One of the reasons I started the thread (edit: read my previous blog post first) was to expose some of the myths that float around in the IT world and are perpetuated by men who (unfortunately) have no real idea why there aren’t any women in their field, and make guesses that aren’t based on any reality. I have heard countless times things like “Women just aren’t good at math”, “Women aren’t risk-takers”, “Women shy away from leadership and men don’t”, etc. It’s shocking how little some people in our field know about women’s real motivations and why they aren’t in IT.
Here’s what I can tell you. I know a pretty diverse group of women, some of whom are quite brilliant, but very few of whom have actually stuck it out in IT. Why? As best I can tell, each of them have had so many bad experiences with the men in IT that they’ve given up on it. Every woman I know who has computers or math as even a passing interest has stories of male teachers, male counterparts, or male bosses tell them some form of “Women can’t cut it in this industry.” The IT industry tends to attract men who prefer computers to socialization. This is where I believe that differences between men and women come in. Now, you can argue whether these differences are built-in or societal (I happen to believe it’s 90%+ societal). Here’s what I’ve seen:
1) I really think the key is the different way males and females in our society are motivated. Female role models motivate by building everyone up and encouraging them to work as a team. Male role models motivate by singling out the “weakest link” and (often) putting that person on display in front of the others as an example of what not to do. When a man in our society is told he isn’t good enough, he considers this a challenge to his ego and strives to do better. Women tend to internalize this and get frustrated about it; they avoid the conflict and either do something else or work with other people who are going to be more supportive. Many males, especially in the tech industry, use the words “You aren’t good enough” as a motivator without understanding that it doesn’t motivate most women. This goes along with the fact that women in our society have much lower self-confidence than men; did you know that 1 in 5 women are on anti-depressants?
2) Women tend to want to work with other people. I have heard a lot of women say “I don’t want to work in the computer industry because it involves sitting in front of a computer all day, and I’d rather be out there with people.” I have also heard this same statement from numerous men, but I think this is a larger influencing decision on women.
While males can generally work with a female leader (though they may criticize her for not being assertive or authoritative in the way they consider to be a leader), women will not work well with a traditionally dominant male leader, and if a woman happens to be singled out, she will generally try to “blend in” in her ideal of having everyone work as a solid, cohesive team.
I have read numerous books that say similar things, including one interesting study about women who win awards. Men who win awards will claim it for themselves (single person mentality) and thank everyone else as an afterthought, while women will make sure to carefully thank everyone on their team and often say things like “I couldn’t have done this without them!”
What can we do to change this? 1) Educate male teachers and role models on how women are motivated and teach them how motivating as a team can benefit all of their students/workers; and 2) Encourage more female role models in the IT industry. I’d like to expand on these two things in the future once I talk to more women and get specific ideas.
If any of you have comments on why you think there are so few women in IT, now is the time to make them. 
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March 27th, 2005 at 3:34 pm
Hey Erica…
Very interesting topic.
I work in the IT division of a Fortune 50 company that has nothing to do with IT. The IT HQ is on the east coast (since I cannot speak for the situation you left-coasters are in *:^). It’s a large IT organization with - no surprise - a large male population despite the numerous diversity initiatives.
The IT population here is not filled with what you or I would call “geeks” or even real “tech heads”. The small population of the IT organization that is in that set of classifications has almost no women.
Why? I don’t spend a great deal of time pondering it since I’ve got my hands full with my day job, but I have made some observations.
First, I tend not to differentiate between male and female non-geek tech workes since they seem to have the same common denominator: do as little as possible tech-wise long enough, but well-enough to get into management (where both sexes screw things up equally). Our company actually *encourages* this behaviour in women in an almost an affirmative-action way. If they can rise up the ladder quickly, earn more money and attain a level of pseudo-power without delving into geekdom then they seem to be more willing to do that than the average male. I don’t respect this attitude and respect the males that succomb to it even less than the females (since there’s overwhelming pressure to climb for them). However, cash is cash and who am I to criticize.
So, there’s at least one reason at this level of IT for lack of tech-savvy women.
Now, when we interview candidates for a position (screened by our HR before the resumes even get to us, so the affirmative-action rules are in place without us even being able to influence them) there are almost no resumes from women. The job descriptions in my department are extremely technical (multi-OS from an admin and programming perspective along with extremely good security skills). I cannot even begin to give you a reason why, but I thought it would be a good data point for you in your pursuit of this topic. To be fair, it’s difficult finding a male candidate with this type of skill-set.
We also are assigned, for lack of a long explanation detailing the exact specifics of the program, “interns” who have graduated from college and are on a fast-track. They are on temporary assignment to us and get rotated three-to-four times before taking on their final position. We get *lots* of women in these slots (across all departments). One out of every ten of them is a true-to-form geek. The rest can barely spell DNS. Most have CS degrees. When I asked them what types of courses they took or what they really liked I never get a straight answer from the non-tech 90%. Most do explain that they cared more about spending time in clubs and activites than they did doing research and programming in “the lab”. In a few cases, I contacted some of their professors (from very prestigious schools) and - to be honest - I cannot exactly blame the female “interns” for not being energetic about their choice of degree program. The teachers seem pre-disposed to the myth that women cannot be technical.
So, I don’t have any answers, but you’ve got some data points in at least an enterprise setting.
On a personal level, I met my wife while we were both in a CS program in college. She’s close to her Ph.D. in math now as well. She’s a tech, and a real enough geek in that she would rather be a cleric in Baldur’s Gate than try on perfume and enjoys Babylon 5 reruns and Star Wars as much as putting on make up for a night out. However, she’d rather spend the rest of her days teaching math than keeping up with the latest AMD, Intel and IBM chips. Ultimately, she’d rather be more involved on a people-level than technology-level. If she chose to stay technical, she’d kick many male butts tech-wise.
In the end, it may just come down to what an individual (male or female) is disposed to. While I believe society is slowly changing, it still looks like women are more disposed to inter-personal disciplines and men (boys, really, do we ever grow up? *:^) are more disposed to tinkering. In a decade (maybe two) or so, who knows?
March 28th, 2005 at 10:18 am
I think there aren’t as many women in IT because of all the men. I’m the only female in my group (the other female was, er, walked out). It takes a thick skin to deal with “guys” all day long. Women are socialized to be conflict-avoiding, and we do tend to take things personally and internalize a lot of things our coworkers say and do.
I’ve worked in this field for a while, and am used to being the only female, as that has been my lot for the last several jobs that I’ve held.
March 30th, 2005 at 7:17 pm
I’ll throw in my (perhaps outlier) data point.
I work in an engineering group of a well-established, healthy niche technology company. My engineering group is comprised of about 15 people. 4 are women. The head of the IT department is female. The most influential VP that also heads up a separate engineering group is a woman.
Personally I like with working with all of the above female staff. They all fit a geek form-factor in different ways and do not back off from being assertive when they need to be, except for one that is independently weathy and happy to have a career to get out of the house.
For the record no one I have worked for in my entire career has told me I “wasn’t good enough”. Also the majority of male managers I have had over my career have been happy to share credit.
I’m definitely not saying there isn’t sexism in the industry, or barriers to more female participation. My personal experience seems to point at a complex story rather than a simple one.
My wife majored in comparitive literature and works professionally as an editor for trade books. However, she picks up technical skills very quickly. With some encouragement she’s written chat rooms and developed community blogs in zope, learned java, python, PHP, SQL and other current technologies. She uses SSH, vi, and root shells regularly. She is apalled at the idea of buying hosting space without a shell account
Her experience in publishing would seem to run counter to Erica’s hypothesis that women do not work well under a male boss. Apparently it is typical for publishing industry to be largely dominated by female employees, but with males in the critical management slots. This is coming from direct experience with four major-label publishing houses, plus a network of peers.
So, food for thought.