Why aren’t there more women nerds…
If you don’t like the look of my blog, or aren’t that impressed with its functionality don’t blame me, or any other women out there.
A man designed it.
Not that there’s anything wrong with men or the fact that a man designed my blog. That’s just the way it is.
In fact, there are few women out there designing blog interfaces. And for that matter, there are few women doing tech stuff overall.
I know, I know, there are some. (My good friend Sabina designed my book website and her talent is unquestionable.) There are some great women who are masters in information technology but they are few and far between. And the numbers of female IT professionals are actually declining.
I address this issue in my MSNBC column today. Where are all the women IT nerds? You would have thought women would make up at least 50 percent of the IT ranks by now.
Should we care that fewer women are entering IT? Technology is advancing quite nicely with little input from women. Is that a bad thing?
February 13th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
“I don’t have to deal with the dynamics of working with women, dealing with cattiness and hormones,” she says. But, she admits, “It would be nice to have someone to turn to sometimes who thinks like me.”
I just thought I would comment on your article which I enjoyed - however the above line I find funny - as in my experience (as a woman)working in tech since basically 1999, men can be extremely caddy and one’s nemesis especially when trying to penetrate a previously all male staff. I have found that gender has nothing to do in general with attitude however. In the beginning I found it harder because men were not used to it and only the most egotistical persons made it difficult for a woman to break into IT even when they supported many other women such as traders, CEO’s etc., it was the only place for a while that they could keep their attitudes in tact (in the trenches so to speak) but all that has changed along with all the rules and laws about harassment and working conditions and even the treatment of IT personnel in general has been improved greatly by federal and state wide labor laws, etc.
“I think women have more of an intuitive sense of designing interfaces.” This line speaks a large truth.
Interfaces is also an area where women would be happy; participating in the design, management and upper decision making areas of IT versus the trenches and the hands-on, which frankly in my opinion is a dead end since technology is changing so fast it behooves anyone in a Tech career to focus on the trends and not get too involved in the minutia which will ultimately change and force people to either update their skills endlessly or move into a decision making role.
There is nothing worse than having to deal with hardware on a daily basis, and a manager can structure their purchasing and warranty strategy so that they never have to ‘fix’ anything unless it is an actual ‘connectivity’ issue or a software conflict. Virtualization is simplifying the whole arena of networkin and remote connectivity. Women fit well in to this emerging arena because they are better ‘big picture thinkers.’ In my opinion.
Hence I think the way to attract women to Technical avenues is to sell the Technology sectors in the MBA programs and let girls know that there is a career out there that will change dramatically constantly and be challenging always but they don’t have to be responsible for ‘fixing’ everything they just need to be good problem solvers and critical thinkers with an edge in finance.
The bottom line for most companies when it comes to IT and budget is ROI. And that takes a lot more savvy to get a handle on than the ‘latest’ technology or gadget. A networking overview is the best background knowledge a woman can have if she wants to get into IT but a career goal with Management, Project Management or Business & Finance in mind would be the best advice for the long term career. I think women are more ‘career minded’ when they see advancement opportunities. And just to support some of the comments in the article I wanted to say that I have witnessed women using their intuition, and playing a major role in solving big problems because they see the big picture and they draw faster conclusions without getting stuck in the smaller technical aspects of things. They are actually naturals at it. Which may be one reason why men have made it so hard for them to ‘break-into the field’ so to speak. No one likes to risk looking foolish when a person who ‘thinks differently’ comes along and changes the whole game.
It is true that women have a truly different thinking style. I think everyone would benefit from recognizing that! And most Universities don’t teach to that - unless it is an all girl’s school. If technical colleges had more women instructors that also might change the attraction. My best teacher was a young woman who looked like a little girl and she was such an awesome teacher in my MCSE track that I absolutely aced the test we were preparing for after her instruction. And her review techniques rocked! She made me feel like she really cared if we succeeded. She got me more excited about my possibilities in a technical career than any of the male instructors. The men were more focused on the ‘how’ but their style was very matter of fact. Not intuitive or exciting - just a different way of communicating. I fell asleep in a lot of classes due to that factor.
February 15th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Wow, if we could only harness that excitement that teacher sparked in you. I think that’s a big part of the problem for men and women entering the field. It’s not a dry, uninteresting profession. There’s is a lot of excitement. I know, my husband is a software engineer and gets juiced often about his job and the projects he works on.
Some how we need to get the message out.
A lot of the change we’ve seen and will be seeing in our society is coming from technology. We all need to be a part of that.