Why are women leaving the tech industry in droves?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-women-tech-20150222-story.html#page=2

by prostoalex • 11 years ago

13 16 11 years ago

latimes.com

minot• 11 years ago

Spoiler alert: They're not.

astrodust• 11 years ago

Betteridge's Law applies, then, even to a question that starts with "Why?"

littletimmy• 11 years ago

She extrapolated all of this from the story of one woman who left before becoming a manager? Where are the statistics on this? What a shoddy piece of social commentary.

It is almost as if journalists have decided that feminism is now fashionable and so everyone must write about it. Gone are the days were ugly women like Freidan and Hooks fought for women's rights. Now feminism's no-risk mainstream and so the Emma Watsons and Sheryl Sandbergs rush in to co-opt the nobility. What nonsense.

riskable4• 11 years ago

She had built a prototype for a travel website, she said, a feature to auto-suggest cities and airports based on the first three letters typed into the search field, fixing a long-standing problem.
Her male bosses told her she'd built it without permission. Then they said only architects within the company could pitch features — and all the architects were male. In the end, the project was handed to someone else, and she was assigned to less interesting tasks.

To me, this sounds like "business as usual" at large companies. I am a male and I have encountered and will likely continue to encounter situations like this often. It has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with classic enterprise problems like "silos", "not invented here syndrome", and just general political BS like, "you/your team don't get to mess with our product/project."

I have no idea if this kind of "default deny" mode of operation results in less women in tech but if it's a major factor then I think it's safe to say that sexism isn't the reason why women are leaving/not entering IT careers.

rabbyte2• 11 years ago

I'm curious. If the "default deny" theory pans out and we discover it does indeed result in less women, why would you conclude that sexism is not a factor? Seems to me it would be evidence of systemic sexism, reinforced by an inability to see that the rules and structures provide more mobility for some and not others.

For the record, I don't think women can't cope with "default deny" mode and I do think all genders have to face the anecdote you selected. However, when the hierarchy is dominated by one gender, there is an additional hurdle that the privileged gender will not encounter.

riskable4• 11 years ago

How could you conclude that "default deny" has anything at all to do with a persons's sex? People aren't being denied/excluded because of their gender they're being denied/excluded because enterprise IT culture sucks.

It is the opposite of an "inclusive" culture but it should be noted how it became that way: Through decades of non-technical people interfering with technical decision making and a political culture that measures success--and power--by the amount of people who work for you. Eventually you get to the point where someone--an outsider--contributing work to your project feels like a threat to your very existence.

However, when the hierarchy is dominated by one gender, there is an additional hurdle that the privileged gender will not encounter.

What hurdle would that be? In addition to not being on the right team or having the right job title you need the right sex? I don't think so. Silos, NIH syndrome, and similar don't take sex into account. They impact all genders, races, and whatnot equally.

I'm sure sexism exists in IT as it does in all industries and careers (especially the subconscious kind) but the worker-hostile situations that are all-too-common in IT are not sexism. They may drive out or scare off women--I don't know--but they're not inherently sexist.

DownvoteMeToWin• 11 years ago

I'm very interested if these theories-via-media used to explain women's participation in tech are universal enough to apply to waste management and construction industries as well.

Isn't testability important to theory?

darkwingduck• 11 years ago

It isn't a theory as much as a religion, requiring faith rather than any kind of facts as to problem or proposed solution. Welcome to the inquisition.

macho_pikachu• 11 years ago

Its more like a cargo cult. Its not really actively harmful to talk about misogyny in tech culture. Its just not doing any good. Like wearing coconut headphones. Or an anti-drunk driving campaign by kinder-gardeners targeting other kinder-gardeners.

DiversityWorks• 11 years ago

Because there is rampant misogyny in the industry as the dismissive replies and often outright hostile attitude you tend to see from the tech community towards anyone raising these type of concerns.

dang• 11 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9091973

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9091810

nkurz2• 11 years ago

I have a "game theory" interpretation for which I'd be interested in feedback: women are often treated poorly at tech companies because it's simply not in the self-interest of their well-paid currently-employed mostly-male[1] co-workers to increase the size of the labor pool.

Currently, competent American tech workers are paid very high salaries due to the lack of suitable replacements. If the size of the pool were to dramatically increase, either due to a more open immigration policy or improved gender balance, their ability to command their current salaries would decline.

It's reasonably accepted that many American workers are against an open immigration policy, and it is is possible to voice this concern in socially acceptable ways. I don't know of any socially acceptable to say the same regarding reducing the pool of competing women, but the self-benefit seems about the same.

Many of the proposed changes are directed at changing hiring practices, but it seems clearly to management's benefit to have a greater pool of qualified applicants, and no particular reason to believe that they'd pass over the opportunity to hire a qualified applicant.

But there's lots of reason to believe that an in-demand job holder would seek to keep themselves in this position. This makes me think that if you want to solve the "gender imbalance problem" in tech, it would help to make it in the self-interest of the current well-compensated employees.

How would one do this?

[1] Interestingly, the same argument applies to women currently working in tech: is it in their self-interest to have more women seeking jobs in tech? Do the women in tech consistently treat other women well?

riskable4• 11 years ago

I don't think your idea holds water because it is based on an assumption that women are treated poorly. Rather, more poorly than men. Is there any evidence that women are treated any worse than men in IT?

Equal opportunity is not the same thing as equal outcomes. If the culture of IT isn't appealing to women it doesn't necessarily mean sexism is involved. Sexism seems like a heck of a lot easier to overcome than, say, NIH syndrome or the fact that changing jobs is more effective at increasing pay than asking for (or relying on) raises.

nkurz2• 11 years ago

I was temporarily accepting this, as it's the premise of the article. My guess would be that there is considerable evidence, but little proof, and even less quantification of effect size. There certainly could be other explanations for why women would be avoiding high paying jobs for which they are qualified, but there does seem to be something about technology that is different than other demanding fields with lifestyle tradeoffs such as law and medicine.

Why are women leaving the tech industry in droves?

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