Gender in IT, a Different View
I try to keep my blog tech-only, but I couldn’t resist.
I read a post by Elizabeth Naramore yesterday about gender in IT
There are so many thoughts that I just couldn’t explain in a single comment on her blog, so I decided to write an article about it. Before you read it, know that my intention is simply to share my own point of view. I don’t have many facts to back up my claims. I’m just an observer. Know that I might be very harsh in my opinions, but I mean no disrespect to anyone. Feel free to disagree with me.
Discrimination
Being the only female developer in every single job, I have not personally experienced any discrimination related to my gender, nor do I know another woman who can give me a concrete example of her experiencing discrimination. I’m starting to believe that it’s an urban legend. Nobody ever saw it, except in the movies, and people keep saying it exists because everybody else is saying it. If you ever experienced such discrimination, by all means, tell me!
Are women really paid less than men? I remember being better paid than most men for an equivalent position in certain companies. Will someone promote a man rather than a woman simply because of gender? I never encountered such a problem. In fact, I don’t remember a single man get a promotion before me. A manager has no interest in promoting a man who has less skills than a woman. If he does that, then he doesn’t understand the concept of return on investment. If you think otherwise, let me know!
What about sexists remarks? I can’t remember a single remark that I deemed offensive towards my gender. I actually find myself making comments such as “these women can’t drive” and “these men drink so much”. Some stereotypes are true, others are not. In any case, stereotypes should not be considered offensive. When he yells to me “go home and wash your dishes” after almost running me over while he has a red light and I’m carrying a baby, I’ll get offended. But this is extreme and doesn’t happen in a work environment.
Parenting and household duties
Yes, women take care of children. I did too. I had to pause my IT studies for a whole year. When I got back to school, I ended up with people who were 1 year younger. I graduated at the same time and got the exact same job as everybody else. At what point did I get behind? I’m still ahead of all those who haven’t finished their studies, or finished their studies after me. Even she who did not have a kid will be behind those who are older than her, that’s just natural.
Yes, women inherit most of the household duties. First, this has nothing to do with IT. Second, she better educate her husband to help her out. She does have a full-time job after all.
Imbalance problem
We all agree that there are less women than men in IT. Having a more balanced team might help. I personally don’t like working with other women. Whenever there’s more than one woman in the room, decisions take ages. I also find it easier to give orders to a man, because a woman is naturally resistant when orders come from another woman. At least so I witnessed.
Now I heard that the percentage of women in IT keeps dropping. But maybe not all women are shaped to be in IT. Maybe IT in 1990 had different requirements. I was too young back then, so I don’t know. But, we can’t assume that it was the same. Perhaps it had requirements that both men and women could satisfy equally, and it’s no longer the case?
Are men different from women?
Of course they are! Now I’m mostly talking about myself, but a psychologist-sexologist (Yvon Dallaire) feels the same. Women make a big deal of small things. Women need to be comforted. Women need to talk about their feelings. Women won’t do something that will hurt someone’s feelings. These are just a few examples.
IT companies are implicitly looking for people who can handle stress. You might disagree but women tend to stress more (I just look at my mother for one second). Not all women can cope with the pressure. Even I sometimes struggle with changing requirements a day before the deadline. It is a stressful profession. I don’t know if that’s just an impression, but it seems to me that men can recover faster from work. They can sleep 6 hours and they’re top-shape, while I need up to 9 hours. That can certainly give them an advantage and discourage some women.
On the other hand, they’re not so different! Our interests are not necessarily shaped by our gender. I played with both dolls and guns when I was a kid. I had a passion for technology since I saw that Commodore MAX at a christmas party when I was 5. I couldn’t stop playing snake and chess until I fell asleep in front of it. So it’s wrong to assume that only boys like video games and thus are predisposed for IT.
Although my son seems to enjoy video games more than the girls his age, I don’t believe that it has anything to do with gender. My father is an electrician that likes gadgets. He’d buy one for himself, then give it to me to play with once he’s done with it. I do the same with my kid. I didn’t buy the X-Box, the Wii and the DS for him, but he eventually ended up with it. Maybe if those girls had access to a computer earlier, we would have seen more geekgirls. We just assume that girls don’t like video games and computers, so we don’t buy them one. Then we wonder why they don’t like them more.
Why not go into IT?
Why do we see so little women in IT? Think of the problem the other way around. We keep talking about gender discrimination and how we need to be sensitive about this topic. A woman who is choosing her career path might consider IT. Then she hears all this chatter about how it sucks to be a woman in IT, how others feel uncomfortable with so many men around, how they’re paid less than men and how she’ll never be a geekgirl. That ought to scare her. Of course she’ll pick administration! People say it’s nice and balanced! It sounds to me like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Think about it. Maybe we’re losing women because we keep talking about all these nightmares.
I’ll give you a personal example. I went for an interview in a PHP shop. There were 40 male developers and not a single woman. I didn’t know that until I was told so by the interviewer. He said “it will be nice to have a woman for a change”. I felt pressure. I didn’t want to take a job just because I’m a woman and because they need to maintain appearance. Had he not told me that, I might not have noticed it on my first month on the job. But because he did tell me, I felt different. I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want to receive a promotion and wonder “did he just give it to me because I’m a woman?” I refused the job.
Another example. My boss would come in every meeting saying “hi guys”. Then he would pause and add “… and gals”. It infuriated me. Why this special accommodation? Does a blind man want to get ahead of the line at a bus stop because of what he is? He doesn’t want to be pitied or differentiated! We wants to be treated like everybody else! I know it because one blind man told me so. Maybe if we stopped paying attention to gender, then women will stop paying attention to the fact that they’re the only woman in a room full of men.
Conclusion
I do not like to be treated differently. I do not like hearing people (both men and women) complain about the female situation. It makes IT less appealing. Men, don’t remind me that I’m the only female developer that you ever worked with. You probably don’t want me to remind you that you’re the only male receptionist that I ever met.
I strongly believe that making this into such a big deal is the reason why this problem exists in the first place. You may disagree, and I welcome any comments.
Hi Anna and thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts in writing! I’ve encouraged the women at PHPWomen to share their discrimination experiences with you, and I hope others do too (here’s a quick one Sara Golemon blogged about a while back: http://blog.libssh2.org/index.php?/archives/61-Youre-not-bad…for-a-girl….html). I hope they give us all more insight into how prevalent the problem really is. Maybe you’re right and it’s not as bad as we think. I would love it if that were the case, but something tells me otherwise.
I think you also bring up an interesting point about “what’s offensive.” Your boss’s attempts to not offend you by calling you a “gal” ended up offending you more, yet other women may be offended at being called a “guy,” because clearly they’re not. It’s likely hard for those around us to know what to call us.
I also think you’re right in that some women have absolutely no problem working in a male-dominated field (my niece, for instance plays football on a team of all guys). Generally speaking though, and research seems to back it up, is that it’s human nature to be self-conscious if you’re different than everyone around you. Once you get over that initial hurdle and start to get to know people on an individual basis, I think that feeling goes away- it would just be nice if we could get women to stick around long enough to get there. Then maybe we could all stop talking about it and move on to other things, as you suggest
.
BTW, it was really nice meeting you at php|tek and I hope to see you around at a future conference!
Cheers,
Elizabeth
Thanks for this interesting perspective of the problem. I don’t see it as contrary to Elizabeth’s post. Just another of many perspectives but much of what you wrote rings true even although I had the same reaction to Elizabeth’s post.
I know this will sound cliche but I suggest that there is quite a bit of truth in both opinions, and perhaps that the solution is a blend of both as well. Certainly the ugliness that took place at the Golden Gate Ruby Conference ( http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SmutOnRails.html ) must be addressed yet I can see your point that sometimes it is best to let sleeping dogs lie.
Great post. Thank you for your contribution to the debate.
Before you start receiving flak for writing this – let me stand up and applaud.
As an employer who has a fair percentage (30% I can call fair?) of women programmers I find your views more closer to mine.
I read the blog post by Elizabeth as well and also had my problems with it. Not because I’m a woman and I’ve never experienced what she writes about but because I’ve just never seen any of it happen, period (and for the sake of clarity, I’m male). Currently I work for a small web agency with about 15 people employed – no women among us. This is not because we or our boss shuns women – we just don’t get any cv’s from women. In my former job, a big corporate monster of an organisation, four of my bosses were women (one of them my immediate manager, the three other higher in the hierarchy). I have no reason whatsoever to believe they were paid less than male counterparts: they did their jobs and did them well and were rewarded for it, to the best of my knowledge. Were any of them discriminated against? Certainly not in any day-to-day circumstances, and seeing as three of them were up high in the hierarchy, I doubt there was any systemic discrimination against women. As for sexual harassment? Can’t recall a single mentioning of it while I was there.
Personally, I think people should be free to take up whatever job they like. If women as a group are not interested in IT, don’t force them! If they are interested, then the world of IT is wide open for them.
In response to this, one might hear things like: ‘But the typical environment of the IT industry favours men! It’s unfair and sexist!’ or something to that effect. I rather doubt this, but even if it was the case, I don’t really care. I lost interest in any equality discussions the minute I realised that no one was arguing for equality for gender diversity among workers in harbour-jobs or waste disposal jobs. Put differently: the political/ethical side of the discussion is meaningless and we should focus on what actually matters, i.e. how people are actually treated in the IT industry. And this, I believe, is not based on gender but is different from company to company.
Regards
Fake
Wow, it’s amazing how much I agree with your view. I think there are a lot of cases “If you want to see evil, you see evil”.
I had the discussion the other they with a woman about that “Hey guys” remark. She wanted to be recognized as a woman and felt a bit insulted by not explicitly being greeted with “and girl(s)”. I also think it has something to do with someones background, perhaps where he/she comes from etc. I’m just glad that there aren’t *just* delicate flowers out there…
I agree with you Anna. Except, on this :
“she better educate her husband to help her out, especially since she makes twice his salary”
Dou you really think salary should be taken into account when doing the household duties?
Bravo. Someone just linked this post to me from the #phpc channel on freenode. Someone had asked me where *my* “women in IT” article was, and I actually considered writing one, although I knew it wouldn’t be popular among women. I still might, but your post has pretty much nailed what I have been saying for years and years.
The bigger of a deal you make out of being a woman in IT, the more of a big deal it becomes, and the more separated you are from the “rest” of IT.
I liken it to walking through Spanish Harlem in NYC. If you walk around like a victim, you will be treated like a victim. If you walk in like you know where you’re going and why you’re there, you’ll be just fine.
I adore Elizabeth Naramore – truly, she’s one of my favorite females in tech, but she also knows we have to agree to disagree on this point.
Thank you for writing this, so I didn’t have to. Although I still might, there will probably be a lot more swearing.
I always felt that if you had opinions, cared about what you were doing, showed interest in all things tech and it all showed through in your work just like everyone else, no one seemed to treat women programmers any differently. I have actually worked with other women programmers, and the only difference I ever noticed was in how we communicated ideas. The only area I ever felt there might be a difference in treatment was in hardware issues and general computer support; everyone always seems to want to ask a computer guy to fix problems, even though I’m right there and might be able to fix the problem too.
Jean-Marc,
I agree with you. Now that you mention it, it seems that I’m basing household duties on respective salaries. That doesn’t make sense. I’ll take that bit out as to not confuse people.
Thanks again for this post – just to clarify, I wasn’t advocating women act like victims or purposefully look to see the bad in the situations, nor whine or complain about it. I was just explaining why some of us may feel the way we do, and that research shows there there’s nothing wrong with you if you do. Men feel the same way when they’re in the gender minority. As well, if you were a 50-year-old working with all teenagers, age would likely be the dividing factor and the one you would have a tendency to internally focus on. It’s human nature. I also thought the other results from my research were interesting and I wanted to share
I totally agree that this *should* not be an issue, and in a perfect world it wouldn’t be. But I also don’t think the answer is just to ignore it, because clearly there is something wrong with the system.
I’m also aware that there is a fair percentage that like the system the way it is and don’t really want to change it, so the message there is if you can’t man up & take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. I can live with that, although I’d rather not
.
Snipeyhead – I would love to read your post, btw
Bill,
I remember reading the SmutOnRails article some time ago. For those who don’t know what presentation it refers to (links aren’t very obvious), here it is: http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-at-gogaruco
When you look at the images used, they are, in fact, unprofessional, offensive and completely out of place. It’s like the presenter never saw an actual woman before except in a porn movie.
In defense of the IT industry, things like that do not happen often and are not limited to IT. Had something like that happened in an office, it would have probably been worse for the female programmer(s), because they’d have to face the guy on the next day of work. Thankfully, I did not hear of such a thing happening in an office.
I have often said that I have never been put in an inappropriate situation as I love being a developer. Perhaps I should clarify: I am reasonable enough to understand that being a minority put me in a unique situation with gross advantages and disadvantages.
I don’t know that most guys have had their asses groped, been told how sexy their undergarments are, been regaled with the way they are fantasized about, have had “scatgirls.com” be a part of their “initiation” (who knows about that part), or when being seen at technical conferences been asked what web cam website they represent.
However, I wear these experiences with pride knowing that I can be a trailblazer and hopefully inspire young women to come through and succeed. I know that the women that blazed the way so I can be in the workplace went through much worse.
The vast majority of men I have dealt with in this industry have been amazing, and kind, and gentlemanly. However, if I have dealt with it I’m not a anomaly.
Just saying we could be a little more sensitive to our sisters.
The problem of course, is the “bad apple”.
Just because you haven’t been the recipient of the discrimination or seen it happen doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
And just because it exists and happens doesn’t mean it’s really that prevalent. The problem is the “bad apple” syndrome. If you have a perfectly beautiful bowl of apples, but one is rotten and molding .. are you going to remember the good apples or the moldy one?
Same thing with IT, discrimination for the most part really isn’t a problem… except for the the few nasty incidents (see the posts above for some examples)
But what are people going to remember? The bad of course. My issue is that in many cases NOTHING IS DONE and the recipients of the discrimination don’t realize that this IS an isolated incident.
As for personal experiences – here’s one for you. When I was first starting in the PHP world I was helping out on a PEAR package. I was writing some new features … at midnight… and the package lead simple had to push the new stuff into the release, even though I told him it wasn’t ready.
End result? Some very broken code. The next morning after some sleep I woke up and fixed the issues. Later that day I received a rather scathing email about how girls shouldn’t code because they don’t know what they’re doing and how I would never be a professional programmer etc.
Luckily I had people I could talk to who reassured me that this was just “a bad apple” and to ignore idiots. I was lucky, I had perspective and a support system. But as a newcomer to open source with no one to offer that perspective what would a woman see? Would she bother to stay involved with that kind of overreaction?
The issue isn’t “does it happen” because it does. It’s not even “does it happen often” – doesn’t matter – the problem is how do we as IT react to the problem.
Elizabeth Naramore,
I like that you mention “if you can’t man up & take the heat, stay out of the kitchen”. Not all women are as thick-skinned as I am. And we shouldn’t require them to be. If some discrimination does occur, everybody should be supportive, and not let her handle it on her own.
I would say that poo-pooing gender discrimination in IT as “urban legend” does just as much damage to the cause of women in IT as saying that it happens all the time everywhere.
Gender discrimination isn’t limited to hiring decisions. It’s the guys in the room who are paying more attention to your body than your ideas.
It’s the developer who asserts that decisions are harder to make if there’s more than one woman in the room.
It’s the manager who decides that he can’t hire a woman because his existing team would be too rough on her.
It’s a CouchDB evangelist using porn in a presentation, and dismissing women who object as “prudes” or “no fun”.
I’m a 40-year-old male who’s working in IT for 20 years. It’s been my privilege to work with and report to many capable and successful women in this field.
To imply that the playing field is anywhere close to level for men and women in IT does not strike me as an accurate representation of reality on the ground.
Regards,
–Duane Roelands
Elizabeth M Smith,
Judging by some of the above posts, it seems that things do happen. So you might be onto something when you talk about the “bad apple”. It seems that no matter how hard we work to prevent something, it still happens. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have emergency rooms in hospitals.
So we can’t prevent all of it (we should still try), we should have a real support system when unfortunate things do happen. We should advertise the support system, so that women would know where to turn to, and not be ashamed to do so even for little things.
Lastly, Anna, I’d like to say thanks for putting your thoughts out here. I think it super important to discuss it.
I’d like to make a comment about your Parenting comment. If I read your article correctly you took a year off before graduating, is that correct? That is not where the problem lies.
The problem with taking time off to have a family is the dead space in your resume/CV. If you do it BEFORE your degree, it doesn’t leave a space, especially if it is just one year. Taking off multiple years in the middle can result in serious carrer damages.
My wife took a few years off from her accounting job to raise our sons. When she tried to go back it was nigh impossible to get anybody to take her seriously. She had to start from the bottom. She had to start at the bottom. Accounting isn’t nearly as fluid as IT is so you can only imagine how hard it would be in IT.
I imagine I would have had similar troubles had I decided to do the Mr. Mom thing. I have seen it happen to other guys so I am pretty sure that this is not a gender issue but rather a perception issue. Employeers should look past such gaps and view them as significant job training. I know I have had to babysit some fellow employees.
I appreciate your perspective, especially knowing that taking an opposing view can take a bit of bravery. It appears you have a great deal of support already, so I don’t feel like you’ll take my comments as an attack on your valuable perspective, but rather just another set of ideas to consider.
To be honest, in portions of your blog post, you have expressed a very sexist viewpoint about women. And, as is typical with sexism, it is also a common stereotype. This quote comes from your post, and it feels to me to be an unfair, broad characterization of all women:
Those are sexist comments. The danger with statements like that is the chill factor it casts on all women. So, what that particular statement does is discourages women from expressing their opinions and viewpoints, and encourages them to follow orders in order to speed things up. To make matters worse, it also encourages others to agree, and then to raise this issue during a discussion that they think is taking too long, reminding people it’s not a valid discussion, but rather “just what it’s like working with women.”
Sexist statements end up adding to unwelcoming environments for women. It could be part of a complex set of reasons that discourage women to get involved. Surely, it’s not difficult to understand “not feeling welcome or accepted for who you are” is a disincentive to participate.
I have 25+ years as a woman in the Information Technology field. I have worked my way up from an entry level developer, to Director of Advanced Application Development at the University of Nebraska. I left my job at the University to freelance with open source solutions.
The open source community can be very sexist. There are times that remind me of when I started in the industry where we were more likely asked to “get some coffee” than we were to “lead the meeting.” The sexism does not only come from men. Women can sometimes be their own worst enemies, focusing on “keeping everyone equal”, instead of “celebrating the sucess of other women.”
Conversely, the open source community can be extremely welcoming of women. Thankfully, communities that are more welcoming of women are *also* more welcoming of diversity, in general. In the end, diverse communities help ensure software fitting for a diverse world. Since building great software is a goal of open source communities, focusing on ensuring a friendly, welcoming community is very important.
Don’t worry that I missed your overall point. We are each individually and completely responsible for our own success. Sexism does not hold individual women down. It holds everyone down.
Kind regards – and again – thank you for stating a different point of view!
Amy
Amy,
Thank you for your comment.
I do not think that by saying that it’s longer to reach a decision with many women in the room is sexist. Based on my observations, women are less likely to take a decision that will hurt someone, whereas men think more heuristically. It doesn’t make women less apt to make decisions, they’ll just keep exploring possibilities until they find something that will not hurt anyone, which may take longer than I have the patience for.
Because I, unlike most women I met so far, think heuristically most of the time, it is easier for me to work with men, who mostly think in this manner as well. I remember once doing a project with a few men and a woman. The meeting took us 3 hours instead of 1, and we didn’t even finish discussing the first point on the list. Men remained silent most of the time, only the woman kept talking. I don’t want to generalize, but this is only one of many examples. It did happen with a man also, on a single occasion. I will not work with that man again. But maybe he’ll be a good teammate for that woman
As for giving orders, I do not say that women are more submissive. I say that as a woman, men seem to listen to me and do as I say more often than women. I noticed the “female-ordering-female” issue first when I was a teenager and could no longer take orders from my mother. I moved out at the age of 17 because of that. I think that this is normal gender relationship because I heard this from other women as well.
If I said some nonsense up there it’s probably because it’s past 1 am.