Women in STEM - who is at fault?

[EBearhug]

I was reading Computer Weekly's Focus paper on Men for women in tech.

It says it mentions parents heavily, which it does - and this is no bad thing, because I do think parents have quite some influence on what their children may decide to do for a career - I know quite a few people who went into the same or similar careers as their parents, and we all know of acting dynasties and so on. (And I suspect that me ending up in IT has quite a bit to do with it being something my parents knew nothing about.)

However...

"Industry experts suggest that dads rarely stand in the way of their daughters pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) as they want to believe their daughters can go on to achieve any desired career." (p5)

"But mothers are often cited as one of the reasons girls choose not to go into technology, as they often dissuade their daughters from pursuing a job in the technology industry, fearing it would not suit them." (p15)

So yay, mothers to blame again. But - do women have a clearer idea of how hostile an environment it can be? I think a lot of men just don't see any sexism. My manager has said there is no sexism, in response to me giving examples of minor sexist things which happen every day. I've had a few colleagues over the years who've outright said that they don't think that women can think logically or always react emotionally (I usually respond with examples of men who always react emotionally.) Plus of course, those who respond to surveys and give interviews to CW on diversity are probably pretty much self-selecting and are more likely to be the type who do recognise the issues and are aware of the various barriers.

I've spoken to male colleagues (most of my colleagues are male - I work as a unix sys admin,) about why they think there are so few women in IT - mostly, the response has been along the lines of, "well, it's IT, women don't want to do it." They don't see the problem, and they think it's a choice that's freely made. They've never been asked to think about why women make that choice, or if it's even a truly free choice - nor about how they might contribute to reasons why women choose not to enter tech careers.

I am all for getting more men involved in diversity - too often it's all about women in tech (or wider STEM) and the majority of men, who create the culture we work in simply by being the majority, aren't involved at all. I'm just feeling uncomfortable about it implying (or maybe I'm just being paranoid and inferring things which aren't there,) that men never stand in the way of girls entering IT, but women do.

And then I worry about whether I am doing enough to promote STEM; I know I do sometimes have doubts about it, because of the constant low-level sexism. I've never actively suggested anyone shouldn't suggest it, but equally, I have stepped back a bit from actively promoting it. I bet none of my male colleagues has the slightest worry about this...

I wondered what others thought.

Physics is stuck, frankly, as regards A-level results

Its partly because of the small number of subjects they do, and perhaps the overemphasis (imo) on medicine within the STEM domain. Considering combinations of 3 stem subjects, biology/chemistry/maths trio probably keep more doors open than chemistry/physics/maths; physics and double maths is perfect if at age 16 you are sure you want to do engineering, physics or maths but limiting otherwise. In a set of 3, CS would be even more limiting.

Computer science/coding is still very new as a subject - didn't they say that most IT teachers didn't have any knowledge of it? ICT used to just be about proficiency in Microsoft Office and a bit of touch typing.

If jobs were more flexible, hours more compatible with family life, maybe more women would be working in STEM.

It depends on the particular role, field, employer - but most roles where I am can be flexible, and have to be. On theory, my hours are 9-5, but I'm usually not in till nearer 10, whereas others are in much earlier, which means we miss the worst of the traffic each end of the day, and between us, have good overlap with Asia Pacific and USA. I only have to be on site if I'm working in one of the datacentres, or have face-to-face meetings, and even most of those can be done by video conference. I do have to do on-call once every couple of months, but I am paid extra for that, and machines are a lot more resilient than when I started out, so most times, it's not too onerous, and some people don't take part in on-call because of family commitments.

And the money's not bad (a benefit of being male-dominated), and there are always new things to learn, and whatever you're interested in these days, there will be IT roles around it.

Obviously not all STEM roles are like that, but a lot can be.

I think with a bit if imagination a lot more jobs could be more flexible. 9 to 5 is the tradition, but unless you are working incredibly closely with a team full.time many jobs could be done remotely, or on site but at odd times.

India has the highest percentage of women studying STEM degrees in the world. Yet when it comes time to marry these women often have to give up their careers because of piss poor childcare options. It's not their mums holding them back in this situation it's a society that doesn't value childcare. Things are changing slowly, and there have already been huge improvements made when maternity leave was enforced (India now provides women a longer maternity leave than the USA).

In the UK my guess is STEM careers haven't traditionally had many female role models. Where are your female equivalents to Stephen Hawking? There are there, we all know they are, but the media ignores them.

Computer science in this country doesn't actually deliver what IT employers want. They want data scientists, analysts, and data visualisers from the UK, not Java programmers or software engineers (they go to India for that).

I think with a bit if imagination a lot more jobs could be more flexible. 9 to 5 is the tradition, but unless you are working incredibly closely with a team full.time many jobs could be done remotely, or on site but at odd times.

Yes - the other developers in my team are in california, some of QA is in India, application scientists/support all over the world. Remote and odd times works very well! And it gets easier all the time with skype, fibre broadband etc. Most of the other developers are office based but do some work from home/not 9-5 to accommodate family and avoid the worst of the traffic.

Computer-based jobs have the potential to be the most flexible and family friendly.

As others have mentioned, some careers such as teaching skew heavily female. Here's a very recent article from the Guardian on diversity in the publishing industry:

www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/06/uk-publishing-industry-remains-90-white-survey-finds

Ignoring the white/non-white headline, the point relevant to this thread is:

The vast majority of respondents – 84.6% – were female
Four years ago, when research was last conducted, 81.8% of respondents were female

So not only does publishing skew heavily female, it's actually worse than it was four years ago.

My guess is that publishing is a very social career – you're always on the phone or in meetings or interviewing people – whereas STEM is much less social. In IT you can easily spend a whole day at your desk without interacting with a single other person. Given that women are generally more sociable than men, it seems logical that they are drawn towards more sociable careers.

Given that women are generally more sociable than men

I'm not sure that is a given, though. It seems to me that outside of the workplace men engage in social activities more than women do (perhaps partly because women find themselves with less free time due to wifework and childcare).

In IT you can easily spend a whole day at your desk without interacting with a single other person.

That depends very much on the role - some IT jobs would mean you spend most days talking to people for most of he day.

Given that women are generally more sociable than men, it seems logical that they are drawn towards more sociable careers.

That's just socialisation again. There are plenty of women who don't mind a quieter workplace, and one of my male colleagues was complaining it was boring yesterday when there were only two of us in.

When I was little I got a Commodore 64 (its programmes ran off cassette tapes). I learned to code it using BASIC and really enjoyed it. No one took any notice. I was, however, told how 'good' my cousin Kevin was with computers and told how fantastic he was at coding. He was doing pretty much the same thing as I was. His coding was seen as evidence of how bright he was, my coding was simply ignored. So I stopped doing it. I studied psychology at uni and later became a primary teacher.

I've now ended up back in an IT-related career. Had anyone given me an ounce of encouragement as a child I could be streets ahead of where I am now. As it stands I'm having to learn coding from scratch. It's shit.

In IT you can easily spend a whole day at your desk without interacting with a single other person.

Err...Nope. Or at least, not in my experience.

Anecdata. DD is doing GCSEs this year. She's in the top set for all sciences, which given she is the child of two STEM graduates, is not particularly surprising. At a recent parent/teacher evening her computing teacher (young, male) complained that, despite being the top of the class by a long margin, she didn't stay after school to work on independent projects like her male classmates.

I gently mentioned the social costs to teenage girls around being good at science and how the boys in her class can make her uncomfortable when she out performs them. He insisted that "that sort of thing" did not happen in their school. DD and I then proceeded to describe around a dozen incidents, most of which had happened under his nose that contradicted that statement. I knew of them because DD and to a lesser extent, some of her friends had mentioned them to me. But her teacher had simply failed to notice what was happening in his own classroom or, if he did, failed to acknowledge them as sexism.

Yes. Possibly I am putting my daughter off working in IT. But what I am doing is naming the problem. Now. when she most need to realise it's not her who is at fault.

In IT you can easily spend a whole day at your desk without interacting with a single other person.

I'm not in IT, but I can. Lovely, get much more work done.

I just can't see how you would know mothers were dissuading daughters, it sounds very anecdata to me

lass clumsy wording i meant "one not you personally. It was a generic comment

The majority of the girls are from Muslim families so not sure if that is a factor or not.

You may find the below interesting martha.
Hilariously I picked this link up from another thread a while ago where a man decided to drop a "fact bomb" about how women aren't disadvantaged in STEM, purely by using one of the graphs, not actually reading the study. It still makes me laugh. Prat.
contexts.org/articles/what-gender-is-science/

Computer science in this country doesn't actually deliver what IT employers want. They want data scientists, analysts, and data visualisers from the UK, not Java programmers or software engineers (they go to India for that).

Not true. Java is one of the most demand languages in the UK (gallery/careers/uks-top-12-most-in-demand-programming-languages-3612638/) and there is now a trend for onshoring as outsourcing hasn't delivered promised benefits.

Crap link soz www.techworld.com/picture-gallery/careers/uks-top-12-most-in-demand-programming-languages-3612638/

Thanks Quentin. That occurred to me after I posted. I do hope Polka is a one-off.

This thread seems to be focussing on IT but there are far more science/maths foundation based jobs than that.

If jobs were more flexible, hours more compatible with family life, maybe more women would be working in STEM

It can be very very flexible. I've been in IT for 30 years, production support DBA, managed it with two DCs, being on call every 3 weeks or so enabled me to take time off during the day if I was called. Flexitime and team work and a good employer is the key.

In IT you can easily spend a whole day at your desk without interacting with a single other person.

You can, but not in my experience, especially with Agile these days, lots and lots of interaction. I speak to people all day long, developers, infrastructure, project managers, testers, change managers, BAs, DBAs.

It is hugely noticeable wherever I've worked that there are almost no women in infrastructure roles. Developers some, Data science yes, DBAs yes. Our Infrastructure team has never employed a woman in the 7 years I've worked for my current company - because the team lead hires people like himself.

I didn't do STEM subjects at degree or A level. I got into IT via a huge Civil Service recruitment drive in the 80s, I sat an aptitude test and they sent me on a 3 month programming course. I never looked back.

I think the industry should look at getting women into tech via less orthodox routes as well as graduate entry. Traineeships, apprenticeships - not necessarily aimed at young people. Many of the best people I've worked with came to IT late - my colleagues included graduates in French, English, history, a former primary teacher, an estate agent.

some careers such as teaching skew heavily female

Guess what - men are overrepresented in management roles in teaching compared to the teaching population.

Also guess what - male headteachers are paid more than female headteachers. On average £4000 more per year.

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/exclusive-disturbing-gender-pay-gap-headteacher-salaries

Don't assume female dominated means female-friendly.

Best
That's the reason I ended up in STEM. Was doing an Arts course and was very frustrated with it, took a psychometric test, tuned out I was good at spatial reasoning, logic etc so they advised computer science. I did a postgrad in IT and ended up in techie land. Because I could write, I did a lot of bid work and consultant work. You'd be amazed how many gifted male engineers can't string a sentence together.

I do wonder if more psychometric testing would be beneficial. Anyone know of any studies on this?

Best I agree that it would be better in many ways to focus on getting women into IT as second careers - partly cos that's what I did. The high level of social interaction and people skills required to work in a successful Agile team makes career changers very effective.

@best we run a very good apprentice programme, most civil engineering consultancies do. We take all ages (Although the intake is primarily aimed at 16 or 18 yo with marketing to local schools and colleges) and will sponsor up to a masters as standard.

For the apprentice positions in our region this year we got 0 female applicants. Yup. 0.

Those routes are open to women, but short of mugging likely looking candidates in the street it very difficult to address the issue when women just arent applying. Thats the issue that needs addressing.

I would love to know why not a single woman applied, but as I and others have said the issue seems to start much much younger.

That's not good Big. I would love to know why too.

In IT you can easily spend a whole day at your desk without interacting with a single other person.

I dream of those days... mind you, I'm a Java (well, ex-Java, now Scala) developer (well, ok, Senior/architect/CTO - level - but in a startup at the moment) - and none of the people in my team are in the same location. The two closest are at different ends of the UK! And I fit it around my family. BUT that wasn't possible when I was more junior, and isn't possible for my DP who is at a similar level but more in the product side.

I heartily recommend IT for women, and not just good ones, any woman - there are hundreds of mediocre men, lets have some mediocre women too. You will have to deal with the environment, but if you can get through it, it's good pay, the hours can be good, and you can travel the world doing it (no licensing authorities/professional requirements for devs like there are for doctors/lawyers/civil engineers)