Comments | jaderabbit: Fascinating article on women's careers (or lack thereof) in technology

jaderabbit

Fascinating article on women's careers (or lack thereof) in technology

Jun 16, 2008 12:50

Computerworld posted a riveting look into why women leave technology careers. The main reason is not starting families, but getting fed up with being harassed or belittled at work. There are more reasons, too, some of which seem related. Having worked in a tech-related industry, I would say that this looks accurate.

The mentoring idea is ( Read more... )

technology, work, women

Comments 12

cynodd June 17 2008, 15:38:43 UTC

I've been thinking about this since reading it yesterday. First, I wonder what, in the majority, these women are going into after leaving tech and science. And did they find it to be better? I wonder if things are actually worse than in any other male-dominated field, and if they left to go to another one, to stay home, or to go into a female-dominated profession ( ... )

jaderabbit June 17 2008, 19:51:24 UTC

You raise several good questions. The worst environment I ever worked in was a small sales office. I don't think the problem was that the owners were men or that the staff was basically two men plus me. I think it was that as business owners, they thought they could have the work environment they enjoyed: a locker room. Ribald, misogynistic jokes were part of the territory --and I heard one of them telling these jokes to repeat customers, so maybe it didn't occur to them them that what they thought was bonding with a male customer was rather rude to the woman at the next desk ( ... )

cynodd June 18 2008, 02:21:03 UTC

What a sad thing for your profession. One question, though: How do you know that it's become less respected because women are in it? Could there be other factors at work? Maybe that it's easy to get at least a college education, so there's less respect for the schoolin', and that people less religious than, say, a hundred years ago (at least, that's what I assume).Yeah, there's definitely no way to know what is the result of the "feminization of the ministry" and what is a result of cultural shift. There's definitely less authority given to religious professionals in general, regardless of generation, than there was a few decades ago. That's true for teachers, doctors, and lawyers, too. And probably there's less of an education difference between a minister who as a master's (or in my case doctorate) and the average layperson, where now the vast majority of congregants in UU churches have at least a bachelor's, and a very large percentage have graduate degrees, as well ( ... )

jaderabbit June 19 2008, 00:28:09 UTC

I think that there are fewer secretaries to go around now, actually. That used to be one of the few jobs open to women, and now most women don't want it any more. Not for long, anyway.

Heh. Making coffee is such a loaded thing. Once I started at a new job and one of my female co-workers told me it was my job to make it, so I did. When someone in a similar job found out, she went ballistic. "You know whose job it is to make coffee? The first person who wants coffee, that's who!" We eventually got to that, and it worked fine.

auros June 21 2008, 00:54:15 UTC

I've always usurped the job of making coffee, where I could, because I've always made better coffee than 99% of my co-workers. :-P

jaderabbit June 21 2008, 22:28:09 UTC

There you go, then. It really shouldn't be an office status issue.

And now that you mention it, I usually ask coffee-drinking guests to make their own so it can be the way they like it. They never seem to mind.

cynodd June 18 2008, 02:24:21 UTC

regardless of generation
meant regardless of gender... :)

and

minister who as a master's
is just my cockney accent coming out, and left the apostrophe off of 'as.

Maleness is A-OK anonymous June 18 2008, 18:21:38 UTC

Oh, thank you for deigning to declare that maleness is not a bad thing. I mean, we're so used to apologizing for being born male. But "macho" is a bad thing.

To whom? You?

Re: Maleness is A-OK jaderabbit June 18 2008, 19:09:05 UTC

"Machismo" was the term used in the article. They seemed to be using it to describe behaviors.

I wasn't trying to be condescending. Men and women are just people, after all. I just wanted to make clear that I don't have a problem with men in general. I thought the article was correct in many places, but I disagree with the assumption that the problem is with men per se. I think the real problem is unprofessional behavior.

Do I know you? It's much easier to have conversations with people who identify themselves.

Re: Maleness is A-OK auros June 21 2008, 00:57:19 UTC

*facepalm*

Some days I am embarrassed on behalf of my gender. (The Kathy Sierra affair was a particular low point.)

No, scratch that, I'm embarrassed on behalf of the whole damn human race. Rude, supercilious people suck.

Re: Maleness is A-OK jaderabbit June 21 2008, 22:30:56 UTC

Eh, don't be embarrassed. You didn't do it.

After giving the previous commenter about a day to follow up, I finally disabled anonymous commenting. I held off on that for a long time, thinking I'd get more interesting blog comments if folks could post anonymously, but the few anonymous comments I've gotten have been either a) spam, b) phishing, or c) rude. Oh well. Live and learn.

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