Submitted by “Today the Southern California Linux Exposition’s fifth iteration kicked off with all-day mini-conferences on free and open source software in the health care industry and women in the free/open source software community. Since the sessions on women seemed to be the less popular, least business-friendly, and most interesting of the two subjects, that was the series I decided to sit in on. It was a life-changing experience for all who attended.”
subject says it all…
Hint from an actual geek chick: with such an attitude, you won’t have a chance
So, what attitude will?
Pwn3D
To people who modded this down:
I admit that his jokey comment was perhaps overly frivolous, but what has he said that was so wrong? It *would* be a good place to meet some women who are perhaps geek-friendly and interested in geek topics.
It must be terrible being a she-geek: Y’know, members of the opposite sex, coming up to you and showing an interest. Must be awful…
Notice the over sensitivity when a man makes a statement that *might* in some way be offensive to women in a technical forum such as this. Funny, I though that we were all sexist, chauvinistic pigs who have no sympathy for women’s issues.
Maybe someone can explain why his comment was modded down. And why the reply to his comment by a women, that does contain a small element of personal attack was modded up. Strange that – as we’re all sexist pigs in a forum such as this.
I admit that his jokey comment was perhaps overly frivolous, but what has he said that was so wrong? It *would* be a good place to meet some women who are perhaps geek-friendly and interested in geek topics.
I don’t think anyone would have objected if it had been phrased that way. Didn’t mod it down myself, but I can certainly see why people might take issue with the “huh huh, let’s pick up chicks, Beavith!” tone of it.
It must be terrible being a she-geek: Y’know, members of the opposite sex, coming up to you and showing an interest. Must be awful…
Try going to a gay bar sometime, see how comfortable you feel when people you have no interest in are persistently/insistently hitting on you.
Notice the over sensitivity when a man makes a statement that *might* in some way be offensive to women in a technical forum such as this. Funny, I though that we were all sexist, chauvinistic pigs who have no sympathy for women’s issues.
You’re surprised that geeks are obsessively nitpicky? Please tell me you’re being ironic.
“Try going to a gay bar sometime, see how comfortable you feel when people you have no interest in are persistently/insistently hitting on you. ”
I’m sure I’d be fine with it. I’d take it as a compliment if someone liked me.
I said: “Funny, I though that we were all sexist, chauvinistic pigs who have no sympathy for women’s issues.”
You said: “You’re surprised that geeks are obsessively nitpicky? Please tell me you’re being ironic.”
The point that I was making was that the article claimed that we tech-orientated men are chauvinistic pigs who would always be horrible to women on tech forums. The commenting and modding behavior that I witnessed in response to the article confirmed the opposite trend: That men in such a situation are more likely to be welcoming and even protective towards women in such an environment.
In all fairness, it is *possible* that the OSAlerters who commented on this article were on their best behavior due to the subject of the article. However, as I said, the type of behavior is consistent with what I have witnessed in other, comparable situations.
“Try going to a gay bar sometime, see how comfortable you feel when people you have no interest in are persistently/insistently hitting on you. ”
I’m sure I’d be fine with it. I’d take it as a compliment if someone liked me.
Perhaps, but the point is that you’re not very likely to have a realistic understanding of what that’s like unless you’ve experienced it yourself.
The point that I was making was that the article claimed that we tech-orientated men are chauvinistic pigs who would always be horrible to women on tech forums. The commenting and modding behavior that I witnessed in response to the article confirmed the opposite trend: That men in such a situation are more likely to be welcoming and even protective towards women in such an environment.
I haven’t read the article, but if it does actually make that conclusion, then I’d agree it’s incredibly facile. But just because people here responded negatively to a rather ignorant comment about women, it doesn’t automatically mean that discrimination towards women is non-existent in online forums.
For the record, I personally have no patience for most of modern “pop” feminism. It seems to be made up of little beyond catchy rhetoric, unproductive “us VS. them” false-dichotomies, and self-described “feminists” who know much more about Ani Difranco music than they do about actual feminist theory. And I think it’s doubly-unfortunate because the sort of uninformed, hyper-sensitive nonsense just distracts from real problems that should be addressed.
…”Alpha dog” behavior, posturing, backbiting, and mysogyny were listed as common and unfortunate social habits among free software programmers…
I haven’t noticed misogyny as being common. If anything males tend to become overprotective when they notice a female in their midst. As for the other “habits”, which I don’t necessarily agree with, coping with different personality traits is just part of life.
Overprotective… yeah, thats me
I get that way when theres a female around.
If anything males tend to become overprotective
I agree with you here. I’ve seen it happen when a female intern came for a few months, two out of us four were a bit too helpful.
The third guy was married and he didn’t seem to care having her around, me, I can honestly say I didn’t have a good feeling about her which proved itself after a few weeks.
In the end there was some trouble and nowadays female interns are strictly forbidden by our (female) manager, hehehe…
>In the end there was some trouble and nowadays female interns are strictly forbidden by our (female) manager, hehehe…
In some countries, she could be sued for discrimination, as, IMO, she should be.
she should be
No, I don’t think she should. I’m sure if we’d get a serious female intern there’d not be much of a problem, but so far some of the guys haven’t proven they can control their hormones.
I must admit there’s been a (imho) cute young woman around who peaks my interest, but at least I can seperate my job and these kind of personal feelings.
>No, I don’t think she should.
Uh? She set a policy to select interns depending on their gender and you don’t believe that she should be sued for discrimination?
It’s her job to ensure that workers behave professionally whatever the situation, not to ensure that all the workers are of the same gender&race&religion&clan to avoid troubles.
As you said, it’s her job to make sure everyone behaves professionally, which is why there’s a preference not to have female interns as that works out best.
I think it’s hard to prove discrimination anyway as it’s not mandatory to accept interns at all.
We’ve also had not too good experiences with the quality of male interns so we’ve become pretty strict on who we accept in our group anyway. (especially as we’re under a heavy workload)
All in all it might not be the fairest solution, we’ve discussed it before, but I must reluctantly agree with her.
(and on the other hand I do hope the school introduces a hardworking, intelligent and independant female intern that shows the guys don’t need to hold her hand constantly, just to restore our faith in interns, hehe..)
“In the end there was some trouble and nowadays female interns are strictly forbidden by our (female) manager, hehehe…”
That really bothers me.
1) If the guys are having issues adjusting to women in the office… having MORE women will help address it… not removing them all together.
2) Depending on the country you are in, that is likely illegal
3) I hope your ‘not so good’ feeling had to do more with her individual character then her being female.
1) Not sure about that. We’ve had another pretty woman working with us for a year or so, but I still noticed the same behaviour.
2) True, but so far it hasn’t really come to that as we’re a small company and we’ve had no interns around for a while.
But, despite being a single male I must agree with her. It’s absolutely not about the competence of the female species, but the self control of the guys.
3) *nods* Very much so. From the start something warned me in the back of my head, something that happens more often but I try to keep an open mind and not judge until I get to know someone better.
And in her case I was right. Instead of someone who took the job seriously she was too much of a princess.
In our culture (British and UK) men are conditioned into taking the active role and competing for a female. The females take on a passive role, sit back and select from the pool of competing males.
The effects of this probably seem pronounced in an environment such an IT orientated work place with few females.
I think that goes for pretty much all cultures.
I wish for once I had females competing for me. *lol*
I’m a UNIX kernel programmer, which is male-dominated even in corporate cultures that strongly encourage diversity. So when I encounter female colleagues, I admit I make assumptions about their skills. I assume they’re significantly smarter and more productive than the average male developer.
I’ve never been anything but impressed by female developers. Only the cream of the crop seem to get into this field, while there’s a lot of males whose talk is far better than their walk.
That’s not my experience: I work in communication industry and 4/5 of the code I’ve read made by female developers wasn’t good: they weren’t interested in the most technical aspect of the job: programming.
I remember especially one woman: she was very smart (very beautiful too, sigh) but her programming skill wasn’t very good, now she is a manager and I think she has all the qualities to be a very good one (good communication skills and smart).
Of course past experience cannot be relied on when you encounter a new person: when I read articles made by Valerie Hanson, I’m blown away: she manage to explain complex things very clearly.
A very large number of people who write software professionally do so because they need the job/money/whatever. This is true for both men and women.
Interestingly, I know of about 6 female software developers (my self included). Out of them, only one does it because its ‘just a job’. Even still, she is writing software because it is something she is very good at doing. (As a side note, she will be exiting the software development field in the next couple of years as she is finishing up her medical doctorate.)
If you would like some contrast, most of the male developers I know who are in this field rather dislike their job and are doing it because its just that… a job.
I have been writing software professionally for the past 7 or 8 years. I can honestly say I enjoy it quite significantly. I find programming wonderful because it allows me to express creativity and problem solving skills.
The ONLY thing that has EVER bothered me about being a woman in software development is how unfairly I tend be treated.
A few examples:
1) The men in the office tend to flirt with me when I am trying to have a serious discussion.
2) If I am too forward with what I say, the guys think I am being a bitch and won’t listen to me.
3) My opinion on things is almost always second guessed.
4) Recently, I had a job interview where the interviewer was blatantly trying to flirt with me.
If a woman is unhappy with her software development position, it is more likely she is unhappy about having to put up with this kind of crap more then anything else.
Your comment alone is a good example of what we have to deal with. In just two paragraphs you managed to generalize and stereotype.
Reading your comment, this what I get from it:
1) Women are not interested in ‘technical’ things.
2) But oh shes so beautiful, but alas she was unavailable to me
3) But hey, because she is a woman she is now making great use of her womanly communication skills! Silly women trying to be technical, should be doing what they are good at!
Edited 2007-02-11 12:12
I noticed you completely ignored his point about 4/5ths of the code being bad and instead went on a totally unrelated rant.
>1) Women are not interested in ‘technical’ things.
That’s funny how you distorted my post: what I said that the women I encountered were in average less technical yes.
What I *didn’t say* and don’t believe was that this is true for all the women, and I even gave an example of one who is most probably better than me.
How can reporting what is my experience can be misogyny?
Oh about 3), I know quite a few women which have poor communication skills..
If anything males tend to become overprotective when they notice a female in their midst.
It depends on what form the overprotection takes.
If it’s the brass ones to stand up and tell a Male Chauvinist Pig that his brand of crap isn’t welcome in this forum/LUG/message board, that’s a good thing. This tells a woman that she’s got a friend/ally in her corner.
But if it’s the “there, there, you delicate little flower, let us big bad hairy-chested men protect you and don’t you bother your pretty little head” brand of protection, that’s actually part of the problem. It tells a woman to “leave the protecting to us” and robs her of agency.
LOL! Actually I think the later description works pretty well to describe the ‘overprotective’ nature I have noticed.
Instead of offering a few tidbits of information to help the person move forward… several things tend to happen:
1) The guy over explains or talks ‘down’ making the girl feel dumb or like a kid.
2) The guy takes the keyboard and does it him self. Not because he is impatient, but I am guessing because he is trying to ‘help’ the girl from having to think for her own.
3) The guy ‘hovers’ over her while she is working through the problem.
As far as guys standing up to the ‘chauvinist pig’… unfortunately they only ever seem to do that in private with the girl… never actually confronting the person. (I recently had to go through this actually. Most of my peers where telling me how I was being singled out and treated unfairly… yet none of them even dared to stand up directly to him.)
This topic makes me a bit hot under the collar. I’m writing a book on the subject of gender politics.
Unfortunately, this article is another example of feminism==nonsense.
Women contributing to mailing lists would be flamed and sent away crying? When? Who here has witnessed this happening? If anything, I have only ever witnessed females getting too much attention and praise when they contribute to something technical.
As with most feminism, this article uses a sort of ‘drifting subject’ technique. At some points it seems to be concerned with women trying to make it in corporate IT and then in other parts it seems to be talking about women being ‘oppressed’ into not making contributions to FOSS.
Barriers to getting into FOSS? What are they? Just start doing it. Many a contributer to FOSS does it without any privilege or encouragement. Many such contributers do it without any formal training in IT. When I was 17 I was a completely self-taught .asm programmer.
All of these women being oppressed in these environments: Where’s the data? I wonder if the data gathering method was the standard one used in feminist polemic of ‘asking people’.
A lot of geeks are self-hating, and as a consequence, think that being ‘hip to the feminism’ will make them seem appealing to the opposite sex.
I haven’t noticed misogyny as being common. If anything males tend to become overprotective when they notice a female in their midst.
There was a clever piece on Somethingawful (rare for them these days, I know) recently that described the tendency as “Internet White Knight syndrome”.
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/few-words-on-2.php
I think the Free-Software “world” is split in two parts:
1. people who watch, speak, but don’t contribute.
2. people who actually contribute.
I’d like to point out that in my experience, the machos are always in category 1. Unfortunately, as seen from the outside, they give the false impression of being all of the Free-Software “community”, which of course is not the case. For example, sexist comments are common on public forums (see above comment by “jamesd” for a typical example) and, as the article notes, in LUGs. Sadly, this can discourage girls from becoming hackers.
But becoming a hacker means joining what I introduced above as category 2. : groups of people actually contributing to Free Software. In my experience, such people are typically very civilized, so there’s no reason to be afraid to join a hacker’s community. Actually it’s not even useful to pick a gender-neutral nickname: there is really _nothing_ to be afraid of.
The reality of most Free-Software projects is that we have a feeling that we could use much more workforce than we have, so serious prospective contributors are welcomed, not turned away.
So join the fun!!
Your experiences are very lacking then, Theo de Raadt (theo, TdR), Daniel J. Bernstein (djb), Ulrich Drepper, and many more of the big names in software have been caught being dicks. They have contributed more than most people that contribute, they’re not always civilized, in fact, Theo is usually not civilized by the time he’s noticed.
The real hackers aren’t timid, they’re leaders and they tend to not care what other random dicks think. Lead, follow or get out of the way – that is how things work, the dicks lead, the timid follow and the frightened get out of the way. This works well enough, as some of the biggest dicks are the best hackers. There is a reason to fear a real hacker community, because if you’re trying to get in and you’re not skilld enough, they tend to tell you to get lost and stop wasting their time.
While most projects could use more help, the people that tend to come looking to help do so from the perspective of making things Windowsy or just doing stupid things – those people are not only turned away, but run out of town.
I completely agree with almost everything you said. With that said, I have to ask you to please never again use TdR and djb in the same sentence, category, or even discussion. One is an asshole genius. The other is just an asshole and is responsible for the qmail atrosity.
Both have problems with being nice to people, and both are very hardline about what they think is right and what is not. While they don’t overlap in their beliefs anywhere, they do share a similarity in their behaviour and both have made a lot of code and effect a lot of other code – even if I hate qmail and despise daemontools, he’s still made alot of code.
I completely disagree. There’s no excuse for being a dick. There’s always a way to get your point across without personal attacks. It’s OK to slam an idea, but it’s not OK to slam a person. When people resort to personal attacks, it’s usually because they can’t prove their point.
A huge part of the success of a free software project is tied to the dynamics of its community. Theo has contributed a lot, and he stands up for things that really matter, like open hardware specs. But could it possibly be that Theo’s antics have caused irreparable harm to the OpenBSD project?
Let’s give another example, Chistoph Hellwig, Linux code reviewer extraordinaire. Real smart, knows Linux and its coding standards better than almost anybody, big dick. He is the guy that almost made SGI give up on getting XFS in the kernel, and he successfully prevented Reiser4 by out-dicking Hans Reiser, which is hard to do. I know kernel hackers from IBM and Intel that refuse to deal with him.
Here’s the way it works: (s)he who codes, decides. It isn’t about who can flame the mailing lists with the most CAPITAL LETTERS or various _emphasis_ *markings*, it’s about who actually codes. Because some of the best hackers I know are quiet, subdued people. Not dicks. The big dicks aren’t the best hackers, they’re the most “prominent” hackers, and they get too much respect.
Consider Linus. He’s not shy by any stretch, but he isn’t a dick. He attacks bad ideas, and he even attacks vocal minorities, but he almost never attacks people personally. It’s not the license that helped Linux eclipse the success of the BSDs, it’s Linus and the community dynamics he cultivated that did it. I don’t want to have a flamewar, so if you disagree with this comment, keep it on topic.
Impossible, Theo cannot cause harm to OpenBSD, because he sets the goals, there is no goal for OpenBSD to be popular with newbies or to have a 3%+ portion of the desktop market, or even to be used in firewalls or routers.
You cannot cause damage to something when there is nothing to damage, and thus any dicking around or squabbling causes no problems. If the image of OpenBSD’s leader scares away people that would have otherwise used OpenBSD, most OpenBSD users are pleased by that, even with their opinions not mattering, because that means one less clueless newbie to deal with.
The reason which Linux’s popularity outshines other projects is largely because of the buzz-word mentality of businesses, as with Java it is not particularly great but many people are talking about it, and that’s what counts. Linux’s initial boost to become the more popular of the open source kernels comes from the BSDi/UC-BSD vs AT&T/USL/Novell, there was a stigma with the potential legal difficulty in using BSD code. There is no real singular community surrounding Linux, it’s all a bunch of random groups of people.
But that is neither here nor there, this discussion revolves around women in open source and has nothing to do with the popularity of Ubuntu, NetBSD or Minix.
Well, while I agree with point about the personalities, I think that in the Linux vs BSD part, you go a bit too far..
I think that we cannot know which part of Linux’s success is related to the license and which part of the success is related to Linus’s charisma (and which part is caused by historic accidents), so let’s avoid gratuitous speculations.
“But could it possibly be that Theo’s antics have caused irreparable harm to the OpenBSD project?”
No.
“Consider Linus. He’s not shy by any stretch, but he isn’t a dick.”
Says you.
“He attacks bad ideas, and he even attacks vocal minorities, but he almost never attacks people personally.”
I find it interesting that the same people who praises Linus for being “outspoken” and not mincing his words are the same people who jump on Theo as soon as he is critical of anything.
I find it interesting that the same people who praises Linus for being “outspoken” and not mincing his words are the same people who jump on Theo as soon as he is critical of anything.
I tend to stay away from such topics but you can't be seriously comparing Linus' and Theo's personalities. Theo de Raadt is, quite frankly, a dick. No matter under which situation, it doesn't warrant him the right to treat people the way he does nor to refer to somebody else's software projects the way he does, especially considering the fact that he is the proeminent project leader of a competing software project.
“you can't be seriously comparing Linus' and Theo's personalities.”
No, I’m saying both of them can at times be dicks.
And no, Theo isn’t always a dick.
“it doesn't warrant him the right to treat people the way he does nor to refer to somebody else's software projects the way he does,”
Sure he does, he has the right to say whatever the hell he wants. It’s called freedom of speech.
Maybe some find it insulting or harsh but he sure has the right to say it.
I come across lots of people who push forward the notion that females aren’t supposed to be involved in IT. In my experience (and those I’ve spoken to) this begins at an early age – with parental attitudes and peer pressure.
Some of the male reactions described in the article only serve to reinforce such ideas.
Edited 2007-02-10 22:18
I think it’s really sad that there are so few in women in tech at all. Like any industry, women are paid less for various pollitical reasons. Women are also treated like they don’t know anything.
More women in opensource is really a step towards respect for women’s equality as intelectuals. Then it just becomes a war between women and the proprietary software world.
I only know this because I grew up with my mom going to college and building websites in the mid nineties. By the time she graduated with a degree in anthropology she just wanted to make money and not be a poor academic.
It seems like every frickin’ tech job is the same set of issues. The company has security problems because the website they have is written in php3 and it’s all spaggetti code. So she suggests a recode, because it would be cheaper than just building more on top of this 5 year old mammoth. Then they ignore her until this other man comes in. He’s white. He smokes. And he says the same exact thing, so now changes are made.
This kind of shitty attitdue has got to change in the tech industry somewhere. So I hope more women join open source projects and something comes out of it.
Responding to this took me a bit, it’s hard to say you’re completely batshit insane in a nice way, so I’ve skipped trying and will go with the straight dope as it were.
Women aren’t payed less than men, not in tech or other fields, they are also given a priority placement in corporate entries because of demographical quotas companies must meet – white men are actually given the raw end of the stick, despite making up the majority quality candidates, because of the affermative action that is all over the place. If there were more women getting into the field, they would be getting the jobs.
Women think differently, they’re not better and they’re not worse, but they are different. Women generally are not as good at thinking in an entirely logical framework and thus are often not good at high-end mathematics, physics and programming. Men aren’t even equals, we’re all different and the cream rises to the top – that the cream tends to be men at this point is not the fault of the milk. Where my brother is exceptional at archery, because he can visualize the arch of an arrow to be fired from a bow, I cannot for the life of me manage it. The means by which he does this is through a different way of processing information, I am skilled in language, I have the most outrageous of vocabularies and speak a pair of langauges and am working on a third, my brother has a hard time grasping complex grammar, because we are different in the way our brains function.
Men’s brains have shown a greater aptitude for particular fields and women’s others, in fact, women are shown to make significantly better fighter pilots than men. So, with women being so much better dog-fighters, why are there not more? I’d wager a guess at women being smarter than men and not wanting to get themselves killed, but I am sure a part of it is the stigma involved with women in the military. There is a stigma with women working in many fields, just as there are stigmas for men in some, you’ll not find many men admitting to being secretaries or nurses, though I know several who are. I am sure there is a stigma involved with women being nerds to a degree, most women try to be the cheerleaders, not the bookworms, because of social norms, but most men try to be the quarterback, not the bookworm too.
The experience with your mother is a case of individuals not trusting your mother, it may in fact have been discriminatory, or her suggestions could have been off-base, overly expensive or too complex to implement at the time. Unless the new white man that came in really did give the exact same proposal, verbatim – while the company was in the same position – you cannot really guess the cause for his success and her failure – perhaps her boss just didn’t like her, you’ll never know.
The technology field has no issue, to a degree it is the people who control it, generally old white men who play golf, they know nothing of technology most of the time, but they do know of money, total cost of a project, the money saved in a long term case, required time for development and potential future requirements… money. I know several women who are capable of coding, but they could not make a programme to save their life, they have too hard a time conceptualizing the entire programme’s peramaters and building it, they can follow the instructions of their project leader, but to lead themselves would be impossible. I know only one woman who can truly programme, make a piece of software from the ground up that does it’s job – and she’s not in the business anymore because it’s a dead-end job with no room for real promotions.
Hell, I can’t even really programme, just code, I am working at my skills to try and one day be able to make full-blown programmes, but until then I can only manipulate other peoples’.
Edited 2007-02-11 00:07
So let me see if I follow you. Women would only get tech jobs because of affirmative action, not because of their own merits. There’s also absolutely no evidence of pay inequality between men and women for doing the exact same job with the same level of experience.
“Dope” is right.
You aren’t following at all, I am saying women are given assistance to get the jobs, but they’re still not filling up a significant portion of the jobs for technology related work.
And yes, there is no evidence of pay discrepancies.
Women can get the jobs with or without affirmative action, but they have it there, negatively impacting the largest group actually working in and trying to get in the field. White males aged 18-40 are pretty much the norm for techies, affirmative action attempts to bolster the other demigraphics, but that doesn’t change the fact that the majority of applicants are still males aged 18-40. There just isn’t a large number of women who are interested/proficient in the work.
Wordy Mc Word, Johann.
I invite the OP to drag his ass over to http://www.bls.gov and look at the statistics about wage disparity.
Yes, it is illegal to advertise a job as paying $X an hour for women and $Y for men.
But what about freelance and/or salaried jobs wherein the amount offered is entirely up to the discretion of the employer? Employees have a difficult time finding out what their fellow employees make.
I’ll bet that if private sector employers were forced to disclose what they paid their employees, we’d find all sorts of incidents of women being salaried less than male counterparts for the same job.
I think you just brought up a whole different problem.
As a *White Man* my self, I think it’s really frustrating to see discrimination of white people because we are supposedly all oppressors. Personally I’m pretty sure you just wasted time trying to have an opinion. But as evidenced by your long-winded flame at me, you are obviously far more experienced and capable than I am.
You didn’t get my post… at all. You just shot your self in the foot for a whole page, only for me to tell you that your fighting the wrong fight against me.
I think that it’s nice that black women are offered jobs as receptionists in tech companies. Really I do, but there isn’t much respect for them there.
by the way. google before you flame (pretty please?),
A young woman who graduated from high school last spring and went straight to work would, over her lifetime, make $700,000 less than the young man who graduated next in line.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/20…
Thirty years after the Equal Pay Act, women are still getting paid less than men – resulting in a financial deficit that could add up to as much as lb250,000 over a lifetime.<i/>
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1488437.stm
[i]Women make tremendous contributions to the economy through their paid work. Women work in a wide variety of occupations around the world from teachers and secretaries to welders and doctors to machine operators and child care workers. Women’s access to paid work is crucial to their efforts for economic equality and to their sense of self. But women’s paid work is generally valued as less important than men’s. Women still earn considerably less than men and often find themselves in low-status jobs with few benefits.
http://www.unpac.ca/economy/paidwork.html
In a year in which Harvard’s president questioned the abilities of women to do science, The Scientist’s salary survey shows that women are coming up short in terms of compensation. The disparity between male and female median salaries grew $200 since 2004, and now stands at $21,700. The greatest gulf is in the highest ranks: $28,500 among department heads and up to $7,000 among professor positions. The pay gaps are much greater in industry than they are in academia – nearly $15,000 for PhD-holding senior researchers.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15721/
just a little fyi. This post has taken a precious three minutes away from my life, and probably more from yours. Stop being such a useless troll.
Wow I am not sure on where to start with a reply to your comment.
Let me start with some links:
http://ieee-virtual-museum.org/exhibit/exhibit.php?id=159251&lid=1&…
http://ieee-virtual-museum.org/exhibit/exhibit.php?id=159269&lid=1&…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
Oh and not to forget this:
http://www.bios.niu.edu/wis/profiles.html
While I can agree that men and women have different EMOTIONAL driving forces in what they do, men and women are not all that different in regards in our capability to think creatively and logically.
The largest mental difference between men and women comes from the social conditioning we are raised with. Women are not brought up from childhood encouraged to be respected, intelligent, independent, and to strive for success.
Generally women have to face the exact opposite. I can’t even count how many women whose parents frowned down them because they wished to attend college for example.
Please see an earlier comment of mine above if you would like some really good examples of inequality in the IT field I have personally delt with.
1) Women DO get paid less: (Try google, hell here even: http://www.nptimes.com/Feb05/sr1.html )
2) Women receive less promotions
3) Women receive a lot less respect
4) An idea from a woman is considered a lot less than one from a man.
5) Women can’t be direct and up front with their thoughts without being looked down on.
6) The list goes on.
How do I know this?
1) I am a woman, I have been in the IT field for 7-8 years and have been dealing with this. (I am a developer and system admin)
2) My mom is an IT business owner, and has been dealing with this for 15+ years.
3) My step mom is a software developer, and has been dealing with this crap for 15+ years.
4) Almost every woman I have worked with in IT has had to deal with this crap.
I know of ONE woman who does not have to deal with this crap at her current job. But guess what? This is the FIRST job where she has actually commanded an equal amount of respect as per male peers, and she has been in the business for several years.
The poster above you is not ‘completely batshit insane’. He is one of the few men that actually understand some of this stuff we deal with close to first hand.
The crap he has described his mother going through are extremely similar to a lot of the crap me and a LOT of other women have to go through constantly.
Edited 2007-02-11 13:32
“I think it’s really sad that there are so few in women in tech at all. Like any industry, women are paid less for various pollitical reasons. Women are also treated like they don’t know anything. ”
I would argue that women average lower pay because men are the ones who are forced into the bread winning roles. Women take on low-responsibility work that is of lower pay.
Tell me this, if a women takes a five year sabatical to have kids (her choice), when she re enters the workplace, should she enter at the same level of pay as the person who has been doing the job for ten solid years?
Show me your evidence that women working as IT professionals are paid less than men of equal experience, qualifications and tenure.
that might be a good point.
I personally have never known this to occur. ever.
but I also don’t know any really ‘normal’ people. so I guess for all those people who live in the same house everyday of there lives. Who had bedtime stories. Those people whose mom’s made apple pie for them every Friday night because of all the free time on their hands. Maybe even had a clean house 24/7, so clean you could hear the dust collecting in the night.
yeah I guess if a woman did have 5-6 years away from work then lower pay would make sense. tech is kinda a cool industry to work in because you can do it at home. like all the time. It’s also an industry that you can involve your kids with (my mom taught me javascript @ 9yrs old & we made games, adlibs mostly).
you might have a point, personally I have never witnessed this, but it’s plausible.
I’ll mod you up one for effort…
oh btw, so your evidence. besides lots of anecdotes, I can’t give you statistics on women in tech specifically right now. I’m not really interested in prying the web again after my reply to Janizary, which includes tons of statistical evidence. check it out. there’s one in there about scientists with doctorates who are still paid as much as a third less, then what men in the same place are paid.
Edited 2007-02-12 03:22
“yeah I guess if a woman did have 5-6 years away from work then lower pay would make sense.”
I feel I should point one thing out. If the woman who’s come back from a sabbatical is doing the same job, at the same skill level as another person who didn’t take the break then no, she should *not* be paid less as she is taking on exactly the same work and must be qualified to do so (if she’s not qualified what’s she doing in that job? She really shouldn’t be). The only reason for a lower wage is a lower skilled/responsibility job.
I have no problem with women who are no longer fully trained to do the job being given a lesser skilled (and thus lower paid) job while they get themselves up-to-speed but IMHO nobody should really be receiving a lesser wage than another person doing the same job.
In the case of a worker who has done a job for ten years, solidly, that worker might have benefited from a gradual increase in status, and consequently, his or her salary. Many job applications specify that salary will be dependent on a number of factors including level of experience and I don’t think that this is at all unreasonable.
A recent test case in the UK has established that UK employers have a right to relate level of salary to experience.
I think part of the problem is that as kids or teens, boys often show more interest in computers (from a technological point of view, not as a tool for voice-chatting their buddies) than girls. And I think parents tend to think that it’s more “boy” oriented and thus are more likely to encourage a male child to pursue those interests than a girl child. Not to mention the peer pressure in school. (I’m generalizing of course.)
I think girls are just as capable though. My 8 year old daughter has hand-coded (I believe tools like Dreamweaver or Nvu inhibit learning; use them later once you actually understand what you’re doing) her own XHTML compliant website with HTML and CSS, written simple console programs in Ruby, and we’re about to start tackling GUI programming and dynamic web sites (also with Ruby). She’s no geek either – she’s primarily artistic, likes to draw, play the guitar, piano, dance, etc. (homeschooled, of course). But I think tech is an important part of a well-rounded education in this day and age. (Oh, and she runs Linux on her computer, though sometimes boots into Windows–unfortunately there’s not much quality kids educational software on Linux compared to Windows.) Anyway, my point is that parents can make a difference in encouraging girls to learn about tech too and not just leaving it to the boys.
Off topic, but I have to say that you sound like an awesome parent! Please keep encouraging and empowering your girl. She is going to be one very independent lady.
Your right though about encouragement. My dad kept his computer stuff ‘off limits’ to me as a kid. When I was 6, I ended up asking him if I could build a computer (286) out of the spare parts he had laying around. He was absolutely SHOCKED. I can still remember the next thing he said to me, “You’re… serious? You really want a computer?” It had never even occurred to him that I might have been interested, and this is after hours and hours of me watching him build the things.
There was a very good & interesting discussion on topic of women in IT some time last year here on OSn – it was due to the incentive money deal from Ubuntu or Fedora – dont know any more – hopefully a comments section as worthwhile reading as the past one will develop here as well – looks already promising .
Very worthwhile – unfortunatly not detailed enough -read – *+* .
Will comment further later .
Women in tech is a difficult subject. I work in a university with the largest college of computer science in the US. I and both a system admin and an instructor. The percentage of girls coming into the IT program here is 10% or less. Why? Well, some of it has to do with the differences between how the sexes need interaction. Girls tend to be more social. Guys often aren’t. As a result, the guy is the more likely to spend long hours alone in front of a computer. Simple but true. As for the workplace, I hate affirmative action. Its bullsh*t. I have absolutely no problems with sex, race, color, creed, nationality, religion, or any other quality used to discriminate. The only thing I look at is competence. I split people into two main groups: the 9-5’ers and the real IT pros. One group spends their time improving their skills and learning new things. The other just shows up to collect a paycheck.
On the subject of the article, I think the situation has begone to improve lately by increasingly more women being visible as contributors of Open Source or Free Software projects.
While there have always been a few women working on those projects, I have seen quite an increase in how many of them write blogs about this work and are syndicated on the project’s planet.
Btw, Celeste Paul, the usuability expert who is the driving force behind KDE’s new interface guidelines (HIG), has blogged about the conference and wrote that she was kind of dissatisfied that most speakers did not use the opportunity to do a technical talk rather than a social/philosphical.
for either sex. How come? It ultimately resides in the Individual to get off their butt and produce what it is that meets their goals. To measure the earning potential is pointless.
They can’t measure drive so they create a hypothetical that sounds great to graduating high school students.
External influences play a major role in determining how well one produces in life.
If you are content/happy with the results then that is what matters.