Lack of women in IT

I just posted the following as the 25th or so comment in a thread about the dearth of women in IT. As a seasoned female computer professional, I was compelled to put my two cents in - please refer to the thread to see the context I was writing into:

I want to throw out a few of my ideas about all this. I’ve been a full-time computer professional since 1980. Have degrees in Psych, Sociology and MBA in marketing with quite a few computer courses sprinkled in along the way. First a couple facts about me for context.

I always liked computers - I like the “possibility machine”ness and intellectual stimulation of software.

I like gadgets (I was a tomboy, have 2 older brothers with Master's degrees in math - one's an actuary, one’s a systems programmer and my Dad’s a civil engineer.) I never found math very interesting, but computers are fascinating to me. I like the application of them. The ease of creating. I’m an abstract thinker, so they are easy for me.

I was an ardent feminist in my college and early grad school days. I even went through a man-hating phase. I was mad that movies were mostly about men. I was mad that my weight was such a big deal in determining whether I was considered dateable by men. I was mad that being smart, openly, was a turnoff for the vast majority of men. I was mad that there’s very little in the way of a history of women or women in arts and literature. I was mad that women weren’t expected to be creative, powerful, athletic and smart. I was mad that I was expected to be a secondary player in life. After a few years, I calmed down and essentially got over it. I think I had good reason to be mad.

I leaned towards working in a male-dominated field because the pay and respect was better. I didn’t necessarily think through all the negatives of being a minority and the negatives of dealing with stereotypes and being the token woman, etc. I also didn’t consider ahead of time but ran into the fact that these good jobs in male-dominated fields were predicated on the job-holder having a wife to keep the household and social life going. I didn’t have a wife so it was harder to come up with the energy to compete and excel and succeed as much as I wanted to.

So enough on me. Here are a few guesses:

1. Women are on-average more interested in social stuff, less interested in abstract stuff including computing. But there are lots of women who don’t fit that mold.
2. The numbers of women getting into computing now are probably going negative because of the dot-com bust. Women were willing to go into computing - perhaps not their first choice, all things being equal, which they are not - because computers has been the hot career ticket. When that perception changed, some women who weren’t really, really interested in computers, dropped it.
3. I do think that if there were more cool pieces of software, games and otherwise, with more social elements - I at least - would be more interested. I was immediately attracted to the concept of social software. I'm also attracted to personal growth software though I’ve seen little to none of it. I think there’s been less interest in these things because the field is male-dominated.
4. Whenever you are in the minority, it’s more awkward and uncomfortable. Also, you are breaking the female stereotypes which has a social cost. You don’t get as many strokes.
5. If you take the social role woman, it’s complicated and includes mother, homemaker, wife, do-gooder, willingness to help someone succeed and play the subordinate role for starters. These role expectations, and some of them get internalized, have to be accounted for by women when they make career decisions. I think all this stuff leads to fewer women applying to speak at conferences - it’s time-consuming and the expected return on effort isn’t all that high. AND, as a woman whose gone to lots of computer conferences - it’s a little isolated.

Here’s what I would like to see. I would like to see people who are in a position of authority/power at these conferences, at universities, in the press, at game companies, computer hardware and software companies and men at large:

• be sensitive to a woman’s plight.
• open your mind to see what’s missing in the computer field because there are so few women, especially women in positions of power and influence.
• solicit input from women
• hire qualified women in good jobs
• invite them to speak at conferences and make it easy for them - even give them special dispensation just so you can alleviate a bad situation and encourage the influx of new ideas, sensitivities and points of view that women can bring.
• fight for job descriptions that allow men and women to participate equally in family life and homemaking and careermaking

Thanks to those who’ve participated in making this a worthwhile inquiry and provided valuable information. Thanks for reminding me about this so I can keep it in mind - it’s hard sometimes swimming in an ocean that has blinders on (mixed metaphor for sure) that doesn’t acknowledge your experience.

I would like to be one of the movers and shakers in this new field called social software. Hello.