Why do so few women work in Software?

veryangryman

This topic was touched on in the "Do women get less respect than men" thread some days back. So i decided id start its own thread.

My office has a ratio of roughly 9 men to 1 woman. My college course wasnt much better. Of the few women that do work in the office, even fewer are in positions of power. Of those few, none make themselves heard when it comes to pushing for deadlines etc etc

Granted it helps you to keep your mind on your business, but what is stopping the girls from giving it a go? Its not as if its a stereotyped male job or anything.

Would be good to hear other software people (male and female) giving their 2 cents :pac:

AnonoBoy

veryangryman wrote: »

Its not as if its a stereotyped male job or anything.

It is.

mike65

How many women can read a map?

mikom

veryangryman wrote: »

Women get less respect than men when it comes to work, it's as simple as that.

In many ways they are similar to computers..... You don't appreciate them until they go down on you.

Podge2k7

Wimmin ain't technical enough.

Wazdakka

mike65 wrote: »

How many women can read a map?

Ah mike you're crazy





Women reading... :pac:

Turd Ferguson

Because you cant cook or wash software

keen

Because their much better at solving hardware issues.

My name is URL

In Ireland at least, up to a few years ago IT studies were a bit thin in secondary school.

How would anyone develop a flair for it without been introduced to the technical aspects instead of just MS Word and Encarta?! Boys were more likely to be interested in it because of stuff they done on their own time.. gaming etc

Give it a few years and I'd say it'll be more evenly balanced

f3qh5g0z6vc7ob

I will gladly put my hand up and say I can not read a map nor do I ask for directions!!


Ill get there eventually!

Naikon

I am doing Computing in DIT, and there are two women in a class of about
30. Software/Computing is just seen as too 'nerdy' for most women.

No woman wants to be sat at home on a friday night debugging and compiling
code. I have never ever come across a women in my life that cares about Linux

Brownie points to any female that has interest in computing beyond
narcissistic friendly hideouts such as bebo/facesham/$LATEST_FAD

Hellm0

As a software engineer (I work in the US), I can say that the number of women working in this field is pretty low. I can remember maybe 4 female engineers I have worked with off the top of my head, and none of them in senior positions.

Without alluding to factors like mindset or capability, I just don't think many women go into technical subjects in college and, therefore, do not go into more demanding technical positions. Those that I have worked with however have been top notch developers.

If I remember my history correctly though, back in them days lots of women were coders. I could be wrong but it this was back in ye olde days of punch cards and room sized glorified adding machines.

anniehoo

Eh...cos its bloody boring thats why :rolleyes:

dr.bollocko

1. Less women than men in IT courses.
2. The IT market has been pushed forward by men which subconsciously builds a pro-male environment.
3. Not much software / hardware is designed to the female market.
4. Video games etc. were rarely designed for women as they were seen as too small a market segment.

Hellm0

anniehoo wrote: »

Eh...cos its bloody boring thats why :rolleyes:

Keep saying that, keeps me in a job!:)

Ruu_Old

The rubber gloves make it difficult. *ducks plate*

TPD

Naikon wrote: »

$LATEST_FAD

Agh!

Sadly I need to get back to my C#

Naikon

anniehoo wrote: »

Eh...cos its bloody boring thats why :rolleyes:

Dennis Ritchie wants a word with you :P
Seriously though, is it just nerd stigma associated with computers in general?

Naikon

The Perfect Drug wrote: »

Agh!

Sadly I need to get back to my C#

Sorry, I can't stop with the doller signs :O
They are freakin everywhere. Soon they will invade my sleep:(

Hellm0

Naikon wrote: »

Sorry, I can't stop with the doller signs :O
They are freakin everywhere. Soon they will invade my sleep:(

I prefer the ternary operator. It haunts me day and night with it's elegance.

Agricola

Is it not for the same reason that there are probably alot less males in female dominated jobs like nursing. Software engineering is seen as a very blokey, technical job, in the same way that mechanical or electrical engineering is. Women steer clear of it in 3rd level for this reason.

The question really is why do certain jobs attract predominately one gender?
I think its simply that males generally thrive on precision, minutiae, some might say mind numbingly anal attention to detail. Because of this they are suited to these jobs. Women are built in a different way (thank god ) and excel at other tasks...............................like cooking n cleaning :pac:

orourkeda

Who cares?

Hellm0

orourkeda wrote: »

Who cares?

The OP. Also has interesting implications

Mr. Presentable

Women don't do logic, in general.

Obviously there'll be the occasional maverick, but it's just not their kind of ballgame.

Or maybe they just prefer their ware hard.............

Naikon

It's shocking how many women do Business and Arts though.
Sociology and Nursing are overly female represented as well.

Gummy Panda

dr.bollocko wrote: »

1. Less women than men in IT courses.
2. The IT market has been pushed forward by men which subconsciously builds a pro-male environment.
3. Not much software / hardware is designed to the female market.
4. Video games etc. were rarely designed for women as they were seen as too small a market segment.

Not in Japan

GLaDOS

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Not in Japan

Japan's a whole different story, for pretty much everything

Creamy Goodness

Naikon wrote: »

I am doing Computing in DIT, and there are two women in a class of about
30. Software/Computing is just seen as too 'nerdy' for most women.

No woman wants to be sat at home on a friday night debugging and compiling
code. I have never ever come across a women in my life that cares about Linux

Brownie points to any female that has interest in computing beyond
narcissistic friendly hideouts such as bebo/facesham/$LATEST_FAD

erm very few guys want to be sat home on a friday night debugging and compiling code. ya should have mingled with 228 people 2 of the girls there used linux :pac:

there are plenty of women who are out there that aren't just interested in social networks, you just need to look hard enough

CreepingDeath

dr.bollocko wrote: »

1. Less women than men in IT courses.

That's a symptom not a cause.

dr.bollocko wrote: »

2. The IT market has been pushed forward by men which subconsciously builds a pro-male environment.
3. Not much software / hardware is designed to the female market.
4. Video games etc. were rarely designed for women as they were seen as too small a market segment.

Nope. The male market is targeted because it appeals to them more.

The primal reason/root cause is that
1) Males evolved as hunters and that requires more problem solving, eg. how to ambush prey, how to set traps. More systematic understanding.

2) Males compete for females based on status.
As intelligence became a factor in sexual selection, men began to specialise into various fields they could make a name for themselves. Eg. electronics, physics, chemistry, psychology, software, etc.
So they became the "alpha male of physics" etc in their social group.

Women competing against women for men don't normally use career/knowledge as the playing field.

orourkeda

They look like this


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EfhfdBjc1j0/RsxmY27GpnI/AAAAAAAAABc/fJwa88AF2ww/s320/LilGeekGirl03_Web.jpg

Naikon

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

erm very few guys want to be sat home on a friday night debugging and compiling code. ya should have mingled with 228 people 2 of the girls there used linux :pac:

there are plenty of women who are out there that aren't just interested in social networks, you just need to look hard enough

Can't really argue with this:pac:
I tend to tar everyone with the same brush.

One thing I have noticed though, is that 'some' women tend to
be pretty 3133t when comes to Excel macros/Office.

Mr. CooL ICE

Ada Lovelace was considered by many to be the first ever programmer :cool:

veryangryman

I really dont get it though...

Its a career that you dont have to "be the best" to get into. Just do the work in college and focus and you will get on grand in a well paying low stress 9-5 job with benefits.

You cant say that for alot of other industries that require a college degree.

Who gives a sh1t if your thought of as a nerd? As a guy, it beats the hell out of tradesmen jobs/the army etc.

For a girl (i would imagine these things appeal), you have a relaxed office environment, little stress and the weekend to yourself.

Herbal Deity

No introduction to computer science in secondary school means that the only people you get doing computer courses these days are those who want to "make games" (and then discover that it's not as fun as it sounds and usually end up as poor to average programmers) and a smaller amount who for whatever reason happen to have a random interest in computers.

The crowd who want to "make games" are overwhelmingly male, since games are marketed that way, and the ones who happen to have an interest tend to be male also, in the same way that other technical subjects tend to interest more men than women.

The ratio of males to females is slightly lower among subjects like maths or engineering, because as maths and physics is introduced in secondary school, it's "advertised" to a wider audience which includes females. Computer Science, on the other hand, is (shockingly) quite an alien concept to most people, and it's perceived as a horrible, confusing mesh of ones and zeros.

stovelid

In the last few software companies I've worked in, there has been virtually no women in development positions, but they seemed to be better represented (relatively, I stress) in QA for some reason.

veryangryman

Herbal Deity wrote: »

Computer Science, on the other hand, is (shockingly) quite an alien concept to most people, and it's perceived as a horrible, confusing mesh of ones and zeros.

Long may it continue. Id anticipate a salary cut if people discovered the secret that its actually quite doable when you apply yourself

Mr. CooL ICE

stovelid wrote: »

In the last few software companies I've worked in, there has been virtually no women in development positions, but they seemed to be better (relatively, I stress) in QA for some reason.

That's cos they're great at giving out

fergalr

I put a lot of it down to inertia.

In times past more engineers, mathematicians, etc were men. Women didn't really have the option of such careers as they weren't compatible with the social constraints of the time. Those careers and roles thus became associated with men.

So there's now a lot of inertia that has to be overcome, for that to change.
One example of this inertia is that science and maths are not taught equally all schools, and many schools are segregated by sex.
Another might be that boys have 'hi-tech' toys marketed to them more (think transformers) while girls are having dolls etc marketed at them. These all change perceived roles. There are many reasons for the inertia, and I think that's a large part of it.
Just make things equal, make opportunities for education equal, and eventually things will change.


As for the ridiculous comments about women not being able to read maps blah-blah-rubbish-rubbish. Sure, some people are taking the piss, but there's plenty that believe that sort of BS too... well, on the maps issue, go orienteering some sunday and see how you do against the W21 elites.

I've worked with enough highly skilled women in software to find that sort of comment, that says the disparity is because they are somehow intrinsically less good at software, is just ridiculous. Even if there were somehow minor genetic differences in natural potential, they wouldn't come close to accounting for the disparity - but I'll remain sceptical until I see evidence. I reckon we talk a lot about natural differences when they aren't relevant.


One thing I notice about working in software in California vs here though is that there definitely seem to be more women in higher-up tech positions over there (and they are really good at it, btw). I do think the culture over there is much better about this sort of thing, for whatever reason.


One final thing is don't just assume that because you see few women working in software, that your experience is representative of numbers across the board. There might be clusters of women in areas like bioinformatics, medical computing, financial services, or other disciplines of software that you are missing etc.

Corkfeen

My name is URL wrote: »

In Ireland at least, up to a few years ago IT studies were a bit thin in secondary school.

How would anyone develop a flair for it without been introduced to the technical aspects instead of just MS Word and Encarta?! Boys were more likely to be interested in it because of stuff they done on their own time.. gaming etc

Give it a few years and I'd say it'll be more evenly balanced

Most irish schools haven't gone further than Word but now they do show how to insert images.

Epic Tissue

People are saying stuff isn't aimed at women. Since it's generally accepted that women fall into the softcore gamer category rather than the hardcore gamer cateogry we can take that the Wii and DS are aimed at them. Also, pink laptops, pink phones, etc.

I'd say so little people do computer science is because no one knows what it is. People know what business, nursing, engineering, science involves but ask someone what computer science is and they'll say computers.

K-Ren

They've certainly cornered footware.

Turd Ferguson

K-Ren wrote: »

They've certainly cornered footware.

Wrong

Wompa1

I work in Software and there's actually quite a few women where I work...some of the hottest women I've ever seen too!!

And the place doesn't seem to be full of nerds either because the people working there in their early 30's and late 20's got into it because their guidance counsellors pushed it when the IT times were better. Only problem is that I think it brings the standard of technical know how down because it's full of phoneys. My 2 cents!

Working in software is one of my options when I finish college and I'm taking two computer based classes in college. Most of the class are girls. I've always been interested in computers since I got an Amstrad when I was 6 and I used to come home from school and work on my websites all night. Maybe I'm just a weirdo. Hadn't really thought about it before but none of my friends are interested in that stuff. I'm not a geek, honestly!

jape

Harry enfield explains it best:

Women! Know your limits!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w

ejmaztec

We'd probably have been stuck with Pacwoman, had women played a major part in games development, and the character would have sat in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen with a headache, saying that it wasn't going to go munching because it's arse was big enough as it was.

There would have been no more games after that, and no computers outside science and commerce.:(

stovelid

Oops. I actually meant to say better represented...

Corrected.

fergalr

ejmaztec wrote: »

We'd probably have been stuck with Pacwoman, had women played a major part in games development, and the character would have sat in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen with a headache, saying that it wasn't going to go munching because it's arse was big enough as it was.

There would have been no more games after that, and no computers outside science and commerce.:(

Not sure what you can say to a post like that...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest

ejmaztec

fergalr wrote: »

Not sure what you can say to a post like that...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest

................and then there are those who jump on the bandwagon:p

Melange

jape wrote: »

Harry enfield explains it best:

Women! Know your limits!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w

That clip's gotten old, tbh.

rainbowtrout

I did a postgrad in software development and at least half the class were female, including myself. I'm teaching C# to Post Leaving Certs this year and i'm hoping the principal in the school will let me teach it to transition years in the next year or two.