Why are Women exiting It?
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The discussion here though is not whether chemicals make you feel or act differently. Many chemicals can do that (e.g., crack). The theory is that there is a causative effect between the level of estrogen in a human body and a decision by that person to leave the field of IT.
Personally I think it's much simpler, because there are plenty of other social and economic factors available that could very easily explain the phenomenon including job security, salary and benefits, work environment, career advancement opportunity, the chance to own your own business, etc.
Of course trying to explain away social and economic behavior in terms of being a "slave to your biology" does make life a lot easier since you don't have to worry about actively recruiting women since their biology will just make them leave the field anyway. You also don't have to worry about improving your work environment or offering competitive salary and benefits to women since all those female developers leaving your company for other careers is just not your fault... it's biological; Mother Nature deciding all these women's career paths for them.
It all sounds to me like a nice easy way to redirect the blame from management in companies that are losing top-notch female talent in the IT field.
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OK ulcer was once caused by stress we now know better.
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie -
Well Mike C, you are right, I must apologise for attributing the slave comment. I misquoted you. Classic AND ironic, always the sweetest way. As for the rest, it all seems well thought through but I did only skim as I really am out of this one now. Gone too far too quickly, so hopefully we can agree to disagree, and hopefully not bear any ill feeling.
If some were offended by my opinions on gender bias, then I hope it is understood that it was definitely not the intention. Not a scrap of it. It's a contentious issue, but if we're going to have a discussion on it then I believe it's best to state what you think, however that may be taken. It's a forum after all. I didn't appreciate the disparaging remarks, but hey, life is too short. Feel free to make some more in my absence
Good night - enjoy the debate!
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What I'm saying is yes, maybe there is. Maybe women and men think differently and that causes them to leave IT. If that's the reason, then we shouldn't see it as a problem, and we shouldn't be looking at ways to try to 'solve' the situation.
If on the other hand, women are leaving IT because they are being abused, obviously we have a problem, and all this talk of chemical differences is again, unimportant. I guess I didn't make that clear, but I think we should focus efforts on determining whether women are being oppressed or forced out or discouraged from entering IT in the first place, and not spend so much time trying to figure out if there's some biological tendancy to favor IT work.
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I'm not offended, just a little surprised by your initial post. I apologize if you felt I disparaged you, I wasn't trying to personally attack you, just trying to determine the basis for your reasoning... I personally think that there are too many variables to try to attribute a social/economic phenomenon like this to simple biology. Some of the unknown factors at this point concerning the women who are leaving IT are: 1) What is their background? What career field did they leave to enter IT, or were they always in IT? 2) Once they left IT where did they go?
Without knowing these variables it's difficult to draw this discussion to a definitive conclusion.
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Exactly, that's why we need to classify, investigate, etc. If women are leaving IT because there is no stability, no advancement opportunities, low pay, bad work environment, etc., studying the problem can help those in charge make the necessary corrections. Reflexively laying it all on the doorstep of biology, however, seems like a way to help upper management sleep better at night ("We're not doing anything wrong...")
Like I said, it would be interesting to see how much the big companies that complain about the "shortage of CS graduates" are spending to get undergrads interested in the field and recruit them versus how much they are spending trying to recruit foreign talent and lobbying Congress to raise H1B visa limits. In 2005, for instance, the tech industry spent nearly $90 mil. on Congressional lobbying (that's a helluva lot of lunches with your Senators), with Microsoft leading the pack at $8.7 mil. And that's not even counting the millions of dollars in political contributions from individual MS employees and management as well as the Microsoft Political Action Committee (MSPAC). Add to that the budget for International Recruiting.
Of course it'll never happen
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