Women in IT

[EBearhug]

I bet I'm not going to see male IT workers advertising underwear.

www.bustle.com/articles/36790-dear-kate-debuts-ada-collection-modeled-by-real-life-women-in-tech-jobs-for-the-coolest-lookbook

I might have sometimes have not been fully dressed when working from home (and definitely not when I've been on call at 3am), but it's not something I tend to share with my colleagues, and I definitely wouldn't be sharing photos of me like that.

I work in a techy area of IT, and I'm actively involved in promoting STEM to schools and so on, in the hope that one day, I won't be in such a minority, doing sys admin. I want women in IT to be normal, and not a nice adornment whom we can imagine in her knickers while making the diversity stats look nice.

I'm a bit torn (but not very) - there's part of me thinking, well, they've got women of all sizes, which should be good. And it's good they want to promote women in IT.

But I don't want the idea of women in IT to be women sitting round in their underwear. Jeans and t-shirt or a suit, like the normal work clothes for women working in IT, rather than the normal work clothes for strippers.

Yes, that's why I'm pissed off with it - couldn't quite put my finger on it when I started typing. It's because I know that there are still quite a lot of men who think women in IT are only really a good thing if they're there for their titillation, and they can imagine them sitting there in their knickers. Well, now they don't have to imagine. I bet they're not thinking about how good their java programming skills are or anything. I don't think this ad is really going to help, because the problem with women in IT is not women, it's men.

(And it's all my own fault for clicking links from other FWR threads - in this case, the one on the OK Cupid make up experiment.)

Erm, I suspect I don't often say hi in the kitchen, unless someone else initiates it.

In our office everyone says Hi to everyone (but few...) - we are v.small office and know new faces as they come and join. I always make effort to introduce myself to every new person who joins or comes over from US (that is our culture)

I work in a non-tech role (web management) but working closely with developers and have enough tech knowledge to know what I'm talking about most of the time. I work in the public sector, which in many ways is great; flexible working, great maternity, obvious misogynistic banter is not accepted. I think there are probably more women about then in a lot of places.

However, I still had to threaten formal proceedings before they put my pay up to the same grade as the men doing the same role as me. This was despite everyone, including my manager admitting that I was much better at the job then any of them.

Willy waving is everywhere and I am used to having to fight my corner to be heard and not patronised by male colleagues. They generally only do it once but it is bloody annoying having to deal with it when you see men who haven't a clue what they are talking about treated like they are some sort of genius for having seen a website once.

There are no female developers at all where I am. Quite a few project managers but I still regularly attend development meetings where I am the only woman.

I'm actually looking for another job at the moment but some of your posts are making me wonder if it's actually just going to be worse somewhere else.

I think wherever you go, there's a risk that there will be some men who appear not to have been aware that 2nd wave feminism happened, let alone 3rd or 4th wave. But there are some good employers out there - I'd definitely recommend my own as one to apply to, just not my department (and even most of them are pretty good.) I've also been in other companies where they've had training on harassment and so on, and a definite commitment to a good working environment. Nowhere's perfect, but some places are better than others.

What EBearHug says. We need to talk about what companies are good and which ones are bad. I used to work for one of the most admired financial institutions, and a friend once reported a man who made a really, really offensive comment. He was then put in charge of the diversity effort for the region. I wish I was kidding. Where I work now...some departments are awful, some are good (my current one is pretty good so I do recommend it when people ask).

I was looking at comment about companies in glassdoor. I haven't come across any mentions about diversity or how minorities/women are treated. I think it is assumed there are no problem in those areas.

I hadn't heard of glassdoor before - interesting site. I read some of the reviews on my own employer, and it pretty much reflects my view that it really depends on the department you're in, whether it's a really good or really bad experience working with us. There were a couple of mentions of bullying, and one was about sexual harassment, and others say the culture is really good. But it's a big multinational, so it depends a lot on your department, your division, your country, and there will be a lot of variation because of that.