Why aren't there more women in tech?

[MrsJamin]

I work in tech. Most men assume women just aren't into tech and that's why we're in the minority. Is that really the case? It frustrates me that more women aren't welcomed into tech, so why do you think it is?

Not sure if this counts, but a couple years ago, I mentioned to my mum that I was thinking of retraining to possibly go into pharmacy when the children are older (sahm atm) and her response was 'well, I don't know. You never were very good at science' so, yes, lack of confidence in oneself may be a factor.

At least at tech conferences there's rarely a queue for the ladies loos.

Unless it's a women in tech conference...

Very true :o

I don't agree that it's socially confident women that go for those roles -- I've found the opposite actually. Most women I've met in tech or engineering haven't particularly wanted to make friends. They just get on with the job. I admire them for it, but it's not something I could do. I'm very outgoing and don't find conversations with men as satisfying as with women, and prefer to be surrounded by women as my role models growing up were women (Mum, Granny, cousin). I also feel very safe with women and could not stand the sexist comments or rude jokes from men I've experienced while working with them. I now work with women only and I'm so much happier.

My husband works in tech in a very well known company and there are no women at all, only in marketing and other departments. He and I both would discourage our DD into going into male-dominated fields because of our experience and we both feel she will be a lot safer and happier working with mostly women rather than in a male-dominated environment.

I don't think the implication that female-dominated roles such as midwifery or teaching are lesser than STEM subjects is helpful to young girls, there is nothing wrong with not wanting to be the only girl in a class full of boys. I think it's a testament to how great women are, that often we like to stick together.

Freddie27 thanks for perpetuating the patriarchy... Slow hand clap. You would dissuade your daughter from working with men? That's utterly ridiculous. I hope she stands on her own two feet and learns to work with men. I love working with men and women, I just like working with talented people of either sex.

Where on earth do you get the idea that to value STEM subjects and professions is to devalue other subjects and professions like midwifery? Why on earth can't one value both? And what will you do if your daughter comes home from school filled with wonder at having been told about astronomy, or subatomic particles, or the construction of a bridge over a huge span, or binary numbers and the sudden realisation that there's more to numbers than the arbitrary choice of notation? Persuade her that she mustn't follow up on that passion for discovery because she might have to work with men? How crazy is that?

And I'm wondering what sort of antediluvian outfit your husband works for if there are no women in the technical areas. That sounds like a failure of management and recruitment (at best), or deliberate policy (at worst). I'd say between a quarter and a third of the researchers in my workplace are women (mathematicians and physicists mainly). And we're widely recognised as one of the top places in the world in our field.

Freddie27, you sound a bit unhinged and have the potential to set your DD back, if STEM subjects become something she wants to pursue....

I work in a male dominated industry (~17 years) and my degree and post grad degree saw me as one out of four females and the only female on the courses, respectively.

I am great friends with all the males at work (shock horror) and am respected and treated as an equal. I believe I always have been. There is friendly banter about mat leave, etc (I have 3 children), but the guys have all had their wives (who don't work in STEM subjects) take their allowed mat leave too.

I find it quite shocking that you would discourage your daughters from science, just because you prefer female company

They are discouraged from birth from taking an interest in STEM related activities and subjects and the ones that persist and get to work in the industry are dealing with male colleagues who are being paid more than them for the same work.

Never came across this, but then again, I'm from a family of mathematicians/nerds who all work in STEM (as do I).

Not a good enough answer to the question. In fact, the question is "why do women/girls 'freely' choose not to go into STEM when they have the aptitude and it would give them access to well paid careers?" What is influencing their "free" choice, and are we happy with those influences?

Maybe it is a free choice? I went to a school where everyone was encouraged in each subject equally, top maths/science sets 50/50 boys/girls.

Come A-levels, a lot more boys pick physics/economics/CompSci, a lot more girls picking art/english/psychology/business.

Maybe they WANT to? No-one is standing at the Google offices banishing all women and telling them they can't code, that's bullshit. Would you all really be so outraged if a lot of women, under no pressure, find non-tech subjects more interesting?

He and I both would discourage our DD into going into male-dominated fields because of our experience and we both feel she will be a lot safer and happier working with mostly women rather than in a male-dominated environment.

That's bollocks. I've always worked in STEM and never felt intimidated/inferior to the men. In fact I've had a lot more intimidation and aggro from women (literally someone made me cry because I used a fucking coffeepot that wasn't even hers).

I don't work in tech per se but have previously worked in IT systems and chose to leave because it was just a soul destroying job.

I managed a team of 8 men who all thought they knew better than I did and would try to ignore instructions, or shortcut because they were focused on their one area only and didn't see the wider picture. I worked on a floor with no other women, was not really included in the chats with my team which I accepted, but also never invited to things with the other (all male) managers unless I purposefully invited myself. Trying to make small talk about things such as films always led to being challenged to prove my knowledge to be allowed to participate.

Raising anything with my manager would have been seen as a sign I was either a petty woman or incompetent. The final straw came when I was tipped for promotion because I'd done a bloody good job despite that and I overheard people saying that it was just to tick the woman box and for diversity.

I could not be arsed any more and instead moved sideways into a department with far more women. It probably set back my career by 18 months but I couldn't care less - I now get listened to, have colleagues I get on with and am not constantly having to fight as the representative woman.

No-one is standing at the Google offices banishing all women and telling them they can't code, that's bullshit.

Have you been living under a rock? In the last few months there have been a huge number of articles both in the technical press and the mainstream press about institutional sexism and the very hostile environment towards women in IT in general and silicon valley in particular - Google are currently facing a class action for underpaying women, Uber's tech department has been hit with a wave of cases involving systematic sexual harrassment ignored by management.

Article from just three days ago from Wired.

Come A-levels, a lot more boys pick physics/economics/CompSci, a lot more girls picking art/english/psychology/business.

Since we're swapping anecdata here, I'll counter with my school experience. My year (last all-girls year) - 10 girls doing A level maths with mechanics, 8 girls doing physics, 6 girls doing further maths. The year after - the first mixed year intake into the 6th form - one girl doing maths, physics, further maths. One year. That was all it took for social pressure to cause the number of girls doing "hard science" to nose-dive.

I was in IT/computing - call it what you will - on graduating in 1970
many many women in all positions from programmers to project managers and it was mostly men doing the operating (stacks of huge discs too heavy for ladies!) and upper management - but those were the times
After a long career in systems analysis/project management, data modelling I retired to live a quiet life. I realise technology has changed but I do find it a bit sad that girls are not more encouraged to look at software engineering, system design - not all IT is about designing games - and women are usually excellent (not stereotyping at all) at detail work and making sure it all works.
When I entered IT - it was not necessary to have a scientific bent or mathematics.

Institute of Physics has done (and is still doing) a lengthy study into the lack of girls in physics. I don't count biology or lots of chemistry because at least at A Level, they don't suffer from such low female numbers. Not does maths. Physics, engineering and computing are very lacking in female presence. I work in a hard STEM arena, and the company tries hard to encourage women in. Everyone I work with is male. The IOP study suggests that girls are 'lost to STEM at 8 years old. There's a lot to do with what their mum does, too or at least how encouraging she is. Girls in girls only schools do better but not enough to fill the gap. This is cultural, as I have worked with Russian, Italian, Indian, Chinese and Nigerian women in the past who found it odd. Americans have a similar issue.

We're due to lose approx. 3 million engineers in the UK in the next few years, due to retirements mainly. We aren't getting enough people through physics, engineering, computing and maths at uni to replace them. A scary thought. It hasn't occurred to some companies that they're ignoring just over 50% of the population!

When I was at university, physica, maths, computing and engineering students were (at a guess) 90/10 male female. Biology and chemistry were around 30/70 (again a rough guess).
My career has bridged chemistry and biology and I've never worked anywhere male dominated, save one small team (1 woman, 6 men), but then another small team was 6 women, 1 man.
Not sure why social pressure puts girls off physics, maths, IT and engineering but not chemistry and biology.

More anecdotal stories but I know of a few companies actively recruiting women. Not in an equal opportunities way. As in they will lose funding if they don't have women employed in technical and senior potsitons. At least one where I got a nod and wink to apply way way way above my pay grade because I'm female.

Even with incentives like that there are still not enough women applying.

Certainly Indian companies are experiencing anything like this gender inequality - there's got to be a reason.

Girls have generally responded that biology feels more relevant to humans, that is, they can see how to improve people's lives in a more immediate way than they can with physics. Still doesn't solve our issue! When I was at uni, biology was about 60% women, 40% men. Physics was 10% women, 90% men. Similar for engineering. Comp Sci managed one woman entering every two years. The Athena Swan projects don't seem to be helping. Also, why aren't girls put off maths at A Level, but don't take physics? This has currently been deemed unanswerable. Also, a lot of us STEMmers approach stuff in a quantified manner and this probably isn't one of those things...!

I think your point a few posts back, Bobbin about it being cultural is absolutely spot-on. It seems to be the UK and US which have this ingrained belief that physics and engineering and computing aren't for women - the rest of the world seems to do alright in this respect (I know I mentioned her upthread, but just to recap - I had a friend from Barbados who found it utterly weird that computer science was seen as a male discipline because back when she was an undergraduate, numbers were 50-50).

I work in IT and I love it.

The company I work at works really hard at recruiting and retaining women across all types of roles and it has worked brilliantly. I've always felt safe and supported and everyone that gets hired has to fit in culturally. All my colleagues are very supportive.

I did CompSci at uni and hated it... encountered misogyny a couple of times. From a creepy lecturer to a guy that wanted to know if I was good enough to work with him.

It upsets me when I hear this bullshit peddled that men are somehow innately better with computers than women. I know so many really talented female programmers.

I am pregnant with a girl now and I hope to set a good example for her. I am already struggling with people attaching personality traits to my unborn child based on her sex!

I read this article on impostor syndrome a few weeks ago. The content has really stayed in my mind ever since. The effects on your peace of mind where you say "I'm a X, I do X" and for the world to be constantly surprised is not good for your mental health... that yes, you are interested in UX, and yes you understand what the agile manifesto is, and yes you've thought of a good way of solving a technical problem, and yes, the technology that you work on does do X and not Y... I could go on - we have to deal with the constant bemusement of those around us about who we are and what we do! You have to be ready for it and think the problem lies with the other person, and not you. I think those women who leave these stem professions to become something more predictably 'female' have easily just got fed up of this impostor syndrome that being a woman in tech engenders.

I tend to feel that until tech gets better at retaining existing women in tech, encouraging more girls to go into tech isn't quite the point.

Yes, it's a good thing to do, as many of them may have enjoyable well paid careers from it and it's good for girls to know their options - but I think that the intense focus on the start of the pipeline is simply a distraction tactic for the complacent white men of tech, who don't want to do the really hard work of analysing how much of their behaviour and existing structural inequalities they'd need to change in order to improve things enough to stop women leaking back out of the pipeline again a few years down the line.

I've been fairly involved with women in tech organisation, but took a decision to step down when I realised that it was effectively preventing me from doing any of my own playing around with tech by eating all my spare time (of which I had very little). While I value the work people put in, I think it's important for women not to feel it's all their burden to magically "fix" stuff - if you're enjoying the involvement and getting satisfaction from it, great, but simply existing and being happy and successful as a woman in a technical field is also contributing.

I loved using computers, creating stuff with computers (and this was before the Internet was readily available)
I loved computers as a child and spent hours trying to program my Amstrad CPC6128 but at school all we learnt in computing was making word documents and DTP.

If we had been taught programming I definitely would have studied computing at school.

So now I am just about to graduate from my OU BSc Computing and IT degree and then I hope to train to teach at my old school to make sure that girls like me aren't deterred from studying computing.

slightlyglitterbrained indeed that's a problem, some of the other companies I've been aware of I wouldn't have liked to work at for the sheer "bro/nerd" competitive culture where you have to be the best of the best if you're going to survive as a woman. The "women in tech" things are distracting from just getting on with the job and being "normal" in a way, they are preaching to the converted! It is men that are the problem, for sure. But not encouraging women into these careers because of it? Surely that's never going to help the problem solve itself.

I used to work in tech and the first tech job I got was a mixed sex team. Maybe 40% women, 60% men. Apart from me, all the women on my team were from India originally so perhaps the attitudes are different there. I didn't realise how rare it was to have a mixed sex team until I moved to a new company where I was the only woman, and then to another where I was one of two women working alongside lots of men.

This is just my impression but I feel as though attitudes in younger people towards women in stem have gone backwards. People I've spoke to of my own age and younger (I'm nearly 30) seem to see tech more as a men's job, compared to those older. It could just be down to who I'm talking to of course.

I'm seeing that too, IllBeBackMaybe. I think there is an element of going backward in attitude to this. I'm not much older than you.