Why Are There So Few Women in Tech?

I agree. I used to work as a software tester and was surround by men all day.

Interesting Facts, Its nice to see stats in US is growing rapidly.
Nice Post.
Cheers

I think many women still fall into the roles of nurturing and caregiving, thus they tend to be teachers, nurses, etc. I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I have a highly technical job in the medical field. I agree with you though, the stigma should be lifted. Women can do any job they desire, technical or not.

http://humanitarikim.wordpress.com/

Stereotypes. A woman working around so many other men can be easily compare to a seal in a ocean full of whales.

It all balances out somewhere else. There may be more men in tech, but there are more women in other fields. I majored in journalism in college for example — FULL of women. But minored in History — FULL of men. And my theatre minor (and the auditions I went to this week BTW) were also FULL of women. Like 4x as many women. But for some reason no one is writing articles about it in national newspapers. I wonder why?

Crystal
http://www.crystalspins.com

Maybe the majority of women aren’t interested in a tech job? Where I work, the majority are men. Not because we only hire men, but because that is who applies for the jobs because that is who has the degrees in the tech field. Perhaps women are just interested in other fields. You could make the same argument with nursing jobs. Why do we have to make the distinction between a nurse and a male nurse?

i honestly think its just a matter of time…change like this doesnt happen overnight. two generations ago sports were almost entirely white – players, coaches, owners. then players became more racially diverse over the years, and slowly we are seeing more coaches as well. while i wish it would happen faster…it is still happening.
http://dearexgirlfriend.com/

I think times are changing rapidly though and you will definitely see increase of women in every single field.

http://www.runtobefit.wordpress.com

You raise an interesting point. I work in marketing communications and work daily with a graphic designer/video specialist/web designer who is a female. She has also found it stifling that there are not enough women in these fields. It’s so strange that this is a male dominated field. However, in other fields like Public Relations there are barely any men, so I sometimes have the opposite problem when trying to break into that field.

Maybe it’s just that women aren’t that interested in tech in the main. They trend towards different fields of work. Women are very successful in all manor of other sectors, sitting in a room with geeks – not so apppealing.

Mat
http://www.tulumboutiquehotels.com/adonis-tulum-gay-men-resort-and-spa.html

As technical woman and as a hiring manager, I can confirm that the small percentage of girls getting technical degrees is the main reason why there are so few women in the technical workforce. We would all hire more women if more applied. Even those of us with technical degrees don’t tend to stay technical throughout our careers. In Canada, for the past 20 years, the government, universities and even student organizations have been actively encouraging young women to go into science and engineering. Still, we haven’t yet passed 30% of women in Engineering. I’ve noticed that women seem to be more driven by meaning than by ego. Careers in medicine, environmental engineering, etc. have more obvious meaning than careers in building power plants, programming a software packages, etc. Everything I listed is technical but the latter group needs to promote the greater meaning behind the profession to attract more women.

I think some tech companies still see women as being incapable or unwillingly to use new technology. Odd as the recent stats seem to show that women are more likely to use gadgets and apps for their daily lives than men.

Plus there are the obvious sterotypes to overcome, which sadly will take time. I believe it is important to encourage everyone, regardless of gender, to embrace technology for their work and personal lives.

http://www.busyellebee.wordpress.com

[...] Today, I ran across a question in Quora that I just had to answer. Below is my answer, which I hope you will read and provide feedback on. Which is a bigger problem: lack of women in tech, lack of technical women or lack of women founders? Why? For starters, I read "bigger problem" to be in reference to the imbalance of women to men in the startup/tech community. My response to this question is overwhelmingly "Technical Women". In general, women … Read More [...]

You go girl!!! Maybe goggle will take a read and catch a hint or two. I think that gender’s still fall under generalizations…. And of course, there is the fact that the woman tend to assume the home carer role. Not always, often by choice.
Congrats on being freshly pressed!!!
Xx

I agree with dearexgirlfriend and runtobefit. In a lot of ways I believe that woman are better business people than men, generally speaking of course. The industries that are balanced in favor of men will soon be tipping the scales in short time.

Why does it even matter? Would tech companies be better off with more women? I’m not even convinced that tech companies would be *different*, let alone better.

I certainly don’t think there is anything wrong with having more women in technical positions – women certainly are no less competant than men. But what difference does it make?

If all the monkey’s are equal, then it doesn’t matter which monkey you choose to do the coding.

What we need is to eliminate sex/gender from being considered in the workplace at all. Let everyone compete based on ability and the rest will work itself out.

It is so nice to see that you ‘tech’ professionals are human, with introspections. But I do suspect that any Equal Opportunity issue must now have been fixed in this 2011 year. Girls and ladies (not woboys and women, please) are now, surely, free to choose. End of discussion. Cy Quick at Sumpnado.

From my own experience, the reason why there are so few women in tech is because the men in tech are incredibly hostile to women in such an overwhelming way that the women are driven out. Stealing ideas, sabotaging, threatening, ganging up — if you are an ambitious woman, you can’t get anything DONE in that environment, and it’s much better to go where you can be effective.

Great Stats, but sad for technology notations.

We can do anything we set our minds to; the question is why don’t we? Are we lazy? Afraid of breaking our fingernail, loss of “stereotypic” appeal? Coddling has given us Diva’s.

Science Technology is a very competitive Industry and a female must have an enourmously thickwise skin – “If you can believe it and conceive it, then you can acheive it.” Pursue your passion or ideals no matter what and be who you are, not what you think others try to make us. Stick to your guns no matter how long it takes, the world is changing and women are being taken seriously.

As an example; my cousin Sharon Martini, by marriage, is Assistant Editor Journal of Chemical Physics, University of Pennsylvania.

As for me, a few significant close and personal experiences have left a bad taste/reputation in my mouth because of the profound outcome they had on my life working as a sub level droid trying to gain my wings of Geekness. On other VAST levels my constiuents have offered me clouds to rest on while I regain my footing to pursue my dreams in science technology.

I rebuilt the engine of my truck in 2 days, minus the internal crank case motor parts (pistons, rings, cylanders).

I’m reading Collider and find it facinating that Einstein’s gravity and electromagneticism has yet to be combined in to one solvable solution, they really are connected. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing, yet with the string theory, but it just doesn’t hold a ring for truth in my estimates. Electromagnetic Fields here I come…

My favorite People: De Carte’, Einstein, Rutherford, Tesla.

I am exactly who and what I want to be.

You know, I’ve struggled with your last point a lot. No one seems to be clamoring over why there are so few women in heavy construction or sanitation. And who is championing the male nurses and elementary school teachers?

I don’t have an answer I can support with facts, but my gut feeling is that a lot of the attention has to do with women’s long time struggle for equality at work and maybe even money.

So for my first claim: a recent Catalyst report found that it’s not enough for women to have mentors at work. (They found that men with mentors on average received more promotions than women with mentors.) Their findings concluded that women need sponsors – high level executives within our business who will champion us for promotions and opportunities. Naturally, the question then is “how can tech women find sponsors if there are so few women in tech in the first place?” That isn’t to say that I haven’t had great male sponsors when I worked at GE, but sometimes it’s easier to talk to a women, no?

As for my second claim: doesn’t your inner Girl Power/contrarian wonder why all we read about are the thousands of men making billions starting and selling their startups? We ladies should be able to get a slice of that pie, right? If the tech sector wasn’t generating such wealth, I doubt there would be such focus on the gender inequality.

I think you have a good point Nathan. The thing about these discussions is that it’s so hard to figure out the “chicken or the egg” problem here. Are women less interested in tech because we’re wired that way, or is it because we receive environmental cues to play with dolls instead of disassembling toy trucks? (Okay, kind of an antiquated example these days, but you get my point.)

I completely agree that we shouldn’t push against what men and women naturally want to do in order to fill some artificial quota. However, it’s our responsibility not to ostracize those who “boldly go where no [other] has gone before.”

Lisa, I’ve had the exact same problems trying to find women to hire for my startup! During my last round of interviews, I was *thrilled* to have 1 female applicant. Ultimately, we didn’t hire anyone from that pool, but it would be so nice to eventually not be the only woman in my company!

My first response would be to say that it’s a lack of women founders. I say this because if more women were actual owners and creators of tech-based business, they would be more likely (I would think) to even be aware of this being an issue. They would also be great role models for young girls/women to look up to and be encouraged by. How many young men want to be the next Bill Gates?

It’s not enough to know that you can get your foot in the door and work along side the men. Young women need to know that it’s also possible to dream big and actually own or create a major business in the industry that they love and may very well excell at just as much as any male in an obviously male-dominated field. And that’s not a feminist view, that’s just wanting an equal chance at success in anything that a girl wants to do.

Very interesting post that is very relevant to today’s society.
I am currently working in a Tech job, and 98% of the workers are guys, majority of the time it’s ok, the guys I work with are fine. Yet occasionally you feel the pressure whereby you have to work extra hard to prove that you can do it just because your a women.(maybe that’s just me giving myself pressure) but it would be great to see more women working in Tech industry. I think as time goes by, the number will gradually increase.

Thanks for raising such a interesting topic.

I am not an engineer nor lawyer but work in knowledge management in the legal and engineering sectors for over the last 25 yrs. So my function, would be in a support internal department, either one of the few professionals in my functional role or managing the dept. My client groups within such organizations were the engineers, technical staff, lawyers and judges themselves.

What I have observed anecdotally in engineering & heavy construction areas:

For field engineering work, it can be a different workplace culture than working in a job where most of it is within an office environment. Some engineering jobs mean willingness to relocate and live in different places world-wide every few years..for large engineering projects. It is a time-driven, project based work culture that can be exciting to some folks, stressful to others because of frequent organizational changes as project meets different completion deadlines and higher staff turnover. It requires a certain willingness to roll with the punches.

With such internal shifting organizational changes, a professional (male or female)must adapt fast, and to gain ahead, play politics abit faster/harder because the construction project must end in 3 or 5 yrs.

I leave this up to readers here if you are willing to have a 25-yr. long career to do this and stay healthy for yourself and for loved ones.

I actually learned applied management when I began my career in the health care field where at a hospital, the management team were primarily women under 40 yrs. It was a great “training” ground to learn that early how marry personal and professional values on the job, as well as see up close different management styles among professional women only a few years older than I at the time.

I find it interesting that some people assume everything has been fixed in the equity department merely because we are in 2011. Far from it. I can recount very recent stories of fellow graduate students who have been harrassed in their field by their male peers (and bosses). I’ve been harrassed on the job by male CEO’s, in the laboratory by male colleagues, and even departmental chairs. All this has occurred between 2005-2010. Not all of these men committing the misdemeanors were older, some were under the age 30. Sad, but true.

Why there are so few women in tech is a bit of a different issue (some of it being due to the above). The question becomes why aren’t women chosing these fields in college? I can say that from teaching science at the undergraduate level, women aren’t necessarily encouraged to chose science and tech careers. They aren’t necessarily discouraged (by faculty or others), but a system for fostering this type of learning among women seems to be lacking. I have a friend who is doing her entire dissertation around why women don’t choose computer science as a major.

Some of the science courses I am involved with have over 2,500 students enrolled at any one time. . These are required baccalaureate core courses. I would anecdotally say that approx. 55% of the total enrollment is women. I don’t know what percentage of these successfully pass these courses, but I can say that a majority don’t chose the sciences, technology and engineering for a degree. (By sciences, I mean basic sciences: chemistry, physics, biology and don’t include healthcare fields.)

What is even worse is if you look at the numbers of tenured women faculty at US universities in these disciplines. Men still far outnumber the women in STEM deparments. You wouldn’t believe the stories about women who’ve been denied tenure because they chose to have a child, take time off for family, etc… Women are still expected to get married, have children, raise the children, spend 60 hours a week doing experiments in the laboratory, publish papers ad nauseam, get funded grants every time the sun comes up, teach 1-2 classes per term/semester, serve on department committees, and mentor graduate students. Somewhere in all of that, we’re suppose to sleep as well.

As a women with a science & engineering background, (Physics BSc, Systems Engineering MSc), the problem is both the lack of women in technology, but also the lack of female role-models and support going forward. There were a significant number of female graduates in my intake to an aerospace company. After 6 years, the majority had left, whether they were technical specialists or business focused. And during that same period, the number of female senior managers collapsed. And this was long before children came into the equation. It was noticable how many moved to a more female-friendly environment, whatever their specialism.

Therefore, the impotent impact of mentoring doesn’t surprise me. If there is an environment where men can only talk to other men about golf, you have to be a man who plays golf to fit in. If it is an environment which accepts a variety of alternative pastimes, a broader church of people feel happy enough to build a career there. How one breaks that cycle I don’t know. There is the real geek end of the spectrum – engineers whose idea of extravertism is looking at your shoes rather than theirs (as the joke goes). There are sufficient scientific studies that suggest men inhabit the extremes more than women do. But as technical managers rather than specialists, there should be no reason for gender equality, but it doesn’t exist. I think back to the female physics grads who started with me – they’ve moved into teaching, local council project management, strategy in my case. No-one stayed as an engineer. Partly for financial reasons – the pay’s better! But it’s still a feeling that we fit better elsewhere. A shame.

I am in the tech field and I have never experienced any hostility at all. Ever. I was the only girl in my class all through school (I graduated in 2002, so somewhat recently). I currently work with all men. In my experience men are much easier to work with and they are probably nicer to me than the women are.

I completely agree. I think it’s purely a lack of interest and nothing more. Going through tech school and now in my career I’ve never hit any sort of barriers or heard anything from anyone about how women shouldn’t be in this field. In fact I’ve been encouraged several times (almost annoying so…) by men (and women), to continue my education and become a full-fledged engineer.

I haven’t had problems working with men either (my current team is all men, but not for lack of trying). Similarly, I’ve had mixed experiences working with women. Why is that?

I think women are just naturally more emotional and catty. I actually prefer to work with men just for that reason. They are generally more level-headed and direct. I’m not saying ALL women are catty or ALL men are great to work with, but in my experience this has been the case.

DP, cinematographer. I shoot movies. And am sourrounded by man all day. Living in Germany, even our job description is a masculine one: Kamera-Mann. We do not have Directors of Photography here. Only the Mann at the Kamera. – People who need “subtle” or “soft” or “female” approach tend to look here and there for a Kamera-Frau. And sometimes I read job adds letting us females know: “A Kamera-Frau should not be a problem” – WOW.

I use to be a ICT technician at a school in the UK, i worked there for three years. My fellow technician was also female where as my manager was a male.

Throughout those three years my manager never really trained us up to his standard, so on the day he resigned me or the other technician could not apply for his job.

We both use to help each other out a lot and learnt a lot from each other, but my male manager was pretty useless.

now i have left that job and I am training to become a teacher! and I love it. I tell all my female pupils to never give up in life, even if it is a mans world!

I graduated with an engineering degree in a Canadian university in 1981. There were very few girls in the class at the time, just 5 or 6 of us out of 100 students in the Electrical Engineering program. After I graduated I worked as a computer engineer. It was a very cool job at the time. However, problems started when I got married and had babies. I just don’t have the spare time that I used to. I was responsible for too many household chores, the kids took up more and more time. Being a mother, is a full time job!!!
I think married women with kids just don’t have the time to update themselves with the latest changes in technologies, and had fallen behind, unnoticingly.
Unless, if you are lucky enough to have a very supportive husband, who doesn’t mind doing all the extra house work and caring for kids. I haven’t seen too many of them yet!
By the way, most of the female classmates in my Engineering class are not working in the technical field any more.

There is a huge lack of women in the technology field. However I believe that we make it up in other areas. I use to work in a software firm where the entire R&D deparment was men except 2 people. There was about 50 people in that deparment. But when we looked at the administration and human resources department, 90% percent was women. I feel that this occurs because women tend to work in positions that are more emotional and nuturing. I think we currently play a better part else where.

I completely agree! I’m currently in high school and to be honest, a lot of girls are more interested in the present than the future.
They worry about boys, parties, and all that jazz. I’m a huge tech-geek so I usually spend my time at home on my computer either on photoshop, illustrator, wordpress, or just plain-simple surfing the internet.
I don’t even use facebook like 98% of the student-body of my high school does!

I’m still thinking about what I want to major in, it varies a lot, but I know for a fact it’ll be something to do with computers. All of my options, to be honest, have to do with tech-related majors! (Software engineer is one of them!)

It’s hard not to have someone to talk to about my new findings when it comes to computers. Women have what it takes! They just need to get that extra push to actually do it!

You might want to check out http://www.unlimitedpossibilities.com.Considered it once as name for my start up and discovered it is already taken….The group’s focus is young women in mathematical sciences…

Same with me. The more high-tech the company, the less problems I have had with hostile men. Actually, I had more problems with sexism when dealing with men in leadership positions of female-dominated areas. The worst case was dealing with a school board back in one of my summer jobs as a student. That experience confirmed that my choice of going into engineering was the right one.

well its not just tech, most industries are dominated by men, im in banking and its a men jungle.

I agree with Scigirl2010. There is a lack of fostering support for women in engineering, sciences, and computer science. I’ve only met a handful of collegiate women who choose their major or field because they wanted to. From a recent graduate standpoint, some woman are discouraged in their field because if they don’t succeed in their first few science courses, even with dedicated study, they switch to a different major as soon as the sea gets rough.

I attended college with a diverse population, with the majority of students being caucasian or asian. Asian women would choose biosci because they are either pressured by parents, the prospect of a high paying salary, or they want to make a difference somehow someway. Half of them struggled in their upper division because they can’t see themselves in a career in science.

In regards to Tech, it is a predominantly male arena, and if a woman is not confident in her abilities its easy to fold if you’re not self-determined. So being surrounded by men, it feels like its not typical.

“This is the problem that needs to be solved!”

I would argue that this is neither a problem nor something that needs to be solved. As I wrote in answer to a somewhat similar post a while back:

Is it a given that we should strive to increase the number of women in tech? [...]) My personal view: No. It is important that there are sufficiently many techies and it is important that we all can chose our own occupations and interests (to the degree that we have the ability—not everyone can be a professor of mathematics). The exact composition of the corps of techies, nurses, garbage collectors, and professors of English literature, however, is near irrelevant when the other goals are met.

(See http://michaeleriksson.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/not-getting-women-into-technology/ for the full discussion.)

These are interesting comments & thoughts. I worked in a male-dominant field of Facility Management for over 14 years. Most of the problems I encountered were they didn’t take me seriously. I found that unless you are very aggressive and strong willed, you always have to “prove yourself.”

After years in that field with little progression, I transitioned into interior design which was predominantly females. I kept my “geekness” and tech-savvy ways and became the computer guru.

At this point, the male techs were a little intimidated. So how do you win? In my situations, I learned you either play ball or get out of the game.

OH,it seems there had a hot discussion. It is hard to conclude, too many factors.

You raise some very interesting points in your piece and many of the comments here have also been really insightful. When I talk to women that are in highly technical fields or fields that are dominated by men they often say that stereotypes are still a barrier. There is recent research that suggests that when a woman’s ability is ambiguous, women in “male” occupations are seen as less competent but likable. When a women has shown herself to be a performer in a “male” field then she is seen as competent but ” cold” which could lead to social rejection. Essentially, there is a bind either way. Interestingly, there have been similar findings for people from underrepresented minority groups. People could subconsciously hold these perceptions of women and there might not be any overt hostility in the workplace. Nonetheless, even implicit beliefs can have implications for evaluation, promotion, rewards, and salary and could explain why so many women leave STEM fields or choose not to enter.

Hi fellow geek! It’s wonderful to hear that you’re staying true to yourself, especially in high school when pressures to conform to silly things can be really high. No matter what you decide, I hope you feel supported by your friends, family & fellow nerds.

Nerds unite!

Agreed… I spent 6 years in Finance, and the ratio of women to men aren’t great in that industry either. The ratio was much better at junior levels, but after a few promotion bands, I saw fewer and fewer women in the room. I think the problem with tech is that so few women start out in that field, and when attrition naturally occurs, due to family or life choices, it leaves a significant void of female role models.

You’ve just hit on my next blog post idea. Why is it that when a female succeeds, they’re seen as b*tchy?? I heard about a Harvard experiment where some students were given a case about a successful female and others the same case except the female was changed to a male. Apparently, everyone thought the guy was great and wanted to work for him, but didn’t like the woman! Ugh.

In general and naturally, women have a different mindset with men, at the other field women much better than men.

If you see a simple example of a toy for boys and girls are different, why? It was natural. Boys are playing car and girls are playing dolls.

The conclusion is very natural, mindset, and different of habits

I’m sure all the other comments here have mentioned several valid reasons for why there (still) aren’t many women in tech. So I will just skip to my own (shallow) experiences

I do wish there were more women in tech; my sister is a computer science major herself at ucla. At my own school, ucsd, the computer science major was always popular (full) and thus didn’t easily allow major transfers (I entered undecided and couldn’t change my major to comp sci).

In the end I never had any formal tech education (settled for management science major), but I am a fan of technology and can grasp it just enough to follow diy intructables and hold a decent conversation (or so I hope). My hobby has extended far enough for my friends to ask my opinions on such-and-such technology (again, hopefully because they trust me to have done my hw).

In my current lack of career I have been considering going into the IT industry or even computer science. But really, I am afraid that all the formal education will end up killing my love of technology.

A bit unrelated to your post about women in tech, but there are a few instances of women+tech stereotyping that just annoy me. Every time I go on a deal forum looking for computers people tend to greatly generalize about women + technology: how they just want the prettier/pink laptop and not care about anything else that matters like cpu, memory, hard drive, etc.

If (when?) women ever started aggressively dominating the tech industry, it would be a sweet bonus that the petty, conversational stereotyping will just stop.

This thread has perhaps the wisest, clearest comments on this topic I’ve ever come across. And it is a subject that has interested me for several decades.

I’m a (white male Texan-turned-LA-guy) aerospace software and systems engineer. My last 25 years have been about evenly split between NASA and Boeing. My experience matches that of most commentators here on this topic. I cannot contribute anything new; the rest of you have covered the field very well. I do want emphasize some points.

One is to keep in mind that equality in any field takes lots of time to come about, and an enormous amount of work day in and day out, in ways both large and tiny. It takes not years but decades, and there will be set-backs and diversions along the way.

Another is that it is not important that the numbers by gender need ever become exactly even. Women and men vary enormously within each gender, and there is a lot of overlap between the two. But each on the average do have different needs and desires. It may be that in a century or two women may still be numerically under-represented in some fields and over-represented in others. What IS important is that neither gender be prevented from entering and excelling in their chosen fields.

Lastly one commentator said something along the lines of “I’m not a feminist BUT …” and proceeded to make a feminist point. I’ve seen this phenomenon many times and it annoys me. Partly is that it seems to disrespect all the work that feminists have done to improve equality among the (several!) sexes. Partly it is because some of that reluctance to identify with feminists is because some of the fault for that condition is the misbehavior of some radical feminists.

I’ve heard about that experiment a million times! It’s true, too (that people perceive successful women as bitchy)! It’s just more double standards, I guess. I’m never to keen on seeing it on film so often (Devil Wears Prada, the proposal, other movies my mother keeps dragging me to see). If you do a post about this, I may meander on over just to see people’s comments because it is quite frustrating to me as well.

I’m definitely mulling it over. I’ll keep you posted!

Good point! I also think that when women get married and have a family the pressure is still there to be the mom. I think that as my daughter’s generation (she is 18) continues to develop there will be a bigger shift. (And probably the next gen after that too.) She plans to study engineering in college since math & science are her strengths.

Hi Jen, it’s not true that “women only comprise 15%-17% of the company” at Google. That’s a misquote of the original interview, which said “15 to 17 percent in the *technical* areas.”

[from the Newsweek article: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/22/google-s-marissa-mayer-girls-can-be-geeks-too.html

I think most tech jobs (specifically software programming, my job) requires a certain logical/abstract way of reasoning that most (note: most, not all) women are just not interested in. In South Africa (where I am from), programming is mostly a white male type of job. This has nothing to do with smart/stupid, it is just how most of us are wired.

My question is this: why do women want to be the same is men? We each have different talents and potential in life and work, giving each DIFFERENT competitive advantages in different areas. So I say celebrate the achievements without trying to balance everything and thereby forcing people into situations where they do not fit.

Few women in tech? Is that a fact? My first child, a daughter, is an EET/ EEC. In computer needs, everywhere I go, it is all half women workforce I deal in there. You must be kidding!!!

oops.it should have read ECET/ECE

It is a good point you make. I work as a maintenance engineer in heavy plant conditions, I have only came accross two women who were ever interested in tech during my training. But I think that women who do take up tech have to adjust to the male enviroment as it can be intimidating to work with a bunch of men. The women who work with our company generally are more involved with small tech and control systems and they are brilliant in their feild.

I think the numbers are improving, though (slowly). My electronics course has 92 people; 12 of which are female. The years above us had 5-8 females on the same course.

Hi,

I really enjoyed your post and I agree, there’re TOO few women in tech.
I’ve been working as a system developer over 10 years and of all the companies I worked (some in Brazil and currently in Sweden) only one had a few women working in the development team with us.
The strange fact is that when I was in college (Computer Science) there were a good number of women so I wonder why they aren’t in the companies.
The IT needs more women, the working environment is way better with mixed teams!!

It will be good to see more womens in IT field and in Networking

http://prakashkalsaria.wordpress.com

lots of women in social media and digital marketing though in Hong Kong! Its all about connecting and maintaining relationships but virtually!

I agree. I was a specialist technician for an international semiconductor company for 12 years. I was the first woman technician of 70 or so. The male engineering manager that hired me made sure I was treated and compensated 100% equally to my male counterparts in many areas. There were only 3 other women hired after me. When he retired, my female manager made sure I was treated and compensated unequally and that everyone knew it. What a shame.

It’s great to hear the trend is improving! One step at a time

Oops! Thank you Joyce for setting me straight. I’ll be better about fact checking next time. I’ve corrected the figures in my original post.

We are all in agreement that women tend to going into fields that are more nurturing and less technical.

My argument is that fields that are more nurturing pay less because these are the field’s women gravitate toward and tech jobs pay more because it is a field predominately male.

- A Mother of a daughter who is a computer science major, mathematic minor. Go Sarah!

I’m not sure I understand what the problem is that needs solving. Some technology requires that you have a certain way of looking at the world in order to be good (such as advanced mathematics or various types of physics), or that you have a great memory for facts and figures (like medicine). And in IT, some people are great at remembering all the little details needed to implement a project or to write beautiful code. Doesn’t this suggest that different people are just naturally good at different things, and that not everyone is good at everything? So I tend to think that ‘getting more women into technology’ isn’t really the problem. It’s what happens to them after they pick a field to work in.

We seem to be surrounded by examples of work places that are miserable to work in – lack of equal pay for equal work, lack of equal opportunity – thinks like that. I remember my father objecting to the women at his factory wanting equal pay while doing the same physical tasks as the male workers. When I inherited a technical support group in the early 90’s and saw that the women were generally 15% to 20% underpaid as compared to the men in the same jobs, I made sure it got corrected over a two-year period. And at the same company, the only woman on the executive floor was the one that ran HR. From the other commenters to your post, it’s obvious these and more are still problems, even today.

I’m thinking the problem isn’t that we need to get more of anyone into any particular field – but rather, that we still have a lot of work to do in keeping them in the fields they pick. At that same company I mentioned earlier, my boss considered some of his people to be in an inner circle. Some on my team were in that group and it made it impossible to manage them. I eventually left that group when the next great opportunity came along and within a year I left the company completely.

So I ask – is the problem really about the lack of one gender or another in any given field or is the problem more about keeping them happy and thriving once they’ve picked their profession?

It’s a kind of stigma that is corrected into children. Parents wan their kids to do what they like but they would push them (whether they know it or not) into more tradtinal roles because of the well engravened reason that women are nutring and men are strong. It’s true many women would actually take science and do well but from personal experience I have seen that those men or women who are unsre about where they want to go in University tend to be pushed down tradtional paths. That’s how the world works.

I think it’s both. While it is true that not everyone has the particular talents need for a particular field, I don’t think it’s as strongly due to gender as the statistics imply. That even goes for men in female dominated professions. I do agree that working conditions play a major factor in whether someone stays in profession. But that applies to both men and women. We probably notice the effect on women more, though, because there are fewer women to start with and family responsibilities are a significant factor for women in a different way than men as noted in some of the other comments.

Can I just say what a relief to find someone who at some point knows what they’re talking about on the internet. You already know how to bring an issue to light and make it be significant. More people need to read this and understand this side of the story. I cant believe youre not more popular because you definitely have the gift.

[...] week Jen Cheng sparked an intelligent discussion on her blog by asking:  Why Are There So Few Women in Tech?.  Women and men shared their views, experiences and wisdom from a variety fields.  It’s [...]

The smartest people I knew in science classes were all women. So what gives?

Maybe women just need to find a niche in the world of technology.

With so much emphisis on environmental sciences/issues these days, it would make sense for women scientist to be at the forefront of this new scientific frontier.

just a thought1

I respect the opinions of every one. To be frank, it’s a debatable issue forever. I feel that the outcome of an industry will be outrageous in a mix up of genders where the matters that involve decision making is not either completely technical or nurturing.

For obvious reasons,women are more gifted with a capacity that men often lack..i.e proper hospitality.

In other words men will be in hospitality industry,if they have enough patience as women have.

So obviously, in the near future as the number of women in tech field rises but not men in hospitality industry due to their inherent impulsiveness, and so on….

[...] recently read an article questioning why there are so few women in tech-related jobs. My current opinion is that tech jobs usually do not attract many women. For example, the [...]

I agree with the fact that, we each have different competitive advantages in different areas. Sometime, we prioritize this whole gender-equality stuff, that we even over look what these women want to do. Maybe, who knows, women might creating some other booming sector apart from tech.

From the part of Africa where I come, from, women are generally socialized into being ‘mild and humble’ and not to ‘dream too much’. There are different sides to this whole argument and I guess there’s no single root cause or explanation. I’m a female, but I believe we should do what we want to, work hard at it, and stop this unending ‘game of affirmative action’

Hello there. I’m so glad I found your blog, I actually discovered this by accident., when I’d been browsing Google for something else entirely., Just the same I’m here now and would certainly wish to express gratitude for a excellent blog posting and a over-all intriguing blog (I furthermore love the theme/design). I’ve saved it and in addition subscribed to your

Good!!! Bookmarked this page that has this amazing content. Will come back to see if there are any updates. You, the author, are a master. Thanks

Hello,

I have a highly technical job in the medical field. I agree with you though, the stigma should be lifted.Maybe women just need to find a niche in the world of technology.

Thanks

Hi Sir,
Women with engineering or computer science degrees often disappear just as they are within grasp of reaching career peaks.Of the top 100 tech companies in 2008, women accounted for a mere 6 percent of chief executives, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. Of companies that raised venture capital in 2006, not even 7 percent were founded by women. Meanwhile the number of startups led by female chief executives that attracted funding last year was just 4.3 percent, according to VentureOne, a venture-investment tracker. As distressing as such facts are for the U.S. technology field, there is another, far-more-alarming number: Only 18 percent of college graduates with computer science degrees in 2008 were women—down from 37 percent in 1985, according to NCWIT.
Thanks

Nice post, really did see things this way. thanks

Thanks John

Thanks for the encouragement! I’m a new blogger, so still finding my voice, but I want to stick to topics that generate interesting questions and conversations.

I work in AV technology and rarely found women working along side me. I would be ignored at tradeshows and technical questions were always directed to the man in the room. Times are changing though – and I see more and more women reaching higher levels in the industry.

An interesting topic. I feel the major issue is not the lack of interest of girls in taking up Science seriously as a career path, but more inclined to the social view of Science streams like engineering as a “man thing”. I know a friend at Univ of Michigan, who says she keeps getting asked at workshop labs if “she needs a hand with her work”, although the work isnt exactly physcially tasking…

There are loads of similar examples, but my point is that parents and societies need to be a lot more open minded for this problem to go away. But like homosexuality, nudity and other former taboo issues, I’m sure even this will be socially accepted and fixed as more broadminded generations replace the orthodox opinioned ones

I’m glad to hear you’re seeing improvements in your industry! As the lone female in my tech startup, it’s incredibly frustrating when investors or fellow nerds only speak to my male co-founder, even when I’m the subject matter expert.

Thanks lorawords, I’m glad you said it.

Here is another post that talk about Women issues in technology.
http://geekwomanspeaker.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/why-do-we-need-to-retain-women-in-technology/