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Ask HN: How many females do you work with?

2 pointsby lewisj489almost 5 years ago
Hi All,<p>I work in the UK as a developer in an office with just over 100 employees. This covers Development, QA, Support, Product and Office Staff.<p>There are a total of 2 female employees, both of them have non-technical roles. And I really feel like this is a shame. I went to university with people of all genders and I feel like gender diversity is great for a team&#x2F;office.<p>It&#x27;s just a stark difference from my previous workplace which was very much evenly split.<p>I just wanted to get a little insight, how many females do you work with?

9 comments

blaser-wafflealmost 5 years ago
Fortune 500 multinational, based in the South.<p>Call it maybe 30-35% XX vs ~70% XY, with most of the XX concentrated mostly in QA, Finance, and Project Mgmt roles. Actual Infrastructure, Ops, and Dev roles are mostly men, and are mostly offshore&#x27;d at this point.<p>In fact, all of the women on the &quot;technical side&quot; (Dev&#x2F;Ops&#x2F;whatever) are entirely offshore resources, with 2-3 notable exceptions. None of the exceptions are American, either, for that matter (Indian&#x2F;Russian&#x2F;German).
mytailorisrichalmost 5 years ago
Women do not tend to choose to study IT and engineering subjects and thus end up being relatively &#x27;rare&#x27; in these types of roles.<p>It&#x27;s not down to companies.<p>Changing that requires a long term plan focusing on primary and secondary education. University is too late. In the UK many schools encourage pupils to develop interests in all subjects these days and to teach them that they can be whatever they want, so that girls may find that they like engineering and boys that they like nursing (for example). I think it&#x27;s the right way forward but obviously it is a slow evolution.
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noninesalmost 5 years ago
None in my team. About 3-4 in my open plan (I guess about 100 coworkers in it). Same numbers in Uni.Similar numbers to all the companies I&#x27;ve been so far (best one was about 80-20).<p>SW Dev seems to be male dominated for as long as I remember myself in it. Made a motto out of it that I hope I&#x27;m gonna pass to my kids: &quot;steer away from any environment where the gender stats are skewed beyond 60-40. This is just not normal.&quot;
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J-dawgalmost 5 years ago
I wonder how long before a self-appointed member of the language police tells you off for using the word &quot;females&quot;
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lewisj489almost 5 years ago
I am sorry to anyone that finds the word &quot;female&quot; offensive. I just wanted to start an open dialogue, not offend anyone.<p>Sorry.
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gshdgalmost 5 years ago
I work on an engineering team of 15 with 5 women.<p>None of whom would find it acceptable to be called “females”.<p>That’s not “language policing” as described elsewhere in the thread.<p>You don’t see men in the workplace being called “males”. “Female” and “male” as nouns are used to describe animals. It’s dehumanizing. Don’t do it.
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remuxalmost 5 years ago
There are only men in my IT department. In the whole company (food production, over 900 employees) about 350 women work.
photoniosalmost 5 years ago
I work in Romania as a developer, in an office with a little more than 40 people.<p>In terms of women in the office:<p>- 2 developers<p>- 1 project manager<p>- 1 QA manager<p>- 1 HR<p>- 1 office manager<p>It&#x27;s a little low for this city and country. In most larger companies, the ratio is 60-40. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower.<p>Romania is a former communist country and the state did not make a difference between male&#x2F;female. It didn&#x27;t matter. You had to work. This kind of thinking has kind of continued.<p>It&#x27;s starting to change though. Romania has extremely favorable laws for women. Pregnant women work 6 hours &#x2F; day till 32 weeks at 100% pay. After giving birth, they can stay home for up to two years at 85% pay. Fortunately, most of them return to work after two years.
LandRalmost 5 years ago
One. But she isn&#x27;t in a technical role.
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