Gender Imbalance in Industry

[selenite0]

ESR on why women are such a small minority of programmers and other high-tech professionals:

Women, in general, are not willing to eat the kind of shit that men will swallow to work in this field.

Now let’s talk about death marches, mandatory uncompensated overtime, the beeper on the belt, and having no life. Men accept these conditions because they’re easily hooked into a monomaniacal, warrior-ethic way of thinking in which achievement of the mission is everything. Women, not so much. Much sooner than a man would, a woman will ask: “Why, exactly, am I putting up with this?”
(snip)
If we really want to fix the problem of too few women in computing, we need to ask some much harder questions about how the field treats everyone in it.

I'm all for that.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Link appears to be to nowhere.

Aha, found it: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2118

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Ooops. Fixed, thank you.

[archangelbeth]

When my spouse was walking out the door of the startup he was in, to go to the hospital because our preemie daughter had just had a choking episode (at the time, we thought it was potentially a seizure) and been transported there (with me) in an ambulance... His immediate boss had the temerity to complain about his lack of "putting in the hours" there.

Yeahhhhhhhhh. **** that noise.

(He went back to his prior company -- that the start-up had spun off from -- a month or three later, and stayed there until his recent retirement.)

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I would have reacted . . . impolitely to that. Fortunately for all the corporate insanity at my current job the people I actually deal with have good priorities on family stuff.

[archangelbeth]

Ze spouse, he is very civilized. He just left to come to the hospital. Thank goodness that family stuff is "allowed" to be a priority with your place!

[bdunbar.livejournal.com]

I was just about to say 'well, I've got it pretty good'. Except ...

I'm on call 24/7. Last weekend I worked the entire weekend, and I've got a few hours of maintenance tomorrow as well.

Now, I don't actually have many calls late at night. My supervisor is good about un-official comp time. The work last weekend was mostly a matter of launch a script and come back a few hours later.

And I'm well-compensated. And I really do like what I do.

All of this means that I'm an enabler for my abuse. Rah.

[emmycantbemeeko.livejournal.com]

I would buy this argument more if not for the fact that the exact same (well, opposite, but you know) argument is used to explain the dearth of men in nursing, ie "Men won't put up with this shit."

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Good point. I wonder if there's someone who's worked in both fields who could find some difference in the kinds of shit. Long hours and micromanagement seem to be the same for both.