When I worked at Wildfire at one point we had 3 women sysadmins out of 4, but we were the exceptions by far, all the vendors who came in let me know that
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I was never an SA, but deskside support and (to an extent) presales are a lot closer to being an SA than development is. I dealt OK with my coworkers and supervisors (in part because there is a particular kind of discourse and language that's pretty "male" from a linguistic standpoint and I can do that), but clients definitely tended toward the "you'd know more if you were a guy."
Academia was a bit less so, in part because gentlemen of a certain age thought I reminded them of their granddaughters or something and just stayed out of my way, and in part because gender parity has been such an obvious and explicit goal. But even if your supervisor is decent about you being a girl, having it chucked at you by the people you're supposed to be supporting all the time just makes you fuckin' tired.
Also, no one is ever talking to support (including SAs) when they're happy. Cranky people will seize on any reason to be more cranky, and doofus sexism is in easy reach.
Sensible women don't want to work with the Bastard Operator from Hell-- and there's always at least one BOH and one pointy-haired boss for SysAdministration.
Another thing that may influence that trend is that SA tends to be a 24/7 on call type of job. While I've been in the IT world for 13 years, that kind of job has had no temptation for me because someday, as a mother, I'll have a different 24/7 priority.
That is interesting. I'll add that my old company (which was bought by my current company) had a web development staff on which the women-to-men numbers were 8 and 3. In the new company, after several post-buy adjustments, we're at 3 and 45.
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Academia was a bit less so, in part because gentlemen of a certain age thought I reminded them of their granddaughters or something and just stayed out of my way, and in part because gender parity has been such an obvious and explicit goal. But even if your supervisor is decent about you being a girl, having it chucked at you by the people you're supposed to be supporting all the time just makes you fuckin' tired.
Also, no one is ever talking to support (including SAs) when they're happy. Cranky people will seize on any reason to be more cranky, and doofus sexism is in easy reach.
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(I don't know about the SysAdmin numbers.)
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