Do women in multi nationals get a Fair crack of the whip r are they controlled by men

Letree · 29-01-2016 01:40AM

I'm looking forward to RTE Primetime doing a show about the lack of male primary teachers or even secondary teachers.

RDM_83 again · 29-01-2016 02:20AM

jimgoose wrote: »

I asked Mrs. Goose what she thought about this, reasoning, as good, nerdly engineers do, that being a woman she'd have some insight. She said that IT would bore the bollocks off a battalion. So there you have it - she may just have a point.

I do agree that the genders do trend towards different fields/subjects but AFAIK in the early days IT was a field with a lot more women in it. COBOL was invented by woman and so on.

Now I don't believe that we should really push towards diversity for its own sake (and if anything these days younger guys do worse in nearly every metric than woman), let those that are best at the job get the job but its worth asking why the demographic in these careers changes.

gctest50 · 29-01-2016 03:00AM

RDM_83 again wrote: »

I do agree that the genders do trend towards different fields/subjects but AFAIK in the early days IT was a field with a lot more women in it. COBOL was invented by woman and so on.
.....

Really early on, Lady Ada Lovelace wrote the first ever computer program

She was the daughter of Lord Byron, who went on to knock around with Mary Shelley

The Randy Riverbeast · 29-01-2016 03:15AM

In my experience you can have a class of 60 and at most 5 will be women. When you get to postgrad level you get about 2 in a group of 10. I think girls do better than boys at the leaving cert (would need to double check) so could get in if they wanted. A company can only hire people who are interested and qualified for the job. If the colleges aren't producing enough graduates then there isn't much you can do. Some companies like Intel have a scholarship for women in engineering.

ectoraige · 29-01-2016 03:44AM

If there's not many women at the bottom of the ladder, there won't be many at the top. There aren't traditional female role models in STEM, it's improving slowly, but it is not normalised for a teenage girl to have an interest in engineering or programming, instead teaching and nursing end up as more commonplace aspirations, careers that now have a dearth of males. When there are good peer supports, female participation in IT increases. I am certain there are many women working in other industries who could have excelled in IT but never took the initial steps to get there.

M Anonymous · 29-01-2016 03:56AM

Does anyone know the numbers on the percentages of women computer science/studies/engineering graduates over the last couple of decades.
I think that fewer are women (the percentage, not the overall number)

Maybe those women are going disproportionately into a small group of companies. Let's say women are 20% of grads but Intel recruit 50/50 men to women then the remaining companies will have fewer women on the first rung in a position to progress at all.

M Anonymous · 29-01-2016 04:02AM

I can't link but I've just googled and apparently the percentage of computer science graduates that are female has halved since 1985. Nearly 40% in 1985, 18% last year.

I graduated end of the 80's and would have said 40-50% of the comp. Sci were women.

29-01-2016 06:46AM

Nearly every boss in the European bank offices I worked in in Galway was a woman. Only one guy had a team leader position.

Graces7 · 29-01-2016 07:03AM

I have a feeling that while men may think they are in charge, we really are. By stealth.. same as in the Church. It is a well known fact that if there were no priests left in the Vatican it would still run perfectly.. We rule! Always have done always will do....

suicide_circus · 29-01-2016 07:12AM

From my years of experience in sales and retail management, the majority of my staff were women. However, had I been involved in recruitment, that ratio would have been adjusted. Women were far more likely to call in sick, go long term sick, be involved in bullying, get injured and suit the company, stand around chatting, take the piss with breaks, use tears as a weapon etc. This is on top of their likelihood of maternity leave etc.
When you moved up to management however, the productity levels matched and surpassed their male colleagues but their likelihood of having complaints of bullying made against them (usually by women) was ten times that of male managers.

pickarooney · 29-01-2016 07:22AM

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Only reason those three things are problems are because working women are still expected to handle the larger portion of home and family life. In theory they affect men just as much, in practice they don't.

Pharma industry is similar and one thing I notice is that plenty of women progress to director level, but they tend to pay a price for it.

I think this line about expectations wrt family is a but dishonest, to be frank. I don't know many people who, if the need for money were not the primary driving force would choose to spend their time at work amongst people they don't particularly like doing work that's not necessarily that interesting over spending time with their own children.

I know which I'd pick if I had a real choice.

BigJackC · 29-01-2016 08:22AM

The Randy Riverbeast wrote: »

I think girls do better than boys at the leaving cert (would need to double check) so could get in if they wanted.

Girls outscored boys in 50 out of 58 leaving cert papers.

http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/why-do-girls-outperform-boys-in-the-leaving-cert-1.2317485

Problem isn't getting the points to get into these courses. Maybe IT just doesn't just interest a lot of girls? I'm all for programs encouraging more of a balance, but not everything has to be an equal split.

Boskowski · 29-01-2016 08:36AM

I work for a multinational and its probably the most balanced workplace I've seen in that regard. We have a lot of women and they're are in all sorts of positions and they're not there on the merit of being a woman, but because they're good at what they're doing. There seem to be more in QA BSA, PM and admin/managerial roles than actual development, but thats more down to individual preferences I think. I work in development with 2 women and they're both very smart, fine engineers. Not that all the above actually needs pointing out, only saying cos its the subject. In my place man/woman truly doesn't matter and therefore it doesn't really ever come up bar for the obvious differences e.g. maternity breaks. I never think about it and like that very much.

Boskowski · 29-01-2016 08:40AM

Graces7 wrote: »

I have a feeling that while men may think they are in charge, we really are. By stealth.. same as in the Church. It is a well known fact that if there were no priests left in the Vatican it would still run perfectly.. We rule! Always have done always will do....

I'd prefer if no one actually would put themselves into a group and would want to be 'in charge' based on that. I'd prefer if individuals just do what they like and what they're good at and if that means they get to be in charge then that's it.

gramar · 29-01-2016 08:46AM

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Pharma industry is similar and one thing I notice is that plenty of women progress to director level, but they tend to pay a price for it.

Well if that's not sexism I don't know what is. Men getting paid to be directors and women having to pay to be directors!

jimgoose · 29-01-2016 09:02AM

Stheno wrote: »

I have to say I absolutely love what I do...

Oh yes, so do I. I'm in ICT R&D, roughly at Principal Master-Geek level, and have been in computing/IT for nigh on 25 years. It's the only game for me. In our particular facility very nearly half the staff are women of all ages. Outside of that sort of environment though, I have noticed that nerdy, highly-technical stuff tends to bore women more so than men. It's not the maths either - Mrs. Goose is, among other things, a tax consultant - but some of the more tedious "nitty-gritty" of machinery and data that seems to turn them off, I think.

29-01-2016 11:58AM

Stheno wrote: »

IBMS CEO is a woman.
Oracles CEO is a woman.
A woman has previously been the CEO of HP.
Facebooks CEO is a woman
Yahoos CEO is a woman.

There are two issues here that you are talking about, one is the participation of women in IT, and the other is how far they can progress.

I work in IT as a consultant and am fairly senior and I'm female.

Of my current clients (five) one has a female CIO, and the other four have no women in the management team.

Doesn't make any difference in terms of how I am treated, I'm still just someone with specialist skills.

The culture can be different though.

Why don't women work in IT?

Imo there are multiple reasons:
1. The hours are long, so family unfriendly
2. You need to constantly upskill
3. For many jobs you need to do a lot of travel.

Its clear as day to me why there aren't as many women in IT. I did computer science in college. Around 10% of my class was female, around 10% of applicants of my currents role are female and predictably around 10% of my co-workers are female.

Why are only 10% of my college class female? That runs far deeper. My theory is that its because I was given a tonka truck as a child and my sister was given a barbie doll.

29-01-2016 12:05PM

I work in a IT multinational. There are more men than women alright. Not huge proportion of men compared to women, however. When I started in the company 8 of us started together and were in the same training group. I was the only woman. I have noticed that there tends to be a lot more women that are project managers. These women usually have degrees in computer science, engineering etc but end up working as project managers after a few years.

jimgoose · 29-01-2016 12:07PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Its clear as day to me why there aren't as many women in IT. I did computer science in college. Around 10% of my class was female, around 10% of applicants of my currents role are female and predictably around 10% of my co-workers are female.

Why are only 10% of my college class female? That runs far deeper. My theory is that its because I was given a tonka truck as a child and my sister was given a barbie doll.

Hmm. When I was at it back around 1990, around one-third of the class were female. While the attrition rate was horrific (that's another problem) it was about the same across the genders. Could it be that, despite a quarter century of progress, young women are being more aggressively targeted by, and/or are more susceptible to, the Cult of Dumb that seems to be slowly taking over, where in-depth knowledge and finely-honed geekery on any subject or field is perceived as "uncool"??

c_man · 29-01-2016 12:07PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Why are only 10% of my college class female? That runs far deeper. My theory is that its because I was given a tonka truck as a child and my sister was given a barbie doll.

I don't fully buy that line tbh. I mean don't women outnumber men studying sciences in college? And they perform better than lads at Maths etc in the Leaving. What is it about engineering in general that doesn't have them applying?

29-01-2016 12:10PM

I came across this interesting paper which suggests women tend to move on from roles more frequently than men, which leads to them not reaching more executive roles. Child bearing being one of the reasons of intermittent working.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10973366

silverharp · 29-01-2016 12:17PM

c_man wrote: »

I don't fully buy that line tbh. I mean don't women outnumber men studying sciences in college? And they perform better than lads at Maths etc in the Leaving. What is it about engineering in general that doesn't have them applying?

I think boys still get better results in maths in the leaving . but remember the lc maths has been dumbed down compared to the 80's to widen its appeal ..cough....cough

Even in Sweden men dominate engineering . we like different things and it has nothing to do with whether you played with Lego as a kid. The whackier end of feminism is looking for problems that don't exist

gizmo555 · 29-01-2016 12:19PM

gctest50 wrote: »

Really early on, Lady Ada Lovelace wrote the first ever computer program

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper created the programming language FLOW-MATIC, from which in turn COBOL was largely developed. COBOL is still, 56 years later, in widespread commercial use. (She was also probably the first person to use the term "bug" with reference to an error in program code!)

29-01-2016 12:22PM

c_man wrote: »

I don't fully buy that line tbh. I mean don't women outnumber men studying sciences in college? And they perform better than lads at Maths etc in the Leaving. What is it about engineering in general that doesn't have them applying?

I only know about Computer Science and Engineering from personal experience; women are massively out numbered. I've no idea about other sciences.

gizmo555 · 29-01-2016 12:24PM

The Randy Riverbeast wrote: »

When you get to postgrad level you get about 2 in a group of 10.

I volunteered to teach Scratch programming to a group of ten year olds in my children's primary school. Anyone who wanted was welcome to take part and it was free of charge. The ratio there was about 2 girls out of a total of 15. Whatever source of the bias is, it's created early.

29-01-2016 12:28PM

gizmo555 wrote: »

I volunteered to teach Scratch programming to a group of ten year olds in my children's primary school. Anyone who wanted was welcome to take part and it was free of charge. The ratio there was about 2 girls out of a total of 15. Whatever source of the bias is, it's created early.

I think this is the crux of the issue. I know its a small sample size but I've seen it myself too (again anecdotal evidence).

I absolutely refuse to buy my niece "girly" gifts for her birthday/christmas. I think she's growing to resent me for it :pac:

c_man · 29-01-2016 12:35PM

Deleted User wrote: »

I only know about Computer Science and Engineering from personal experience; women are massively out numbered. I've no idea about other sciences.

I don't have any links to hand but I'm 90% sure that's the case. Anecdotally I remember in undergrad engineering we were always delighted when we'd be sharing a class with any of the Science streams. Women! :pac:

silverharp · 29-01-2016 12:50PM

gizmo555 wrote: »

I volunteered to teach Scratch programming to a group of ten year olds in my children's primary school. Anyone who wanted was welcome to take part and it was free of charge. The ratio there was about 2 girls out of a total of 15. Whatever source of the bias is, it's created early.

Some of it is biological so there will always be a numbers bias in certain fields. If I remember back to school every class had its "Sheldon" and others that were into cb ham radios , electronics. Teenage girls simply have no interest in these things.

jimgoose · 29-01-2016 12:54PM

silverharp wrote: »

...Teenage girls simply have no interest in these things.

There's always an exception to prove the rule, though. I know one young wan who was always interested in engines. Not just any engines either - she's now a marine engineer, out at sea for six months at a time babying Cathedral diesels the size of a large building. :pac:

gizmo555 · 29-01-2016 01:02PM

silverharp wrote: »

Some of it is biological so there will always be a numbers bias in certain fields . . .Teenage girls simply have no interest in these things.

I can't agree that it's biological, any more than it's "biological" that there are so few male primary school teachers these days. Of the eight teachers who taught me in primary school, six were men. These days male primary school teachers are practically an endangered species. In the same way, when I studied computer science in DIT in the mid-80s, about 40% of my class were women.

I think it's just changing attitudes and fashions, not any hardwired biological gender based bias. It's not, for example, as though coding requires greater physical strength than women are capable of. FWIW, the two girls in my Scratch class actually did better work and showed more aptitude & enthusiasm than most of the boys.

Do women in multi nationals get a Fair crack of the whip r are they controlled by men

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