Discussion on:

Tech workers back need for more women in IT but oppose quotas

I think you'd get the same results if you ran this survey for US IT workers as well.

Gender equality is important, but I think people often go about it the wrong way. Do some companies have glass ceilings and/or a sexist bias in their hiring? Certainly, and we should work to eliminate that kind of backwards thinking. But the lack of women doesn't actually indicate those things - correlation does not imply causation, after all. We don't have a lot of women in our IT organization or in our company's executive team, but I know for a fact that it's not discrimination; it's that few women apply for the job. Imposing quotas, and other such affirmative action programs, are not the solution. They are in and of themselves unfair - they assume that everyone is doing it wrong and needs to be scolded.

Whenever there are quotas based on anything but ability, you sacrifice quality for equality. In addition to possibly bringing in less proficient staff, there may be a resentment among the others that feel the bar was set lower for someone due to an attribute they cannot change themselves. This will increase resistance by peers to accept a person hired under a quota and set them up for failure.

Force em to watch big bang theory?

Hak5 may be a good recruiting tool. There is a lady on there that is feminine, but also tech savy. It's pretty good content too if the one episode I watched is representative of the whole series.

Bill

Get them away from the notion that Facebook and Twitter are 'technology' and 'geeky.' Get back to teaching basic computers as it being a tool, not a toy. Teach how a computer works - at a basic level. In my beginning class, I brought in a box of parts and a case and 'built' a computer. Purpose? Show them there was nothing inside that would eat them! They loved it.

I had students enter my class with their back to the wall .. sliding across, too afraid to sit at a computer. I encouraged them from the word 'go,' and when the class was done, they came back, enthusiastically, for more.

I'll never forget one high school student - female - who took my basic classes and then followed me all the way thru my Office classes. We talked one day and she said she used computers all the time for classes. Why then, I asked, was she taking my classes? She said they were only taught how to *produce* something, step-by-step like a robot: a Word document, a PowerPoint presentation, but were never taught HOW the programs worked. That is what she wanted to know - how the program worked and how to best apply it 'out of the box.' Think. Produce. She had a real interest in technology and I encouraged her to follow it.

So .. there is a whole world of potential out there in education, but I don't see it being developed. Handing a child an iPad so s/he can stab a finger at a screen and swipe things is neither education nor technology. It's a lost potential.

I have three teenage children. They each have a home PC. They also each have had 'state mandated school laptops' since the 6th grade. They can word process and make 'keynotes'. They can create videos. They have absolutely no idea how a computer works. They do not know the difference between hardware and software. They can barely install a game (unless it's on steam).

According to the school this is as designed. They are only supposed to know how to 'produce'.. not how it works. I hear from people all over the web telling me that the new millennials have no need for 'tech support' because they are so 'computer savvy'. Really? I don't see it. Only one of my kids friends has any interest in actually figuring out how a computer works. I offered to show him as I always have junk around to tech with.. but his mother freaked out because she felt if he knew more then he'd 'mess' with their home pc.

I gave my 12 yo daughter a Raspberry pi that I had set up and now she can't let go. Deliberately I haven't connected it to the net yet but with MIT Scratch alone it's keeping her occupied for hours and hours. The XBOX 360, Wii and the PSP were a complete waste of money compared to that cheap little box. The good thing about the Raspberry pi is that you can just wipe it and start over every now and again.

@Slayer: I am afraid that being a nerd is like being bi or gay or straight - I honestly think we are born that way and yes - I am a girl-nerd who is bombarded with job offers in IT. I always thought it was because it was in the STEM fields. I didn't realize it was also because I am a nerd chick! Also, there have to be nerd girls out there otherwise were would all the little nerds come from?? Actually one of my fellow geek girlfriends created a new label for all of us: Nerks which is a combination of nerd and geek. I am definitely a Nerk!

...how many engineers are married to nurses? I'm married to a (slightly geeky) nurse and we're currently filling our house with little geeklets. So maybe that's where geeks come from.

because they like the uniform. I could think of many other nice things but they aren't suitable for innocent minds. When I was an engineering student the local nursing school was like a honey pot for us. We also had a lot of fun at the local pharmacy school. Ah! good times indeed. Though I am sure your wife put you on the right path.

Once inherited, it takes over.

skills and experience just so the company can quickly meet their quota. This often means the people are not in positions that have low levels of responsibility and are not really considered for promotion to more demanding jobs due to the perceptions of them having got their job solely due to the quota.

Much better to use a scheme like the apprentice system where the people supporting the employment pay a part of the wage for a few months or the company a bonus after 6 months. Maybe the BCSWomen should establish an IT employment agency and offer a big discount on their fees if the company hires a woman. At least that would ensure the women hired are seen as real professionals and able to do the job properly.

You are entirely correct.

and get it aired to encourage women and girls to enter the IT field. The first women in the IT field were hired due to their capabilities, as were the first men, so that should be emphasised and not quotes. Oh who should the mini series be on, only the mother of IT - Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Grace_Hopper

The majority of IT professionals in the UK are blithering idiots.
They don't "need" more women in I.T.
They need more qualified people in I.T.
They would like to see more qualified women in I.T. from a purely balanced social demographic standpoint; but they certainly don't "need" any particular gender.

Just makes sense. Don't lower bar. Poisoning the environment for everyone.

I would be offended if I were hired for an IT position just because I'm female. Employers should hire the most qualified individual for the job regardless of gender or race.

I don't believe I've ever been offered a job simply because they needed to hire a woman, and if I ever found out that was the reason ofr hiring me (or even something that was factored in to the decision) I'd be looking elsewhere very quickly. I want to compete for a job based on my skills, experience and fit with the team, not because I happened to have 2X chromosomes instead of XY

there is always some subjective factor(s) in place, your looks (who can convincingly argue with this?), the bond with your future boss, and I am afraid sometime, even if subconsciously, but it might make a difference if you are a girl or a boy.

Having been in the hiring process in previous lives, there are "minority consideration" lines to check off on interview results in some companies. If we did not at least interview an equivalent number of minorities (of which, in engineering especially, women are one), our dept. was dinged. That being said, we weren't required (though encouraged) to hire a minority per se.

So the good news is we were expected to at least offer the opportunity (some might say preferentially) to interview to women/minorities, which, though might ruffle some folks feathers, may have resulted in hiring a woman. As you say, hopefully it is due to better (or at least equivalent) skills. Can't honestly say, depending on how rabidly "PC" a company enforces minority hiring.

Women can see that IT is very insecure - constantly changing technology and skills, employers who only want people with latest skills..., try taking 5 years off to have kids and your career is gone. And now of course with outsourcing, IT jobs are decreasing.

Without sounding sexist, WHY does there need to be more woman? Just because the numbers are not even in male / female positions, why does that matter?
It comes across as a call to hire women JUST because their women, not because they are better suited, better qualified etc.
Why not say there should be more, or quotas of, MEN in nursing , teaching, child care, fashion sales, perfume departments, lingerie stores, etc etc.
Any suitably qualified, experiences or interested person, SHOULD be able to go into any field he or she wants! Not be dragged in because of sex or be denied because they're over quota for that industry!

that says that, for example, since blacks make up 11% (or so) of the population, that all jobs should be 11% black (which means the NFL would have to fire a lot of black players). Pick your "minority" group. Insanity. "Affirmative action" needs to die a horrible death.

By the way, you were not being sexist any more than I was being racist (I wasn't). Let's leave people to be free to do whatever they want job-wise.

If you are qualified to fill the job, there are no other items to influence those qualifications. Of course, some of those qualifications might be a bit slanted but are neccesary. Such as fluent in English, reading and writing. Silly, but that may change with the country. Lifting requirements and sometimes a bit of roof walking becomes part of the job. Claustraphobia and fear of heights can lead to some uneasy moments on a simple installation. The world is filled with skilled and willing workers who will do the whole job, not half or have to rely on fellow workers to do their job.

Probably a silly question.

IT people are no longer nerds. The word "Nerd" is some crap that Americans passed over to the other side of the pond to Europe. Although I saw very few female electronic engineers in the 80's I am quite sure that in the next 15 years we will see the imbalance fixed on it's own. You will thank Nintendo, Facebook and numerous flash games sites for fixing the imbalance. Before the Nintendo NDS, girls showed relatively little interest in games. Now that I see that my daughter and her friends have had Nintendos since they were 7 years old. I also see that there is an equal interest in schools for both genders in IT lessons. Since IT is only considered by 40 somethings as a nerdy I can't see that IT won't be fashionable for both genders. The only difference being boys will play "Call of Duty" and girls will play "Nintendo Puppies". However, the interest in basic IT will be the same. In the future only grandad will use the word "nerd". Engineers in European countries are not classed as "nerds" but society gives them similar professional recognition as Lawyers and Doctors. Although, I hope engineers don't make money from other people's suffering

IT doesn't NEED more women, not does it NEED more men. IT just needs qualified PEOPLE! If they happen to be women, great! If they happen to be men, great! If they're not qualified, get rid of them.

Get over this equal representation cr@p already!

Those who are competent and want to do the job should be chosen without bias.

We've tried Comparable Worth in government agencies in the United States with less than the best success -- paying secretaries the same as truck drivers creates an artificial balance not supported by world markets and may have been a (small) factor in outsourcing as we price our labor force out of jobs.

There should be equal pay for equal competence for equivalent careers with no bias at all.

The problem comes when management defines competence.

Historically, it is the responsibility of man to earn money. So men are always under pressure to work and earn money. Even if you don't like some job but if it is the only option then you should work. Sometimes you don't have so much options. But women generally prefer better jobs and if they don't like it they don't accept it and don't work. That's all. Women don't like IT because you can be called in the middle of your dreams because of a simple system component failure. If you're on the development side then long nights and weekends with overtime waits for you. I remember at some time police department said "our men are working in very bad conditions but I can not send women to everywhere. Most of them are not strong enough for long and heavy duties. And of course for each pregnancy our jobs must be replanned again and again. Our offices are full of women and I do not want more". Let's be honest. Women are not Xena. Generally they are not forced like us to work under any condition. They can "choise" which is a very important factor. Do not be mistaken by the exceptional women who say very big things and seem like a warrior princess. In real life there are not so much of them. So if you don't give positive discrimination then you can not get work balance. But if our aim is quality then this can not be solved with adding women to the area. It's not about gender or race, it's all about knowledge, experience, performance.

Also can I get the original requirement? Do we want to increase the number of IT workers, do we want to increase the software quality OR do we just need women? Is that all about it? What is the requirement?

...which is why there are more guys in IT than women, and I'd guess (not actually looked at the official stats) that would be why there are more females in nursing. The same is true for differing personality types
So why do people feel the need to create and artificial sense of "equality" by wanting to ensure that there's a 50/50 split? If more women want a career in IT - great! But attract them through education and motivation - not legislation!

It is hard for me to give an opinion on this topic but when I was for a short while at IT studies at one of the technical universities there where maybe 5 women for 40-50 students on one year. The point is that men and women are different and still it is difficult to see a woman who enjoys sitting at the computer and types some code on the screen. I don't know where is the reason but the more I talk with some girls who were on IT studies I got an impression that they were slowly getting bored with all that stuff. On the other hand, I see in my country that women chose other subject,courses etc such as production management. The reason might be in the way a man and a woman sees the complexity of a matter. Men see a problem in a more direct way staying focus on one thing and trying to understand a subject,problem thoroughly. Women tend to see many problems and they try to deal with many problems at the same time. All this might be based on biological prerequisites and it doesn't mean that any of the parties is worse or better.

They need to take a more best practice approach rather than a quota approach.

A quota approach will make people resent their female co-workers, rather than doing what most retailers and/or businesses do, is hiring based on the general population within the geographical boundaries of the company's location.

I think we should have more females in the industry, it makes things more rounded in the work place, just like hiring different races I believe helps make the work place more well rounded.

All this coming from a middle income, mid-life white guy with no kids and no wife and straight......think that's too much information, well....its just saying my opinion comes from a person with the most to "lose" with all this being implemented.

it is my recollection that there were very few women in the classes - usually only one or two in a class of 20 or so. Could it be that most young women (or women of any age) aren't interested in jobs in Information Technology?

As a woman, I have worked, and still work, in IT for over 40 years. A career in IT always allowed me to make decent money. Yes, I have been through lay-offs and downturns, but I survived because I was able to save during the good times AND because I always kept my skills tuned and multiple certifications current. For women who are nerds or geeks or otherwise have the temperament, skills and desires, this should be a great recruiting tool. This should be part of 'promoting women in IT'.

If more women want to be in IT, then they need to put forth the effort to do so. It is not incumbent upon anyone else to 'encourage' women to do anything. There is no 'encouragement' for men to be in IT, but yet we are involved. Why do people feel that women need special assistance? As Nate said above, correlation does not imply causation. A simple lesson that needs to be learned by both the HR industry a special interest groups of all stripes.

How about we let the people who want to be in IT, be in IT and be done with it?

In my opinion there is no need for a quota, because its not going to make a huge difference first off, on the amount of woman in the IT field. Granted, I think it will bring some type of awareness and possibly encourage some woman to think about getting into the IT field, but its not a guarantee and or a solution like others have stated to balance the woman to man ratio out in IT. Being a woman in the IT field and working in it for over the past 10 years, I find that a fair amount of woman lack the interest in the IT field. Its just not their forte or they don't have the desire to pursue a career in IT. I agree with someones statement that in the next 10 - 15 years we are going to see an influx of woman in IT. I feel its because we are moving towards a society that completely rely's on technology and we can not ignore that fact. It will then become a necessity to understand technology and gain an interest in it. Especially, if you want to be employed. In closing, there is one change I think could help encourage more woman to join the IT field and that is the pay scale needs to change. Woman should get paid what a man gets paid doing the same job. But that's another topic.

I would also be offended if I were hired based on gender. My advice to lawmakers would be to start offering incentives for women to get into the IT field of study. Not to enforce quotas. Companies should have the freedom to select the best candidate for the job from a wide and diverse pool.

I spent my entire career in IT eventually managing large IT departments and never once did my colleagues or I ever stop to consider whether we were hiring male or female candidates.

The question was always: can this IT worker do the job and will they fit into our environment. Sometimes the best person(s) was a man; sometimes it was a woman. Salaries were inevitably negotiated by HR and followed a standard structure. There was no 'salary discrimination.'

When I think back over the best developers / project managers / architects / network specialists/ web designers / managers I knew and employed maybe thirty percent or so were women. (The disparity is because fewer of them take up an IT career.)

Indeed there are two that I can think of in the top 1%.

The article and the whole concept of 'women in IT' is insulting to IT women and IT workers in general who, I argue, are a pretty fair minded lot.

These silly articles are simply a journalists attempt to drum up controversy which I am sure irritates many IT readers.

I am in my late 40's and have been employed as a "geek" since 1998. However, I have been into computers since the Commodore 64! (yes, about 1983). I had a boyfriend who was very much into computers especially the TRS 80. I credit him for my success in IT. I absolutely love being a Sys Admin. I love figuring out how to fix things. I guess it is just my nature. I agree with the guys that there shouldn't be quotas or anything else trying to force women into work they may not enjoy. My one big pet peeve about being a woman in IT is that I don't feel like I get the same respect as the guys. I've even had people say to me "can we get a tech to fix it?" WHAT??? I AM the tech! So if anything needs to be dealt with its the reality that women CAN be good at being geeky. We do have the knowledge and the smarts to get the job done. Personally I actually like being one of very few women in this industry. I don't have to deal with the drama that women bring to the work place.

yesterday, and I've been in IT almost 20 years. A tech turned up to fix a printer, the owner of the printer introduced him to me so he'd know where I was, then he turned around and asked if they had an IT person he could speak to! Never had anything like that happen before, and I confess after watching 30 mins of watching him repeat the same troubleshooting I'd done before calling him, to come to the same conclusion and order the part required (the one mentioned when the repair call was made) I wasn't too upset he didn't get the connection between me and IT - was only surprised he was making a living as any form of tech himself.

It's only natural. There are more women in primary education, there are more women working as nurses .... there are simply jobs that are more natural to women and others that come more naturaly to men.

It's also natural to want to sit at home all day and watch football. The whole thing about men's jobs being different from women's jobs (unless they involve physical strength) is old.

while the quota does not sound like a good thing. I can say that it worked for me to get my first job and prove to the employer. Sometimes being female it is hard to get in the door since it is a male dominated field and the people hiring have not quite gotten to the comfort of women in the IT field

Lots of women are "geeks" -- doesn't mean they want to work in IT. Women are still the primary care givers..if you are dealing with kids and aging parents, IT doesn't provide the stability, and regular hours a woman needs to deal with her life. When guys take on more child care and elderly parent care, home care -- and there is a shift in the general population - more women will probably go into IT.

Personally, I've seen a real shift in society, and as the responsibilities of both genders are shared - more women will start stepping into more traditional male jobs. No quota system is going to force more women to go take STEM courses, or except a job working nights/weekends. At least in nursing you get paid for your overtime, instead of - yeah you are on salary and will just work as long as needed. After all if you are working weird hours, you are paying high babysitting rates, and it is not worth it if you are on salary.

As a single mom, when on call, I'd either bring the baby to the server room - or send the babysitting bill to my management (3am calls, need to go in, and I have a baby.... can't see why the job is an issue to women) Not all management is that flexible.

Also the more women your shop has, usually the more women are willing to work for your shop...catch 22, no women, it is hard to hire any. They look around and notice the abesence of other women.

Back in the 1980s, the US had something called "Affirmative Action" where employers were forced to discriminate against more qualified workers in favor of women and minorities. When a lesser qualified woman or minority candidate was hired because of this, the term used for them was "Affirmative Action Special." They usually didn't last long at whatever job they got because they were often underqualified.

It was just as bad for the person who was hired over more qualified candidates. You were put in a position you weren't qualified to do, and people resented you for it. I know all this firsthand because I *was* an Affirmative Action Special at one company and had to work with them at others.

It makes more sense to ask women who choose other professional fields than men who chose IT.

Why in the world does it matter how many women are employed in IT? What matters is that each employee in a given position is taking care of business. I can't see the correlation between gender percentages and an organization success. What I do see is a correlation between employee's competence and organization success. The emphasis should be on qualification not gender. Suppose those gender bating talking heads want to hire more women so they have more skirts to look up into. And that includes Ms. Dr Sue Black, mentioned above. I bet.

I truly think that the best, most qualified person for the job should be selected, regardless of gender or age.

Unfortunately, many of the employers out there negatively select against female/older canditates. The number of times I've come second to a younger male in the interview process is frustrating, when I know I'm more experienced, better qualified and have done a good interview.

Talking to other older candidates, including males, they find the same thing happening to them. I blame it on the culture of young managers, I believe they possibly feel threatened by older subordinates. The same thing is true with female candidates, we have to be many times more qualified than male competition to be even considered for a role.

That has always been the case in all industries, and hasn't changed. Forget the "glass ceiling", getting the job in the first place is tough enough...

There's that "will the candidate fit our profile/our team" barrier that few women will suit, unless they are gorgeous, then they are not being taken on for their "IT skills", and that's just insulting...

I am absolutely against quotas. The best person should get the job. But stop discriminating against women.

Here is my problem with this discussion. Everyone assumes that there are no women in IT because they don't "choose it". But what about those that chose it and remain unemployed? Got my degree in CIS last year. I have a pile of rejection letters a mile high. Every tech job that I interviewed for.. they hired a man half my age. A couple of whom I had actually trained... grrrr... The only jobs that people were interested in hiring me for were web design jobs. How sexist is that? Especially since I have absolutely NO graphic arts talent. I guess because I'm a woman I'm supposed to grasp it? Sorry.. I'm much better at troubleshooting and customer service.

I feel like I totally wasted my education. I've stopped sending out IT resumes.. going back into accounting. At least they don't discriminate against women.

of the bloated garbage we see so much of now days.

For years I was in a computer chat room as a host. A lot of the chatters thought I was a male with a female nickname due to my knowledge. I inspired a lot of females who wanted to learn computers, after seeing how much technical help I gave. I also think there is a mind blockage with employers who don't think women can do IT, until they actually see them doing the work.

I studied Computer Science where 40% of the class were women. As a matter of fact, our Summa *** Laude was a woman. Women got better grades than the men. This was nearly 30 years ago. I now work as an IT Manager. Many of the frontliners of our vendors are women. I would say about half. They range from technicians, programmers, analysts and yes, sales. I live in The Philippines. Are you telling me we have made more "progress" in this area than the US or Europe?

nt

Oh my, I just noticed that now!

nt

Summa Kum Laude

The IT field does need some type of system or program to make their management accountable for fair and equal opportunity so that women who are are genuinely interested in their field, who have spent their lives constantly educating and improving themselves, and are working very hard for the customer and the business, do get a fair chance. The IT field doesn't need to encourage more women to go into IT who are not really interested or are just out for the money or the nerd image and then will lose interest later. I say this from my own experience as a 55 yr old woman in the IT field in local government health and human services for 35+ years with current and extensive formal education and on the job training in HHS specialized apps, networking, GIS, webmaster, A+ tech trained, and BIS support who's worked on many IT projects. I can tell from when I walk into an interview by the look on their faces, and then when the subject of the job changes to chitchat about family, and by then I know I'm not going to get the same chance as if I were a 20 or 30 something male. New and previous management on my current job promote males and younger people only to have them later come to me, or are sent to me, to train in more complex areas, or customers come to me later to fix their mistakes. Yup, there is still a major problem with incorrect perceptions and prejudging a female's ability to do the job, and that holds people like me back. Very discouraging and a waste of a well trained and experienced human resource. Someone needs to come up with a better system.

...but I wouldn't say that it isn't a problem, either. I'm a female network engineer, and while I love my job and what I do, the environment sometimes leaves something to be desired. I think male-dominated fields can often be unappealing for women, cause let's face it, we are different from men and a lot of times to succeed in those fields and be taken seriously, women have to sacrifice their femininity and act like "one of the guys." Which is too bad because I think the "feminine" perspective is valuable and could do a lot to improve the industry. That's where the focus needs to be, not "hire X amount of women" but look at what qualities women bring to the table and see them as assets, not liabilities. That also requires us women who are in the field to be true to ourselves and show that we may be different from the men on occasion but that is a good thing. Diversity in general is a good thing, more perspectives mean more ideas and solutions.

seek to work as primary or grade school teachers and nurses, or other predominately female work areas.

A man will never stick his hand down a toilet to clean it, so how many office and home cleaners are men? Most men will never collect the vomit from someone. It's amazing that women are supposed to be the weaker sex but my wife and my daughter never gag when something horrible happens even though they hate to see it or smell it. I myself could throw up quite easily or wouldn't dare clean up after anyone. Women get the work done regardless of whether a man wants to do it. My point is that men get to choose what they do regardless of their qualifications. If you talk about games involving various sizes of balls you will go up in the command chain. Of-course we all know that the more expensive the game is the smaller their balls become

If 20 males and 1 female apply for a job, why should that 1 female have any advantage or any 1 male? Without using any gender biases, can anyone tell me the benefit of having more women in the field?

And if we're going to have a representative portion of females in the organization, will we also work to have more African americans, Aboriginals, Latin americans, chinese, various other races, homosexuals, bisexuals, older people, younger people, people with attached earlobes and people with naturally blonde hair?

If they want to have equal gender participation in any industry or work area, then they need to apply it to all. Thus, if they want laws to force people to hire women in IT they also need to do the same in other industries like miners and sewerage workers - if it's good for one industry it's good for all of them.

You may now turn on your sarcasm alarms again and clean the slobber off the floor.

Looking at this article lightheartedly, I'm surprised no one has seen the hidden agenda behind this. A male dominated industry is asking for more females to work in the industry in which a good percentage of them are, how can I put this, a loner. This could be because terms like "geek" attributed to this or in fact its because there is a good number of men who are single.

If you say no that can't be true, think of this. Besides a bar or religious institutions where else do people usually meet. Work. Whether it would be through a friend at work, through a work function, or at work. When it comes to IT, many of us are on call or do a little side business in addition to our full-time jobs. Never much time to fix our pale complexions. Though I did make a killing passing off as Robert Pattinson for Halloween. Killing as in no one knew who I was. I'm the only young guy surrounded by the older crowd.

Here is another point. Do you see any female dominated industries stating that they need more men? For example Household Employment Services (Nanny), Child Care Services, or Healthcare. These industries have at least 69% workforce female dominated. I don't see articles asking for more men to be a nanny or work in child care. Maybe healthcare but child care or becoming a nanny, haven't seen one.

The next argument would be, well if you are saying that a gender dominated industry leads to single people, it will only be a matter of time when the industries you mentioned above complains about gender imbalance. My response would be, who has an easier time picking up people, men or women.

To be serious here, and before I dig a deeper hole with my dry sense of humor, why do we try to be equals. When people lose their uniqueness, try to be equal to someone else, try to force people to be equal, we will never have people who stand out. Yes, everyone should have equal opportunity to all industries. Yes, there are some industries that are gender dominated and push back the other gender from entering the industry, however I don't see the IT industry doing that. Like many of you, I look for quality / experience not gender or race.

If you are eager to learn, eager to grow, and have a strong work ethic, I hire you in a heartbeat. It doesn't matter if you are Klingon or have weird hair with a name of Sanjaya. I think we get the term equality and its meaning distorted when we look at stats of industries. Though I do believe there is a hidden agenda to this article.

I recently graduated from an IT Security program. We had 1 woman and 20 men in the graduating class. To argue about a gender gap is like saying we should have a quota for male elementary education teachers which is the opposite ratio. My wife graduated from an elementary program with about the same 10:1 ratio.

Of course there is a gap if there are no qualified candidates.

There have been some comments that have been deleted due to the crude nature of the comments. Let's keep it clean, classy, and professional.

Bottom line is, nothing but qualifications and will the person be able to get a long with the people in our office enter in to the picture for us.

Well, I'm a woman in an IT industry, started out as a programmer, debugger/tester, analyst and finally a PM. Honestly, the number of women in IT industry here in my country is small. That's not because women aren't interested in IT fields, in fact, there are more and more girls went to college/universities for an IT engineering/Comp Science degree. The lack of women in IT fields in my country is because most of the IT job advertisement clearly stated the requirement for the job has to be MALE. There were only a little where they didn't really care about your gender to apply for an IT job especially engineering. This fact was really discouraging back when I was still fresh coming out from university. Nowadays, some of the job advertisement for IT still requires only MALE for the job and the image of IT has since turned into a 'geeky' image which women probably find less interesting with the arrival of TV shows that show nerdy geeky IT workers and they probably don't want to be thought of as one. I honestly never admitted to being a 'nerd' or 'geek'. I think it's funny to call myself one though most of my friends call me either nerd or geek, which I don't really care as long as I get my jobs done. However, it's not really important to get the number of women and men balanced in IT fields. As for me, as long as the work/project/requirement is done, then I don't care whether it's woman or man behind it. Keep it simple!

Since the 70s I have worked in Restruants, construction, manufacturing, & IT with women in all fields (Yes, even construction) & have been fortunate enough to have worked with some really great women who did their work as good as if not better than most men. The best auto mechanic I know is a woman, as well as some top notch IT folk. Even the women wielders & carpenters I've had the pleasure of working with were top notch. Maybe because they had to be to keep their jobs as they all seemed to be judged much more critically than men doing the same thing. In fact, seems the place where I actually didn't see women working was as short order cook at the restruants I worked at. Even health care I see as many male nurses now as I do female. I read a post talking about the drama women bring to the workplace & all I can say to that is that, from my bigoted male perspective, ALL women bring drama EVERYWHERE THEY GO! It's just how they seem to be wired. Why do you think soap operas are so popular? Now, having said that I must admit the women I worked with on the construction site themselves didn't bring the drama, neither did the ones I knew in IT, except maybe for my boss at my last IT job, but that was always confined to the bar after work & usually started by her husband towards closing time. I guess my point is that while I've always heard about the shortage of women in certain jobs, I've never really noticed it. I even see women working the road construction crews that pop up all over the place around here every spring. But for myself, I say bring on more women! A quota isn't necessary, they just have to know what they're doing. I would much rather work next to a woman than a man myself as I've noticed that women do seem to be more detail oriented & more into safety on the job. So much more so than I was when I worked construction (when I was young & thought I was indestructable).
Both when I took electronics at a local business school & later when I taught at that same school I noticed that my classes in both cases had slightly less girls than boys. As a teacher I had to advise several guys to reconsider their choice as I didn't want to see them waste their money & time on a subject that they were obviously struggling with & would probably fail if something didn't change. I only had to have that conversation with 1 female student. The biggest difference between them was that the guys just seemed to be lazy as only 1 of them worked besides going to school while the rest were simply too hung over for class every day. Meanwhile the female was working a full time job as well as being in the National Guard & rasing 3 small children all by herself. After working with her for several weeks I finally got her into a nursing program which seemed to be more suited to her life goals. When I ran into her a few years later she thanked me. She had gotten a nursing job she seemd to like & was purchasing a house of her own. It seems to me that while men can go from job to job & many have the worries of providing for their families, it's the women that really have it tough in this world. I think John Lennon hit the nail on the head when he said that woman is the ****** of the world. As for the hireing practices of corporate America I believe the "good ol' boy" club is still alive & well where it's who you know that gets you the job as well as the practice of promoting incompentance to where they can do less harm that still rules the day. That's the only reason I can think of why there might be less women in some job fields that there should be.