Grace Murray Hopper, Pioneer Computer Scientist and inventor of the ‘Computer Bug”.Madeleine Albright once remarked that “the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. She didn’t make that up but was quoting Abba Eban, a former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, but I heard it from her first. I’m starting to think the same quote applies to women. Seriously. The longer I work in our industry the more I’m starting to think that most women never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Don’t get me wrong. I love women and think they are smarter, faster and more organized than men. Unfortunately I don’t see too many women taking advantage of their skills and the opportunities presented to them. No, this is not just an observation by a male macho geek. I have some pretty impressive data to back this up. Of course, with lies, damn lies and statistics as the basis of my assumptions, I could be wrong. So consider this a RFC.
First of all I want to get started with women in technology. Why aren’t you dominant in our space? No really, why not? On the web, nobody knows whether you’re are a pony, a geek or a women. The reason why so many web entrepreneurs are geeks with pimples is that they can be. Nobody judges them on their body odor, pimples, glasses or stutter. All they are judged on is their work. Or as Jessica Livingston explains:
By nature, startups are very non-discriminatory. As a founder, your success is directly tied to the success of your product. You must please the market, not your boss or other executives. The market doesn’t care how old, what race, religion or what gender you are. It cares if the product is actually good.
More women than ever are starting companies these days. But hardly any of them are in technology (I know the exceptions, so spare me those) and I just don’t understand why. What is holding you back?
Ah, it might be our geeky attitude that keeps you out? Blog posts with titles such as “What is keeping women out of technology?” make you feel ‘not at home’ in our industry? Well excuse me sister. Want an invitation? Want me to hold the door open for you? Want me to make it easy for you? Get the hell outta here. Women unfriendly environment? I just don’t buy that as the reason you are not in this space. What kind of lame excuse is that? “yes I would like to build the next Google but I just don’t feel welcome in this space”.
Take this blog as an example. 44% of our readers are female. Impressive right? But somehow you don’t notice it. I’d say one in 20 comments here is from a women. Maybe even less. Unless I violate your rights by posting an image that is “sexualizing women in a business context“. Then you are all here commenting about the rights I supposedly violated. The fact that you haven’t exactly been taking advantage of those same rights before doesn’t seem to bother anyone. It bothers me.
When I’m at a conference, any conference really, and there is time for questions, 9 times out of 10 the person asking a question will be a male. It seems part of being a women. Is it really?
More data: Nokia did a study recently and found out that of women miss a lot more phonecalls than man. You can’t seem to find your damn phones in your damn purses! I have been asking women about that the last few months and asking their opinion on it. They all agree with and confirm the study. And they are fine with it. The reply I get is “You know how hard it is to find anything in a purse?”. That might be a reason but isn’t an excuse. How can anyone function in a business context if they miss important phonecalls?
Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at the search engine company Google
Every year we organize The Next Web Conference and every year we get shit about not putting enough women on stage. The reality is that we invite as many women as men to our events. Most men we invite are happy to be invited and thrilled at the prospect of speaking to 1000 of their peers. Most women don’t reply at all, say they are too busy or ask me to explain to them what they would get out of talking to a 1000 of their peers. They don’t seem to consider it work. In the end, we end up with maybe one or two women on stage.
Two women might not seem a lot next to 18 guys but that is actually more than the industry average. As Jessica Livingston writes there seem to be less than 10% women (she funded 7 women out of 102 start-ups) in the start-ups she funded at YCombinator.
The reason I started this post is something that happened at a networking event last week. Just before the break a female comedian entered the stage to entertain the room and get us in the mood for networking. She asked everybody to stand up and then started to ask us the first of 10 questions. The goal was to filter out the people who were REALLY interested in networking. Her third question was “Who didn’t bring their businesscards with them today”. I was in the front row and saw her jaw drop, so I looked around. All the women in the room (it was a 50/50 male/female audience) were sitting down. None of them had brought businesscards to a networking event. The comedian said “I guess you all thought that if you show your breasts he will remember you?”.
I don’t think that was it, but I do wonder what was going through these women’s minds.
After the meeting I went up to the comedian and asked her if she knew that all those women would forget their cards. She said she had no idea and it was just a lucky guess. I told her I thought it was shocking and that I wanted to write something about it on our blog and if I could have her card so I could mention her name.
Unfortunately she forgot her cards…
That is one helluva good article.
Hi Boris, I think this is very much a Western / European maybe even Dutch cultural issue. Regarding female geeks: if you enter a space with expats from India or Indonesia the chance is big that 3 out of 10 are woman.
Here’s just a side-note to drop in the pot:
Low numbers of women in technology is kind of a ‘Western’ thing.
Go to Malaysia, more than half of tech grads are women. That pattern is repeated all across SE Asia (I know some excellent female java devs in the Philippines, for example). In general, developing world nations with a tech industry are not having a problem with this.
There’s a perfectly sensible reason why. If you are (for example) Malay, a tech job is stable, indoors (& airconditioned), has prospects for promotion, rewards diligence, and brings in decent money. What’s not to love? Nothing gendered about those benefits, it’s just a very very good job.
Those benefits apply in the West too, & frankly I am sick to death of commentary about women in tech that focuses on the ‘culture’. So profoundly unimportant compared to the above.
btw your comments text editor doesn’t allow left-to-right cursor scrolling in chrome :(
ummm nice post. my “almost cringe factor” peaked a few times then at the prefect moments you kept reassuring me that u r not “just another macho, anti feminine, male chauvinist ”
phew.
i agree with most u said and wonder why women are not more involved in web related stuff as a general rule. my little hypothesis might be the word count theory. studies have shown women need to talk out loud about 17,000 words per day and men about 8,000. you dont talk much on the web.
i also wonder what the FB ratio is given that is more social.
wow i, too am sorry, as i am not “just another macho, anti feminine, male chauvinist “. i am happily married with a daughter and just generalising for the sake of commenting on this post.
How funny. You criticise women for never DOING anything, except showing up to complain about “getting sexualized in a business context.”
But your post basically boils down to complaining that no women come to your conference, without exploring why that might be, and how you might change things to get more women involved. It must be OUR FAULT.
If the purpose of this post was really to try to talk to women about their under representation, and maybe to encourage more women to attend The Next Web, I have to say it’s made me feel discouraged, rather than encouraged. Shame, because I loved @zee’s presentation at Webstock this year, and I had been thinking that the Next Web might be worth making the trip.
Cheers,
Sarah
PS – as I said on Twitter, the Geek Feminism (http://geekfeminism.org/) blog is full of tech women (many of whom are successful geek women and entrepreneurs, which seems to be what you care about) who take time out of their work and personal lives to try to encourage other women to succeed in tech. That approach is what impresses me, more than hollow complaints.
Such a shame that the valid points in this article are hidden by some invalid ones and a lot of stereotyping.
Everyone seems to be concentrating on why keeps women out of IT. No one is looking at retention. Why don’t women stay in it once they’re there. A straw poll amongst some of my female IT/programmer friends suggests that most will not be in the industry in ten years time. The institutionalised misogyny, a basic low grade sexism that runs all the time, is driving them away.
The issue about ‘standing up to be counted’, asking questions at conferences, commenting on blog postings, and so on is because for so much of our life we are generally put down we are afraid that we’ll be shouted down or ridiculed for our statements. So its safer not to say anything.
As for business cards, losing phones in handbags/purses and so on. At more techie conferences I tend to find its the women who have the business cards and who are more organised. In my particular geographical location, for a percentage of the geek population, women seem to have a far greater input than the numbers should indicate. Its generally women who organise the events.
I have a personal issue about some ‘women in IT’. For example I go to the local Girl Geek Dinner and find that there are an awful lot of HR and PR women there. So much so it tends to keep the more technically oriented women away as they don’t relate. There’s an amusing anecdote that you can always tell the coders at these dinners because they’re the ones in sneakers and jeans.
I don’t think there’s an easy fix to the issue of the low numbers of women in IT. I think its a fundamental problem that cannot be over come with some quick fixes. Probably there is no hope for the current generation and the best way to encourage women is to tackle the issue in the schools with the young girls who approaching their teenage years.
I wrote a poston this a while ago so I won’t repeat all that here. A couple of responses on specific points from this post though..
Yes I do think we are our own worst enemy at times. That tends to be because we have less confidence in our abilities than men do – they seem to be naturally a bit over-confident. This is a good thing sometimes but not always.
On startup culture, as one of the speakers said at Y combinator’s startup school recently a lot of startups tend to mistake “people like us” for talent. Mirrortocracy is not meritocracy. It takes effort for any business to look beyond “people like us” to people who can contribute to the business in different ways but it’s usually worth the effort. That doesn’t just apply to women of course.
As someone who has worked in tech for a long time, it does get tiring constantly being the odd one out and having to adapt to a all-male environment. That does not just apply in software. I have friends in other male-dominated fields like mathematics who have the same experience. I have learnt from it but it would be nice not to have to cop with the same issues time after time.
Finally when I miss calls, it’s usually because I don’t want to talk to the caller at that particular time. But maybe that’s just me :)
On the one hand there is the natural male hormonal drive to manifest himself. Basically, men want to show they’re strong men. So, they’ll grab every opportunity to voice their opinion. They don’t need to think things over. They don’t need details. Its the big picture that counts.
Its been shown in research that teachers expect from girls more details in their school-work than from boys. Girls give more detailed answers to begin with, and therefor, they’re being judged by the details of their answer. Thus, women expect to be judged on details. This makes them cautious, and often insecure.
Its the, often recurring, female dilemma you’re depicting.
Girls at school perform better at maths when in a girl-only class. As soon there are boys around, girls do worse at maths.
So why is this?
Why do girls/women still want to be girly (being good at maths = not girly). Is it really the old biological motive, to please the males, and show how fertile you are?
Technology is a male world. Would women be more forward, be more eager to give big presentations, ask more questions, if in a women-only surrounding? Do women have more confidence when surrounded by women? Are we less focussed on womanhood, and more able to let our true potential come out?
This is kinda sad, seeing the great potential of women, also in technology.
How can this change? by structurally and consequently showing women role models, by empowering girls, by being aware of the preconceived notions about genderspecific roles that surround girls&boys from birth onwards.
ps i really think that the business card is a grossly overrated sales tool.
Unbelievably puerile linkbait. Way to look like a professional there.
You know what keeps women out of tech? Attitudes like yours.
Also by Boris: “Chick magnet: USB card reader disguised as a perfume bottle”
http://thenextweb.com/2009/09/29/chick-magnet-usb-card-reader-disguised-perfume-bottle/
I am interested to see this discussion move beyond the “male / female” stereotype bullshit arguments some replies grind into.
AND hear more about other cultures than the European / Western based ones. Show us examples of where and how it is differen. (Remarked on the ones that do already in this thread)
Good points Donna. A lot of the female entrepreneurs we look up to seem to be older.
Dear Next web, its not so much what women get out of being “IN TECH” as you call it (which has some fuzzy borders), but what they don’t get.
If you get on any stage anywhere and dare to talk about new media or the web today as a woman,
you will be “BABISED” and found wanting.
Your body and face or “Doabilty” (to put in in terms you men understand) will get in the way of any message you have.
Marissa Meyer of Google case in point, who has been nominated for a style award, She beautifully stylish, yes.
Entrepreneurs who happen to be women, are called femprenuers and other idiotic names, in Techcrunch articles.
Tech is no different than the rest of the business world when it comes to this double standard. Yes spare me the exceptions, I know who they are.
Men with furious facial fuzz, potbellies and bad attitudes populate the stage on Tech all over the place and are never judged by their Do-abilty,
So what you need as a woman in tech on stage, are inonclad balls, which you normally only aquire in your forties, after a few decades of desensistization. By then tech is considered “too young” for them.
When women stop caring about being objectified, in this way, they become very powerful
Watch this space.
Boris, thank you for the post, there are certainly quite a number of things that are very true about how women behave online. But this behavior is also the reason for us to also be more noticeable online and enjoy a number of other additional advantages as well – I’ve written a post about it quite some time ago here http://profy.com/2008/08/14/forget-discrimination-it-is-better-to-be-woman/
Again, thanks for taking the time to write this :)
Boris
Getting a lot of comment love huh ?
I think you need to look one level down as has been indicated towards education. For female presence in tech you need female presence in engineering schools; there is a lot of literature on the difficulties in getting significant female populations into engineering degrees.
The female working population has overtaken the malr working population in the US for the first time, as the recent recession hit manufacturing pretty hard, but most female jobs seem to be in services.
Whilst I would hate to generalise, the CEO of NetAPorter recently mentioned something interesting about “men wanting to fit everything into methods that would work regardless of the people involved and being essentially systems-oriented” and “women wanting to understand the other party’s motivations and being fundamentally empathisers”. Clearly Mars-Venus type rules are only mildly helpful, but I did find resonance in this and it would clearly help understand a male bias in engineering schools.
And yes your editor is annoying in chrome :-)
Good of you to bring these issues up.
Boris,
Oke messenger, let’s discuss the message and add
some positive points;
Female tech startups
There are many women starting or leading companies with an internet platform/component, to call them all tech, maybe not, not all of them are coders, but the increasing numbers will close the gap at one point in the (startup) internet world. We try to portray them to raise visibility.
http://thenextwomen.com/female-hero-of-the-month/
Girls in tech
An example:
2000 girls are in the application system for this year’s NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing. This is up 500% over last year’s numbers and proves that girls are out there that are interested in technology!
http://www.ncwit.org/award
Female Role models in Tech
We started a series to show that there are at least 100 inspirational roles and role models in tech. If anyone has a good story come forward. Yes, we called them sexy, because that’s good for page views…
http://thenextwomen.com/female-hero-of-the-month/get-inspired-series/
Just another thought: Female Geeks/coders and female entrepreneurs should be matched in my view much more to make some real visibility waves in the tech world.
This article is unbelievably infuriating. Boris, I can see that you’re being incredibly reductionist towards every commenter that disagrees with you, so there’s no need to respond to this one.
First of all, any sentiment that you need to qualify with “I’m not sexist, but…” is probably sexist. Replace the word “sexist” with “racist” and see how it sounds.
Let me start with your statement: “I love women and think they are smarter, faster and more organized than men.” This, in and of itself, is a prejudice. You are grouping an entire gender into blanket characteristics that cannot possibly be uniform across 50% of the population. Even though you’ve chosen three positive traits, you are still generalizing in a way that shows that you think of all women as being the same. Try replacing the word “women” with, say, “Asian”, and you’ll see how atrocious this is.
Secondly, as many commenters have already pointed out, in the Western world women are taught that technology is “unfeminine” and not for them at a very early age. This is institutionalized sexism that comes from our peers, our parents, our teachers, and society at large. Let me share some “evidence” (or, as you apparently understand the word, personal anecdotes): My first job was at a dot com in the late 90s. The only other woman working there was the secretary. Later on I worked at large corporation with a 200+ tech department. I was the only white female in the entire place. People asked me to make them coffee, to help them book conference rooms, or to direct them to HR – I never saw this happening to my male colleagues. I also found out later that I was being paid literally half of what males in comparable jobs were making. I suspect that if you actually talk to women in technology you will hear similar experiences.
I am passionate about technology and have been at an early age. But if I encountered such uphill battles to be taken seriously in the field, how many women never found their way into the field at all?
I’m sure you’ll point fingers at me to say that this is the first time I’ve participated in NextWeb comments so you obviously can’t take me seriously. Let me give you a basic lesson in digital communications: people respond to things that they’re passionate about. If you Google me you’ll see that I participate extensively online in other arenas. You should ask yourself: what is it about my publication that only entices women to respond in a negative way?
The problem isn’t us, it’s you.
Give me a Stitch and Bitch instead of a bitchfight !
Its not your post that provokes women to respond so negatively. Getting upset by your post is something these women are choosing to do.
There is so much crap on the web, if you see some more, you just ignore it. So if they’re commenting and getting worked up by it, that means they value your post in some way or another.
Also, we’re living in a culture where women complaining about men is fashionable and popular. Thats why men, whenever they mention anything about gender, have to start and end with apologetic tiptoeing and litter their opinions with praise and respect for womens supposed superiority.
If they are smarter, faster and more organized they probably have something better to do.
On way to motivate some people is to tell them they can’t do something. This includes both men and women. Make your next conference an all male only and women will be beating down the door to get in. Just kidding.
Maybe you should have a female put on the conference next time.
I find your blog very interesting, never thought of this before. I have been to many conferences and they were mostly men. I just thought women didn’t like to be seen as a geek. Because of the medium, gender should not even be an issue.
Hey Boris,
You and I have gone over this topic before. I don’t know what the real answers are though.
I can only speak for why I never went to conferences, or pursued working in the field. Essentially working IN technology was not my number one priority in my life. Perhaps it boils down to that for women, they have other things that are equally important, and thus aren’t completely absorbed in the tech world.
I look at my 15 year old daughter who is smart, well rounded and has ZERO interest in anything related to social networking, software development or really anything to do with computers beyond using them as a tool – a means to an end. This cannot be from lack of exposure, lord knows she’s seen me working for the startups and her dad is a bona fide geek as well. I have asked her to articulate what it is that she doesn’t like about the tech field but I don’t really get any concrete answers.
I think your post was a fair one, if a bit sexist but wtf Boris, it is what it is. The facts are simple and clear. The causes are not.
By the way, I can rarely find my phone until the 5th or 6th ring so if you call just let it ring!
One last point. You mention the lower number of comments from women as if that is the only way to display interest or participate. That’s quite a male viewpoint – whoever shouts loudest wins :) I comment more on analysis and opinion pieces like this than on news but I RT news a lot. So maybe you should also measure engagement by how much your female readers share NextWeb articles and what they share.
Oh guys and girls. Don’t worry. The new ages of Augmented Reality will be full of “hot geeky chicks” (quote: Bruce Sterling). There’s a whole new era starting. Where a feminin approach to markets and technology (i.e. not focusing on the tech itself but on the relevance for users) is ‘the normal thing to do’.
We at Layar have already 4 women (out of 9 fulltimers) and are hiring another female coder.
And personally I’m a bit fed up with ‘us/ them girls, we/ you are so…’. I simply don’t experience any ‘problems’. Is that really just me??
Hi Boris, thanks for your post. Why are more high school women applying for our Award for Aspirations in Computing? Well, we’re promoting it more broadly this year, and it offers a $500 prize and a laptop. (We also send a crystal, engraved award to the winners’ schools to put in their trophy case — NEXT TO THE FOOTBALL TROPHIES.) If you’re a girl who’s taken computing classes or built your own website or you participate in your school’s robotics team, it’s a no-brainer.
We agree with Simone that young women interested in computing are out there, and they want positive recognition. But as you point out, the entrepreneurial and workforce pipelines aren’t going to grow unless we grow the education pipeline as well. It’s not for lack of brains that girls avoid computing. For example, girls take 51% of all Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus exams, but only 17% of AP Computer Science exams. More stats at http://www.ncwit.org/bythenumbers.
I stumbled on your blog today for the first time, you had me smiling and knotting my head several times throughout the post. Well….at least I now know that “not bringing business cards to the networking event” is a “women’s thing” and will use this as an excuse each and every time my husband has a fit over it. :)
As for participating at an event, I agree with Martha, “Perhaps it boils down to that for women, they have other things that are equally important, and thus aren’t completely absorbed in the tech world.” Not to mention that some of us are petrified of public speaking of any sort, even if it requires asking a question. Sure we do it when we have to, but it has to be darn important and extremely necessary.
As for why women don’t and men do and vice versa, there is really one answer, “we are wired differently”, and that will never change regardless of how far technology takes us.
Hey everybody, check out this guest post http://tnw.to/3TgF by @stokely in reply to this post.
Boris,
I don’t care how many companies your girlfriend owns or how many daughters you have. Your comments, especially the one about “the phone in the damn purse” are still very misguided.
Although there are some women in tech, it still remains a boys club where women’s ideas are not valued as much as men’s are. I will never forget seeing a tweet from an attendee
(@rafe)at Demo 09 that said, “The TotalTrainer presenters at #Demo09 scare me. Those muscles don’t belong at Demo.” Come the f#$%# on, dude, there are so many male tech nerds who have no social skills and probably didn’t get laid until they were 30 who now seem to think they have all this power because of the damn “web 2.0 revolution”, and social media just magnifies their stupidity.
There. How’s that for a comment from a woman!
Boris,
Thanks for the article…it expresses some points brilliantly.
From the comments so far, I see that there are very few women who actually realize that it is not a personal attack on them..and I pray to God there are more like them.
Ladies,
There is no human on the face of this earth in all of time, male or female, who has brought about any change without having to suck it up.And that is what it comes down to…if things are not in your comfort zone..who on earth is going to change it for you? How on earth do you expect men to build better conditions for you, unless you really push for it! I’m not saying that where men have idiotic attitudes they don’t need to change, but i absolutely do not see why that would hold you back. I don’t get the idea of someone saying that they’re not taken seriously…well…no one is until they prove themselves.
And please stop lambasting Boris, in case you did not notice, he’s on your side…
Grace Hopper did not invent the term bug. It was in use by electrical engineers long before she pulled a moth out of a relay. You know what she did invent, though? THE COMPILER!
This made me jump. I can see how it’d be hard to be a geek pony (can’t type) or a woman pony (unless you’re the female version of Pan?), but a geek woman? Er, those aren’t mutually exclusive.
I wonder if fewer startups are women-run because VCs reject women’s ideas more often than men’s? That’s a plausible explanation.
Personally, why wouldn’t I start a tech startup? Fuck business, let the suits deal with that shit; I just wanna hack.
“I wonder if fewer startups are women-run because VCs reject women’s ideas more often than men’s? That’s a plausible explanation.”
It is not what Jessica Livingston’s research shows: http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2008/07/female-founders.html
But it might be a factor too…
I think it might be more of a case of female retention in IT rather than what’s keeping them out.
I worked for a company for two years where I felt like I was bullied by other staff who thought the management was playing favourites because I was a woman (and it seemed, most of them had a thing for me – and I wasn’t interested). I was only one of three women on my floor, and the only permanent team member with any responsibility.
I work in retail at the moment, but if I was going back I would be freelancing or doing something on my own away from the opinions of my colleagues.
Boris,
I am an accountant and have been in the field for 30 years. Critical mass for women in accounting took several decades to build. The major big 4 accounting firms all started have programs as a means to retain women and the programs now are for retaining all staff.
We need to reach middle school age girls for high school is too late. Expect that it will take some time. Supporting organizations like Women in Science & Technology is a place to start. They can provide the role models to girls.
I think there is a psychological barrier to entry into tech for women that filter out a lot of potential at a very young age in western culture. I grew up fascinated by computers, but surrounded by girls who didn’t feel confident or compelled to explore technology. It’s almost like “I don’t know what I’m doing” is an excuse not to try, but only when it comes to technology. In other areas women are equal to men in eagerness to learn and explore.
This is just an observation from my own experiences. I’ve often wondered what prevents all the women around me from becoming more computer literate as I think technology is an area where women have much more to contribute. It would be very interesting to see what happened if that invisible barrier was ever broken down.
I also find it extremely frustrating when women get defensive and jump at every potentially sexist remark – you ladies know who you are – please stop making the female gender a laughing stock.
Maybe there are some women in tech, but they’re pretending to be men – like the author of this article: http://www.copyblogger.com/james-chartrand-underpants/
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
“your post basically boils down to complaining that no women come to your conference, without exploring why that might be”
I hope it boils down to a lot more than that. That was just one fact in a long post with a lot of information.
Which gets me back to my first ‘observation’: all you do is complain.
Isn’t it a bit too easy to opt-out of this whole thing just because I don’t get it that you don’t pick up the phone, don’t bring business cards to a networking event and less than 7% of women start technology companies?
I’m inviting you to explain this AND take over the industry. Your reaction is that my ignorance discourages you to get started in the first place. Geez, if that is all it takes to scare you away I’m even more discouraged than I was before I started this post.
@Zoe
I think the difference is the attitude to tech in the west and in the east. To me its not just a job or career. I wouldn’t be in it if it were ‘just a job’. It is a passion. Something I’m good at. Something I feel I can contribute to. Personally I think career programmers are not the best programmers. There is need for career programmers but for the next best thing you need the artists.
I love to see more examples like this. Blogging about “what does not work” is still thinking inside this limited and retarded “male/female difference” box. Also like to read more to hear what the basic markers are where it DOES work for woman to be entrepreneural in IT or other “male” areas.
Now we are getting somewhere! Your write “he best way to encourage women is to tackle the issue in the schools with the young girls who approaching their teenage years”. So what would you propose? How should teachers make young girls more entrepreneurial?
“when I miss calls, it’s usually because I don’t want to talk to the caller at that particular time.”
I will ask my girlfriend if that applies to me too. ;-)
Thanks for your detailed(!) comment Karin. Very interesting points. Regarding the business card issue I agree that I don’t think that coming home from a networking meeting with 15 business cards is effective either, but not bringing ANY doesn’t seem to make sense either.
I can’t help but wonder if you actually read the post. I almost literally refer to comments like these in one of the first paragraphs…
Your post is counterproductive and will only encourage women to avoid both you and the tech industry more. Your “data” are totally anecdotal and really a waste of time. Maybe women didn’t come to your conference because your programme wasn’t attractive enough?
Unfortunately avoiding the tech sector is a rational choice: if people here do not respect or listen to women because of gender, why waste time? They could instead start a career in a field where they will not be subject to such stereotyping and therefore be more succesful in a shorter period. Avoiding stereotyping is a reason why girls and women don’t pick specific careers.
Thus, the only women who stay in technology are those who are ubergeeks and don’t feel they could go elsewhere.
There are numerous studies that indicate methods for better engaging girls and women in ICT (see for instance one I carried out with Cisco – http://www.eun.org/whitepaper). Computer clubs, ICT for social change (i.e. how can IT help the world, not just make profits?), IT shadowing days, and other awareness measures will work. The European e-Skills week planned for 2010 will address some of these issues.
Oh Mike. I posted worse stuff than that! As you could read in that post I made fun of that ugly thing! I was being cynical!
Here, this one is much worse. Do your research next time: http://thenextweb.com/2009/08/12/twillustration-hottoplesschicken/
My favorite quote from your post “If you behave like you are already equal, no one will doubt you are.”
There is a difference there even between Western countries. My last job in Ireland had about a 3-1 proportion male-female in the tech staff. In the Netherlands, I have only ever had one female tech colleague (and I hired her).
This is for similar reasons to those mentioned above. Ireland was a poorer European country when those people were educated and IT offered a good job.
Lovely. Also as it is closer to home :-). I think you got a good point here as one of the possible factors: “Ireland was a poorer European country when those people were educated and IT offered a good job.”
In my view – Regardless of your gender: I think a person preferably choose the solution most practical and profitable. IT maybe was one of the “least crappy” options for a career and an income. Compare that with working in a Canned Beans factory.
Hi Simone, can you tell us what caused the 500% change in sign-ups at the award? Would be interesting to find out what they did different to get to those numbers.
I would add that a better gender mix also made for a more enjoyable place to work. You can’t just discount that especially when it comes to retention as Melanie says above.
Thanks for taking the time to comment today. I’m really sorry to hear that the problems starts and ends with me. That sucks. And unfortunately it won’t get us anywhere either.
But I will think HARD about “what is it about my publication that only entices women to respond in a negative way?” and would appreciate it if you could give us a few pointers. Seriously.
Oh, and Asians are better at math. That is a generalization but it is true too. Schools take more time teaching it as they consider it a skill you can learn instead of something you need to have talent for. Sure there are Asians who are less good at math.
FWIW, that stat is disputed – a more recent study showed that men and women speak the same amount: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11762186
You must have managed to hire most of the female coders in the Netherlands then Claire :)
Mate, get your hand off it. (PS: Hi from Australia)
One thing I’ve observed time and time again during my career in IT is that men in general do not, at all, understand the way in which the culture they create drives women up the wall.
The thing is that at one point I had the same attitude problem. The main difference that I can see between the way you’ve approached it and the way I approached it is that I listened to what the women I worked with said when I asked them what got them pissed off about the culture in IT. You appear to have formed a bunch of opinions and, when people call you on one or more of them being wrong, you use that to reinforce your beliefs. This is one shining example of what drives people out.
Agreed. Many women, just as they are hitting their prime years as a technology expert – they have kids. Not that this makes you stupid or makes you care less about your career, but there are simply more things to keep track of in a day. I had my son at 29, just about the same time I was promoted to senior-level, and my daughter a few years later. I love my job (web app developer) and I’m damn good at it, but I don’t have time to go to lots of conferences, and I don’t have time to kill myself working outside my 40 or so hours. I wish I did. Maybe in five or six years, when they’re a little older… I do have an incredibly terrific husband who is not afraid to do anything that needs to be done – he doesn’t consider himself anything other than a full partner in parenting. But it’s almost impossible for more than one of us to keep it all straight – just this week we’ve got the dentist, flu shots, book fair, ballet, cub scouts, enrichment stuff on the weekends…
Thanks for stopping by Kate. With that kind of passion I’m not worried about you as a women in technology at all.
Technically you are right. She didn’t ‘invent’ the term but popularized it. Her notebook (with a moth) where she describes ‘debugging’ the system. It is on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington.
it has a few obvious logical failures though. Let me point to one:
“I’d say one in 20 comments here is from a women. Maybe even less.” – How do you know? As you also wrote, on the net nobody knows if you are male, female or a pony -unless- you disclose it yourself.
As to why a woman geek might not usually want to disclose her gender, comment on slashdot (purely technical, on stuff you know and would have commented on anyway) with a female name instead of a male or neutral one for a week or two, it might give you a few hints.
I agree.