Only 2% of kindergarten teachers in the UK are male (1). Further, the overall number of male elementary school teachers in the UK has fallen significantly in the last 30 years (2) - men have been "bailing out of primary education" for decades.<p>Are the majority of cases due to bullying or being "forced" out of the role? I doubt it. It's more likely to be related to opportunities and different types of people gravitating to what sort of jobs suit them best. I <i>suspect</i> if women are crashing out of IT, it might be because it's not a particularly appealing or novel <i>career</i> anymore (back in the 90s it was portrayed as super high paid and "cool" - far more appealing than the <i>very</i> sexist financial industry at the time) and women have better opportunities to do other things than ever before (e.g. finance, management, legal) whereas males in IT are probably there because they picked it from the start as a calling rather than a career.<p>Update: As one of the respondents says, yes, let's make IT more inclusive. But let's not 1) assume IT is a special case, or 2) go OTT by doling out blame or restricting the largely innocent (i.e. "men" as a group) by redefining acceptable behavior to be a tiny gamut of unnatural neutrality and inoffensiveness.<p>1: <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7838273.stm" rel="nofollow">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7838273.stm</a>
2: <a href="http://www.askamum.co.uk/News/Search-Results/Current-news/Primary-schools-lack-male-teachers/" rel="nofollow">http://www.askamum.co.uk/News/Search-Results/Current-news/Pr...</a>
This is a subject that I care about, as my wife is also a software developer and has felt out-of-place in a male-dominated field.<p>Two things struck me about the linked article.<p>1: It sounds like her Midwestern co-workers were just assholes, seriously. Having asshole co-workers is a problem for men and women alike. One key distinction is that men don't immediately relate abusive bevahior to gender. I am sure it often really is gender hostility, but sometimes the guy is just a jerk.<p>Basically: Dear women (and men) in IT. There are jerks out there and there always will be. Sometimes the only option is to get a new job. Sad, but true.<p>2: I find the idea of a "glass cliff" (i.e. an impossible project set up to make someone fail) really fascinating. It's a form of harassment I've never heard of before. Anyone have stories?
IME, the presence of women has mostly been a signal that the workplace is healthy. For the most part, women won't put up with the same shit men will to get ahead.<p>Whenever someone says "women are bailing," I read "working conditions are poor."
I'd say less than 1% of all programmers I've met/seen have been female. About 50% of the project managers I've known have been female. In about 90%+ of the cases where I've been in a meeting at work with programmers and a project manager, IF there were only 1 female in the room she was the project manager, not a programmer. So, extrapolating... assuming enough other males have experienced approximately the same thing in life, that could account for why they tend to expect any unknown new female they encounter in that situation to be, well, <i>not</i> a programmer, and very probably a manager or project assistant of some kind.<p>That said, yes, obviously there are female programmers, and yes it sucks if a man assumes a woman can't program solely because of a gender. But from my reading of the OA, I don't think that the particular female programmer in question was necessarily having that particular experience. Instead, she may have just been on the wrong side of statistics. Some of those men may literally have never encountered a female programmer before, period. So for them, it would be like, oh say, walking into a Great Clips to have your hair cut, and you sit down at the hair cutting chair and suddenly a man comes up and starts cutting hair. It would be shocking for me if that happened, at least initially, because based on my own experience 100% of hair cutters at the Great Clips franchise are women, no exceptions so far. But it wouldn't <i>mean</i> that I was discriminating against him, or oppressing or persecuting him in anyway.<p>Summary: She may have just found herself on the wrong side of statistics. Part of life, move on.<p>(note: Great Clips is a chain of hair cutting salons in the USA midwest)
If you calculate some sort of mean aptitude for IT work for each gender, you end up with a meaningless statistic. All men and women are individuals capable of individual contribution and for any large 'group' of individuals to be discouraged/lost is not a good thing for any profession. For selfish reasons I want more women to consider applying their talents to IT/computing.<p>I'm sure sexism and other factors have an effect, but people have a knack for overcoming things like that... I think the problem is much deeper rooted.<p>Anecdotal evidence, but ten years ago the pupils in my year at school were asked to pick from Computing or Administration as one of their subjects for the next year. We ended up with about 2 girls picking computing in the whole yeargroup, whereas the Administration class (secretarial work) was much more evenly dividied.<p>Computing was a harder subject but the girls in my year were just as academically accomplished as the boys (if not more). So what gives? <i>That</i> is the root of the problem IMO
The report is apparently not online, though you can give them your email address here: <a href="http://www.ncwit.org/resources.thefacts.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncwit.org/resources.thefacts.html</a>
[Edit: actually it is, just click "no thanks"]<p>There's another article here:
<a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/06/ncwit-report-examines-womens-d.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/06/ncwit-report-...</a><p>"The NCWIT report contends that 56% of women in technology companies leave their organizations at the mid-level point (10-20 years) in their careers, a costly loss of talent."<p>Maybe this is just Silicon Valley bias, but I have to wonder about who stays with the same organization for 10-20 years! I would expect most people to have worked at two or three companies by then. I wonder whether they addressed that?
For me it comes down to two factors...<p>1) In this specific case, I wonder if the geographic location (she moved to Mid-West) had a lot to do with it... ie workers not accepting of a strong woman in the workplace. In other words nothing particularly to do with IT specifically.<p>2) In general, women just don't particularly gravitate to IT related fields, perhaps because behaviorally logic-brained people are statistically more likely to be men than women, and those are the type of people who get ahead and successful in IT-related classes and careers.<p>Here in SF, I do think we could do a lot more to be accepting and encouraging of women but I think things are a lot better than other places and the main issue is lack of interest by women rather than them being pushed/kept out.