Women in IT (Aug 3). Online freedom of speech (Aug 5th)

Colin McGregor colinmc151-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org
Thu Jul 27 16:06:59 UTC 2006


--- Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 09:21:45AM -0400,
> billt-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org wrote:
> > I was working in the production main frame world
> for a spell, and all
> > the woman are their. In fact in a group of over 50
> people I was one of
> > seven guys.
> 
> I suspect the mainframe world wants perfect code
> written to well defined
> specs following set down code styles.  That probably
> suits the
> personality of a lot of women better than a lot of
> other IT jobs.
> 
> In a lot of IT jobs, the person who is the loudest
> or has the most
> dominant personality gets to make the decisions,
> which almost always
> means it is a man that is making the decisisions. 
> It also intimidates a
> lot of people, and probably women more than men on
> average.

My personal theory is that a VERY large percentage of
people in IT have trouble with human interaction and
find machines easier to deal with. 

This is not always due to choice. I briefly worked
with one woman, a web page designer who was a cancer
survivor, when doctors removed the tumour in her brain
she lost her hearing. So, she needed a job where her
interactions with people could very largely be done
via e-mail. Odd having someone in the next office to
yours who you had to write notes to, and/or e-mail in
order to communicate with :-( ... Also odd having to
go around the office building saying, "no, she isn't
being rude when she totally ignores everything you
say...".

For what ever reasons (and I think there are several
reasons behind this), on AVERAGE women are much better
at human interactions then men. So, if one is not good
at sales/marketing stuff due to 2nd rate social
skills, am too bright for assembly line drone work,
what is left? Several science/engineering/IT areas...

Of further note, when it comes to the 10 women I
e-mailed with details about the "Women in IT", some
you could argue are not in IT. For example, I sent
this info. off to Stephanie Cole, who ran the press
office at the "Linux World Canada" show. Is Stephanie
Cole in IT? Public Relations? Publicity? Hospitality?
All of the above? Likewise, some of the women I
e-mailed do human resources functions for the IT
field. Of the 10 women I e-mailed, I would only
consider 4 to be hard core geeks (women who have been
at one or more TLUG and/or Unix Unanimous meetings).

Colin McGregor

> My wife used to work for the transport automation
> division of alcatel
> (they make systems that run trains/subways and the
> signaling and
> switching for them, usually for fully automated
> setups), and the first
> group she was in was 90% women.  Other groups were
> the complete
> opposite.  It very much depended on the type of work
> that the group was
> doing.  She certainly found that some groups had
> some very dominant men
> working in them, and very quickly had no women in
> the group at all.
> There are some women who would like such an
> environment, but I haven't
> met very many.  I think many of those that do like
> it tend to aim for
> management instead.
> 
> If a field is very competitive and requires being
> very outgoing and
> dominating to get noticed and listened to, it will
> have a lot less women
> in it than a field where working together rather
> than competing is
> desired.  If you want more women in IT, you really
> have to change the
> environment, which means you have to change the type
> of men that work in
> that environment.  It isn't easy.  In places where
> the environment is
> more cooperative, you often have a lot of women
> working in IT.
> 
> --
> Len Sorensen
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings:
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