Ladies do you or have you worked in IT/Engineering?

Nevyn

Once upon a time having a home pc and playing games on it and being on the internet was certainly a hobby for only a certain people who were into such things and they tended to be male and from a technical back ground be it some sort of science and engineering.

These were very much seen as traditionally areas that blokes worked in,
I know myself in college the intake for the first year was 110 and out of that I was 1 of 4 females and that ratio seemed to be mirrored in other jobs I have held in that field.

Being on an internet forum was once also considered to be a nerdy bloke things to be doing and I find my self curious how many of the ladies here have a technical back ground and how many are still working in those areas.

Pretty much it was this article which has me thinking along those lines.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/319212/Why_Women_Quit_Technology?source=rss_news10

Why women quit technology careers
More than half of the women in science, engineering and IT leave the field at mid*career. Here's the reason.
By Kathleen Melymuka

What if half the men in science, engineering and technology roles dropped out at midcareer? That would surely be perceived as a national crisis. Yet more than half the women in those fields leave -- most of them during their mid- to late 30s.

In this month's Harvard Business Review, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Carolyn Buck Luce and Lisa J. Servon describe the Athena Factor, their research project examining the career trajectories of such women. Hewlett, founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy in New York, told Kathleen Melymuka about what they learned.


Your research shows that there are more women on the lower rungs of science and technology fields than most people suspect. Women are actually excelling in science, engineering and technology, despite the fact that the schools are not very good at encouraging them. Many don't just survive the educational process but get some distance in terms of careers. The story is very encouraging in the early run. Between ages 25 and 30, 41% of the young talent with credentials in those subject matters are female. It's a more robust figure than many suspect. That's the good news.

What happens later?
The bad news is that a short way down the road, 52% of this talent drops out. We are finding that attrition rates among women spike between 35 and 40 -- what we call the fight-or-flight moment. Women vote with their feet; they get out of these sectors. Not only are they leaving technology and science companies, many are leaving the field altogether.

How many women are we talking about?
We reckon that maybe a million well-qualified women are dropping out in that age range. We reckon that if you could bring the attrition rate down by 25%, you would hang on to about a quarter of a million women with real experience and credentials in these fields -- fields that are suffering a labor shortage.

Based on the demographics, it seems likely that they leave to start families. Is that what happens?
No. I'm not trying to pretend that work-life balance is not important, but we found four other more important factors about the culture and the nature of the career path. We call them "antigens," because they repel women.

Tell me about those. The most important antigen is the machismo that continues to permeate these work environments. We found that 63% of women in science, engineering and technology have experienced sexual harassment. That's a really high figure.

They talk about demeaning and condescending attitudes, lots of off-color jokes, sexual innuendo, arrogance; colleagues, particularly in the tech culture, who genuinely think women don't have what it takes -- who see them as genetically inferior. It's hard to take as a steady stream. It's predatory and demeaning. It's distressing to find this kind of data in 2008.

Is this data global or national?
We studied private-sector employers in the U.S., and then we looked at three large, global companies with women working across the world. We also did a bunch of focus groups in Australia, Shanghai and Moscow. The data were pretty consistent. Actually, India is a little better than the U.S. But there's not much variation across geography.


What are the other antigens?
The second one was the sheer isolation many women cope with daily. She might be the only woman on the team or the only senior woman at a facility. Isolation in and of itself is debilitating, with no mentors, no role models, no buddies. And if you're surrounded by men who don't appreciate you, that can be corrosive.

The third thing is that, for many women, the career path is all very mysterious because they don't have mentors or sponsors or folks looking out for them. Some of them can't begin to map what the career ladder looks like. This mystery adds to the sense of stalling, of being stuck and not knowing where to go or how to get there.

The fourth thing is the risky behavior patterns that are rewarded. We found, particularly in the tech firms, that the way to get promoted is to do a diving catch: Some system is crashing in Bulgaria, so you get on the plane in the middle of the night and dash off and spend the weekend wrestling with routers and come back a hero, and there's a ticker-tape parade, and you get two promotions -- you can actually leap a whole grade if you rescue a big enough system.

But what does that have to do with gender?
Women have a hard time taking on those assignments because you can dive and fail to catch. If a man fails, his buddies dust him off and say, "It's not your fault; try again next time." A women fails and is never seen again. A woman cannot survive a failure. So they become risk-averse in a culture where risk is rewarded. Women would rather build a system that didn't crash in the first place, but men enjoy that diving catch and have a system of support that allows them to go out on a limb.

So finally we come to work-life?
The fifth one is a combination of extremely long hours -- in tech, the average workweek is 71 hours -- emergencies and a very family-unfriendly atmosphere. And at 35 to 40, women are often having the second kid, a time when even the most organized woman finds herself caught short by the demands of her life.

Is this whole scenario worse in technology and science than in other types of jobs?
We did work in other fields in our '95 study. It was a slightly different pool, but we found that women across industries will often take a brief break -- like for two years. But our sense is that this is distinctly worse. In many fields, almost 100% of women will try to get back into the industry [later]. Here, only 60% say they would be willing to give it another try if conditions were right.

So 40% leave the industry entirely. Right. They've been too badly burned. It's particularly serious for the women who have invested decades getting a Ph.D. in a much-loved field -- and for society.

What practical steps should CIOs take to keep women from leaving? It's the most standard solution in the world: You've just got to get mentors to pair with the young talent.

It is a total savior, because it prevents the isolation setting in, allows them to start mapping their career paths and insulates them from some of the worst repercussions of the macho behaviors. If you have only a few senior women, use some of your men.

And use technology. Cisco is using telepresence technology to do virtual mentoring sessions across the world -- linking young women in India with senior women in San Jose.


The Good News

Several of the companies that were involved in the Athena Factor project are experimenting with programs to change the pattern of the female exodus from IT. Here are some of the more promising initiatives:

* Cisco Systems Inc. launched the Executive Talent Insertion Program for lateral recruiting of senior women and multicultural talent. As of mid-May, 15 new female vice presidents had been recruited, including Chief Technology Officer Padmasree Warrior.
* Intel Corp. has created a women's engineering forum. The goal is to showcase their research, relieve isolation, foster solidarity and mentoring, and support creativity.
* Johnson & Johnson has a program called Crossing the Finish Line, which provides high-potential women with career development resources and, more important, senior sponsors who are charged with looking out for them.
* General Electric Co. is initiating a program called Restart in its Bangalore global research center. The goal is to reach out to women who have left to rear young children and to facilitate their return when their children reach school age.

Do you work in a gender cultured work place?

Stheno

No I don't work in tech/eng/Science.

Thaedydal wrote: »

Pretty much it was this article which has me thinking along those lines.


Do you work in a gender cultured work place?

Interesting article, research along those lines in the IT industry has been coming out more frequently over the past four years or so, Gartner (I think) last year published a study on the subject of women leaving IT.

I've worked in IT since 1997, currently work in a team of 21 and am the only female team member. There are 29 people in total in the IT department and 4 not including me of them are women. That said I do work in the Operations/Service side of IT, ,and have noticed over the years that there does tend (ime) to be a higher number of women working in Project Management/Testing and Business Analysis than in the Operations side. I'd relate to a lot of what is in the article, any mentors I have had have been male e.g.

The company I work for has a 91% male, 9 % female breakdown in terms of overall employees.

doncarlos

There are three of us in our IT dept, two women and myself. There was two women out of fourteen in my last year of college though. The year had loads of women in it. We were quite jealous.

jellie

No I don't have a tech/eng /sceince qualification.

I am the only female in my company. its quite small, less than 10 people. I am in a position of authority over most of the guys which doesnt always go down very well to be honest & sometimes i cant help but feel its because
- i am female
- i am younger than them all (noticeably so, im the youngest by approx 5 yrs)

They talk about demeaning and condescending attitudes, lots of off-color jokes, sexual innuendo, arrogance; colleagues, particularly in the tech culture, who genuinely think women don't have what it takes -- who see them as genetically inferior. It's hard to take as a steady stream. It's predatory and demeaning. It's distressing to find this kind of data in 2008.

ive never come across bad jokes or sexual innuendo (but maybe im just ugly & theyre not interested! :P), but bad attitudes and arrogance ive certainly experienced. Ive also had many a conversation where its been blatantly
obvious theyre taking the piss out of me but if you called them on it they could make an excuse to get out of it.

it does get me down sometimes. Ive reported 1 guy to my boss recently. for the most part i can take their crap, but some days its just too much.

The second one was the sheer isolation many women cope with daily. She might be the only woman on the team or the only senior woman at a facility. Isolation in and of itself is debilitating, with no mentors, no role models, no buddies. And if you're surrounded by men who don't appreciate you, that can be corrosive.

mostly this is not an issue for me - yet. theres a guy in work i get on with quite well and can have a laugh with. i find it more annoying that the companys so small than the lack of females. but that said female company would be nice, even if its just someone to sympathise with me when im dying of cramps and dont feel like doing any work. but im used to the lack of girls around at this stage, it was the same in college. i think i missed it more in college.

The third thing is that, for many women, the career path is all very mysterious because they don't have mentors or sponsors or folks looking out for them. Some of them can't begin to map what the career ladder looks like. This mystery adds to the sense of stalling, of being stuck and not knowing where to go or how to get there.

possibly a naive view on my part given what is said in that article, but i dont see my possible career path as being any more mysterious than anyone elses. in fact right now im shooting ahead of my colleagues.

The fourth thing is the risky behavior patterns that are rewarded. We found, particularly in the tech firms, that the way to get promoted is to do a diving catch: Some system is crashing in Bulgaria, so you get on the plane in the middle of the night and dash off and spend the weekend wrestling with routers and come back a hero, and there's a ticker-tape parade, and you get two promotions -- you can actually leap a whole grade if you rescue a big enough system.

not really relevant to me so far.

The fifth one is a combination of extremely long hours -- in tech, the average workweek is 71 hours -- emergencies and a very family-unfriendly atmosphere. And at 35 to 40, women are often having the second kid, a time when even the most organized woman finds herself caught short by the demands of her life.

I have no kids, but yes the hours are crap. not always but coming up to a deadline youre expected to work a lot of extra hours for no extra pay. That said, where im working right now can be quite relaxed about hours at noncritical periods - leaving an hour or half an hour early if youve somewhere to be is fine, coming in late is not a big deal (once youre not doing these all the time!). though this might be just this company.

Morgase

No I don't work in tech/eng/Science.

I have an engineering degree, and work for an engineering consultancy which was very office-based but for the past year I've been working on a roadworks construction site.

Generally I don't feel that I'm treated differently for being female but certain unwelcome comments are par for the course. I shouldn't be used to it but it becomes water off a duck's back after a while. There's another female engineer working with me who I get on great with, which helps me not to feel suffocated by testosterone!

We work fairly long hours but this is not something that bothers me in the sense that I don't have children to look after (or intend to).

I don't know if I'll be an engineer for ever - it takes a lot to become a bigwig in these companies and at the end of the day I just work to pay the bills.

When I went to university (ten years ago), there was about 10% women in my year of civil, mechanical, electronic and computing engineers. My boyfriend has just started college and in his year of computing applications and two other computer streams the percentage is less than 10%, rather than more!

tatabubbly

No I don't have a tech/eng /sceince qualification.

I've just finished my degree in chemistry and biology.. Lots of people did biology but chemistry which is the harder had less ladies in it... At one point i was the only female in one of my modules.

It's also notable in the staff that there was less ladies, and that when a female lecturer took maternity leave, i heard the male lecturers crying about it when i was in my labs..
But the good point was the amount of female phd students... loads.... with special make up parties to build up sisterly love

asdasd

in tech, the average workweek is 71 hours

A bit off-topic, but if that is the case it would explain why less people want to do tech. Per-hour that is a crap wage. In terms of life-style, rubbish.

Dudess

No. I have worked in a couple of very macho, blokey environments though, but to be honest, I just had a brilliant laugh in these places.

asdasd

I just had a brilliant laugh in these places.

I get the impression, however, that you are the kind of woman who can take a "laddish" humour. Some women just cant. Some guys cant too, of course. Male humour can be cruder.

CathyMoran

No I don't work in tech/eng/Science.

I have a science qualification but I did not work in that area - also have a tec qualification and work in that area - was also doing an engineering qualification but had to stop when my mum got ill and then I did - hoped to get back to it evening time this year but now hoping for next year.

Nightwish

No I don't have a tech/eng /sceince qualification.

I've an engineering qualification, but have yet to work in a related field. I studied in a faculty where the male to female ratio was 8:1 and I was one of 3 girls in a class of 30. A few of the lecturers were female and I didnt find any gender bias at all within the department, but in the wider faculty, there were male students who were immature and looked at the girls like they were just there for show.

b3t4

No I don't work in tech/eng/Science.

I work in IT. I'm a software developer. I finished in the top ten in my course which I'm quite proud about. When I started my course there were 200 of us and with a 50% drop out rate there was only 100 of us finishing. What we noticed is that even with a high drop out rate there was a solid base of girls that finished out the course. I've got some very good girl friends from that course. We had a few female lecturers as well which was encouraging. If I recall one of those women managed to become of the head of the department for a while.

The company I'm working with is pretty good. I've had to only deal with a handful of idiots that would question my ability (said people never lasted long in the company anyways) There was quite a few female dev's but they're is only two of us in the office atm (one's out on maternity leave) Sometimes I even forgot that what I do is unusual for a female

The long hours are something that would cause trouble down the line. I'm young and eager now but time will come when I'll want to leave work at work.

I doubt I'll be in this area for ever as I'm starting to loose the hunger for it. Also, my want to learn the new buzzword is inadequate. Buzzwords really bug me about what I do.

A

Stheno

No I don't work in tech/eng/Science.

sar84 wrote: »

I am the only female in my company. its quite small, less than 10 people. I am in a position of authority over most of the guys which doesnt always go down very well to be honest & sometimes i cant help but feel its because
- i am female
- i am younger than them all (noticeably so, im the youngest by approx 5 yrs)

This happened to me, I'd one job where I was the second youngest in the entire department with my eldest staff member being 27 years older than me.
To be honest I had the same feelings as yourself, and found that by working to take advantage of the knowledge that the person who had all that extra experience over me had, life was easier, they knew loads about the company and really helped me out.

It did however take a few months for me to actually cop onto this. And I have found that whilst working with guys who are older can be disadvantageous that they can be very caring and will always look out for their colleagues regardless. (the company I was/am in encourages this which may be a factor)

I'd one very (to me) funny experience which I will never forget. The company I was working in at the time was the lead sponsor for an international event, and needed a lot of onsite IT support. So the two guys in their fifties arranging the event call me into a meeting, talk about all the skills in the IT department and then ask who can authorise x person (guy in his fifties) being dedicated to the event. When I replied "I can" they literally gaped at me as if I was the toddler MD of Kleenex giving them permission to do something.

ive never come across bad jokes or sexual innuendo (but maybe im just ugly & theyre not interested! :P), but bad attitudes and arrogance ive certainly experienced. Ive also had many a conversation where its been blatantly obvious theyre taking the piss out of me but if you called them on it they could make an excuse to get out of it.

I am so used to bad jokes/sexual innuendo that at this stage, similiar to Morgase, I'd not even notice such things. I have found that in IT, there tends to be a sadistic/black sense of humor that can run along gender lines.

As for taking the piss out of you, I've found the best way is not to call them on it, but deflect it back humorously if you can. Not easy but it works

it does get me down sometimes. Ive reported 1 guy to my boss recently. for the most part i can take their crap, but some days its just too much.

It doesn't get me down, it was much worse in the late nineties, the sheer hours and stress get me down moreso.

mostly this is not an issue for me - yet. theres a guy in work i get on with quite well and can have a laugh with. i find it more annoying that the companys so small than the lack of females. but that said female company would be nice, even if its just someone to sympathise with me when im dying of cramps and dont feel like doing any work. but im used to the lack of girls around at this stage, it was the same in college. i think i missed it more in college.

I've had one job in the past twelve years where I had more than one female colleague or peer, it was very strange, when I went shopping at lunchtime I'd come back and they would want to inspect my bags

I think in industries/occupations dominated by the opposite gender it's something that you learn to adapt to, I've very close female friends, am involved in a couple of groups for women in IT/Science, and generally enjoy the company of women very much outside of work, but can't say that the lack of female colleagues in work takes away from my enjoyment of my job.

asdasd wrote: »

A bit off-topic, but if that is the case it would explain why less people want to do tech. Per-hour that is a crap wage. In terms of life-style, rubbish.

I can give you an example, I was on holiday last week and out of curiosity counted up the hours I spent on the phone/dealing with emails etc. Over the week it came to 21 hours, and to be honest it's endemic in IT, it's not a male/female gender issue, it's how the industry works, and possibly a reason why there is a high enough burnout rate. And just to clarify I work primarily in an 8-6 Mon - Friday environment, people I know in 24/7 are far worse.