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> try (as a male) to get a job in a kindergartner or a nursery school. Problems in other industries are no justification for ignoring our own--is this an argum

• cliveowen 13y ago
  I do not justify sexism in the tech industry, I'm trying to resize and put into perspective the phenomenon. If you add up all the jobs that are the preserve of women (mostly retail, where face-to-face communication is needed) you can actually see that sexism in the tech industry, in the grand scheme of things, is a pretty small matter. If you think I'm being hyperbolic just take a look at job ads for common jobs like barista, sales rep., PR, call centers operator, etc.
• illumen 13y ago
  Agreed. There are definitely sexism problems in education. Especially kinder, pre-school, and primary school levels. This also has flow on effects to the IT sector. 80% women teachers is a common amount in countries like UK/Australia. Not sure of the stats in other countries. The IT sector is doing better in addressing the problems compared to Education sector. The IT sector has made some good progress in the last few years. Some companies are going from 0%-20% to 40% women. There are outreach programs at many conferences and in many open source groups. If you look at the conference websites for teachers you don't see the same efforts. Lots left to do though. I think the IT industry can take pride in it has accomplished in comparison to education in recent years. IT is doing well compared to the journalism industry too (male dominated). Still lots left to do, and just because some industries are doing badly it doesn't mean we can't do better. But we also shouldn't ignore the good progress we have made.