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At least for IT, I suspect part of the reason there are so few women is because they have better options - stay home and have kids, or do something more sociall
by Tichy 14y ago
At least for IT, I suspect part of the reason there are so few women is because they have better options - stay home and have kids, or do something more socially rewarding (involving interaction with other people) that earns less money (because they don't need to earn a lot of money, that's what their husbands do, or because they are smart enough to figure out that happiness is more important than money). I guess you could say "maths is hard, let's go shopping". I am aware that this is not a political correct hypothesis. I also don't have anything against women entering IT.
We tend to romantizice IT because in theory a single person is free to follow their visions. Being a hacker at home working on fancy projects is indeed cool. However, most IT jobs are a drag, you spend most of your time motionless in front of a computer, more often than not in an office in the basement while the (mostly female) PR department has their offices on the top floor with a view on the skyline.
- defrost 14y agoSpeaking as someone that's spent 30 odd years wandering the intersections of mathematics, computer science, numeric engineering, geophysics, bioinformatics et al, I have a hard time recalling the last time I met anyone in the IT department that was much chop at applied mathematics. By contrast, between a third and a half of the peers that I run into are women; eg: http://65.54.113.26/Detail?entitytype=2&searchtype=2&id=1881031 http://65.54.113.26/Detail?entitytype=2&searchtype=2&... .. one woman, 91 diverse publications, most leading to working implementations of actual robots, hand sign reading vision systems, etc. I guess you could say IT is boring, let's go make robots with lasers. EDIT: I should specify I'm talking from an Australian perspective, maybe our sheilas have more of a kick arse take no prisoners attitude?
- Tichy 14y agoRobots with lasers certainly sounds more exciting than IT :-)