[SGVLUG] OT: Why aren't there more women in tech?

[Dan Buthusiem]

All I can add is that at one of my jobs, all of which are IT, the three
managerial  levels above me are held by women. I definitely agree that we
need more women in tech. I'm just wondering why the women in our mailing
list haven't chimed in with their point of view.

Sent from mobile.
On Mar 24, 2012 11:49 AM, "Christopher Smith" <cbsmith at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 10:39 AM, John Kreznar <jek at ininx.com> wrote:
> > In a message purporting to be from "juanslayton @dslextreme.com"
> > <juanslayton at dslextreme.com> but lacking a digital signature, it is
> > written:
> >
> >> ... My daughter (Rebecca Marie Slayton) took her PhD at Harvard, but
> >> did most of her hands-on research at MIT. ... she has occasionally
> >> been the recipient of condescending treatment by male colleagues.  And
> >> by the media, which is a source of particular irritation.  Things are
> >> getting better, but it's still gonna take time.
> >
> > Still, to deny the likelihood of a correlation between gender and
> > science aptitude, just as there is between most pairs of measurements of
> > human individuals, is, as Dustin says, to bend science.  Politically
> > correct, yes; true, not necessarily.
>
> I dunnoh that this is going on. The politically correct attitude is
> that there could be *more* women in tech if some changes were made,
> not necessarily that there'd be as many or more (hard to prove either
> way, but seems likely). The larger PC problem is this: even within the
> industry we seem incredibly stupid about our interpretation of
> statistics, and equally stupid about how to react to the reality that
> the field is male dominated. I mean really, how stupid do you have to
> be to ignore the reality that the prevalence of bias against women in
> tech has a Darwinian effect, such that it is completely idiotic to
> assume a woman who *is* in the field lacks aptitude or interest or is
> likely to speak up without having something important to say.
>
> The disturbing thing is that this plays out only for certain industry
> minorities (women and to a lesser degree, seniors), but for the most
> part for others. For example, industry demographics definitely show
> under representation of those of African descent, but I have yet to
> see a young male African American programmer ignored, overlooked or
> have their talent disrespected like I see all too often with women,
> and the industry is not rife with unintended insults to Africans. I
> don't like the explanations I can come up with for this observation.
>
> >> I think the more serious question is, "Why aren't there more of
> >> _anybody_ going into tech?"  Nobody is going to get brownie points for
> >> scientific ignorance.
> >
> > Yep.  Technical illiteracy has to go the way of illiteracy in natural
> > language.  Illiterates simply cannot cope in the modern world.
>
> But the two aren't necessarily uncorrelated. Not only is there the
> issue of people not always being interested in careers with
> demographic skews, but when your industry appeals to a narrow type
> (and I'd argue the industry is narrow enough to focus beyond just
> "young male", but that's a big chunk), it tends to shape the job & the
> career in a way that the bulk of the population is less likely to
> qualify for and isn't interested in participating in.
>
> I'd also point out they aren't correlated in another way: you don't
> have to be in the tech industry to be technically literate. That's
> another lovely industry prejudice. :-(
>
> --
> Chris
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.sgvlug.net/pipermail/sgvlug/attachments/20120324/bf2044f7/attachment.html