doors, nobody cares.

I've noticed a pattern of union contractors hiring mostly White males, not just in construction, but sheet metal workers union did that too. In the case of the sheet metal workers, the workforce was 100% White male, with no females, or a single colored person. Nobody ever goes to a union site complaining about lack of diversity. It's an unspoken rule that union contractors are exempt from diversity quotas.

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鬼殺し wrote:

To suggest females are less represented in STEM because they lack the interest is relatively benign and puts the blame on societal expectations and a much deeper-seated prejudice regarding what women should and should not do. But to suggest then that trying to reduce this gap is counter-productive (regardless of reasons) is a direct attack on whatever steps are being taken to countermand said deep-seated prejudice and expectations. Meritocracy is all fine and well but if it's coupled with a belief that one sex is simply less interested because of...reasons?...then it's problematic.

Problematic for you.

Incidental gaps between arbitrary groups are an inherent part of meritocracies. If you randomly assign people to two sports teams, Red and Blue, it would be very strange if Red and Blue tied in every event, and it's not particularly unlikely that one team would dominate the other in a variety of events. If the losing Blue team were to claim not only that the cause of their loss was bias on the part of referees (which is possible) but that the inequality of outcome is in-and-of-itself incontrovertible proof of anti-Blue referee bias, you would rightly accuse them of logical fallacy (especially if they claimed that meritocracy is all fine and well).

Efforts to smooth out all the gaps are indeed wasted effort. Gaps might lead one to suspect an unfair bias, as unfair bias can cause gaps, but this is only one of many causes of performance gaps, many of which are not causes worth fighting. Unfair bias can also cause those without merit to appear more equal to those with merit, which is ultimately what these thinly veiled protocommunists are all about.

TL;DR: In meritocracies there are winners and there are losers. Thus, meritocracy and the assurance of equality of outcome are mutually exclusive beliefs.

Why is it misogynistic to allow people free will?

If women choose not to be interested in a particular industry/career, why are there apologists clamoring for 'equity' and equal representation in the workforce?

Are there industries that have barriers to entry based on gender? I thought that is against most countries' labour rights codes, let alone human/charter rights.

I am not denying respectful workplace issues exist, but these are behavioural problems that are perpetuated by individuals, and so should be addressed (coaching/therapy/firing) individually/singly until those issues are resolved. Arbitrarily establishing hiring quotas for 'ethnic/gender equity' seems so bass ackwards due to the false expectations being created for people that choose to self-identify into a classification that explicitly singles them out just for being who they are.

Same reason why I feel movements like BLM/trans/queer are going about it all wrong. The way to integrate is to normalize, not to grandstand and make entitled statements...