I was idly scanning a press release in my inbox the other day stating that the National Academy of Sciences planned to honor 17 individuals in 2010 for their “extraordinary scientific achievements in the areas of biology, chemistry, geology, astronomy and psychology.” Five of the recipients were women. I remembered having read about Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace as a child, and knowing that women have played a seminal role in computer science, I wondered why we don’t see too many women anymore among the ranks of computer scientists?
Observation: How many women post on IT forums with 'male' or gender neutral user names?
I have identified quite a few. I believe many feel their comments and advice will be taken more seriously if it seems to come from a male. And there is the unfortunate fact that females on-line attract sexually biased or charged comments that men never seem to have to deal with especially when offering comments on a contentious subject.
Anecdote 1: My older daughter has a Bachelor's degree with a dual major of English Literature and Primary Education. She has over 15 years experience as a teacher and as an academic adviser for a large university. She completed her MBA a few years ago with a 4.0 average and an excellence award for her thesis which was then used as a model for a reorganization of her department. Her job performance evaluations are consistently outstanding and she has been given performance raises each of her last 3 reviews while her peers were living with wage freezes.
She was recently up for a job within the university to replace her manager who had been promoted. Her manager encouraged her to apply and the HR folks explained how her 4 years experience in her current job when combined with the university's desire and policy of promoting from within would make her a very strong contender if not a shoo in.
When the university filled the position with a male from another university with less than one year of experience in academic counseling she was told they figured with a 4 year old she wouldn't be able to commute an additional 12 miles to work. (She had stated in the interview that she had already made child care arrangements including her husband getting his work shift changed to minimize the time in day care.)
I can't imagine a male candidate being excluded for for this same logic.
Anecdote 2: My younger daughter has her mechanical engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon and her Masters in Bioengineering from Trinity College (Ireland)plus 12 years experience with Intel managing production equipment installations. She left Intel to get her Master's and then was hired by a medical devices company to work in product development.
She found out a year later that she had been hired at a full grade level below the other 4 (male) engineers hired at the same time. None of them had a Master's nor a fraction of the experience (two were recent graduates).
She did get a hiring bonus which brought her first year's pay up to nearly what she would have earned in the higher grade level, but she remains a year behind her 'class' for promotions. Oh, by the way she was the winner of the company's engineering excellence of the year award.
When she asked why she was hired at the lower level her supervisors stated "You did tell us that one reason for leaving Intel was to get away from chemical exposure before having children."
(Intel had offered her several other jobs away from the chemical exposure, but they were all 'paper pushing' as opposed to 'hands on' engineering leading to her decision to seek other work even though it paid roughly 60% of what she had been earning at Intel.)
Conclusion: Women have many reasons to operate in 'stealth' mode in the workplace which don't apply to their male counterparts.
And many of those same reasons are often considerations in avoiding testosterone rich environments.
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Women: IT Needs You - Men: Get Over It
Posted by: Richard Adhikari February 2, 2010 05:00 AMI was idly scanning a press release in my inbox the other day stating that the National Academy of Sciences planned to honor 17 individuals in 2010 for their “extraordinary scientific achievements in the areas of biology, chemistry, geology, astronomy and psychology.” Five of the recipients were women. I remembered having read about Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace as a child, and knowing that women have played a seminal role in computer science, I wondered why we don’t see too many women anymore among the ranks of computer scientists?
I have identified quite a few. I believe many feel their comments and advice will be taken more seriously if it seems to come from a male. And there is the unfortunate fact that females on-line attract sexually biased or charged comments that men never seem to have to deal with especially when offering comments on a contentious subject.
Anecdote 1: My older daughter has a Bachelor's degree with a dual major of English Literature and Primary Education. She has over 15 years experience as a teacher and as an academic adviser for a large university. She completed her MBA a few years ago with a 4.0 average and an excellence award for her thesis which was then used as a model for a reorganization of her department. Her job performance evaluations are consistently outstanding and she has been given performance raises each of her last 3 reviews while her peers were living with wage freezes.
She was recently up for a job within the university to replace her manager who had been promoted. Her manager encouraged her to apply and the HR folks explained how her 4 years experience in her current job when combined with the university's desire and policy of promoting from within would make her a very strong contender if not a shoo in.
When the university filled the position with a male from another university with less than one year of experience in academic counseling she was told they figured with a 4 year old she wouldn't be able to commute an additional 12 miles to work. (She had stated in the interview that she had already made child care arrangements including her husband getting his work shift changed to minimize the time in day care.)
I can't imagine a male candidate being excluded for for this same logic.
Anecdote 2: My younger daughter has her mechanical engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon and her Masters in Bioengineering from Trinity College (Ireland)plus 12 years experience with Intel managing production equipment installations. She left Intel to get her Master's and then was hired by a medical devices company to work in product development.
She found out a year later that she had been hired at a full grade level below the other 4 (male) engineers hired at the same time. None of them had a Master's nor a fraction of the experience (two were recent graduates).
She did get a hiring bonus which brought her first year's pay up to nearly what she would have earned in the higher grade level, but she remains a year behind her 'class' for promotions. Oh, by the way she was the winner of the company's engineering excellence of the year award.
When she asked why she was hired at the lower level her supervisors stated "You did tell us that one reason for leaving Intel was to get away from chemical exposure before having children."
(Intel had offered her several other jobs away from the chemical exposure, but they were all 'paper pushing' as opposed to 'hands on' engineering leading to her decision to seek other work even though it paid roughly 60% of what she had been earning at Intel.)
Conclusion: Women have many reasons to operate in 'stealth' mode in the workplace which don't apply to their male counterparts.
And many of those same reasons are often considerations in avoiding testosterone rich environments.