Why Women are not at par with Men in the Business/Technology World?

[Phil25]

I read this interesting article, Here's the Real Reason There Are Not More Women in Technology - Forbes
So what do you think? Whose fault is it?

 

[Sunstone]

Whose fault is it? Such a question is useful only in the spirit in which it is asked. If asked to assign blame, it's a worse than useless question. If asked to figure out the obstacles and how to overcome them, it can be a useful question.

I suspect there is no one single reason why women are under-represented in technology. But I also suspect their representation might be changing. A hundred years ago, women were much less represented in medicine than they are today. But in some countries today, female doctors are more numerous than male doctors. Maybe a hundred years from now -- or less -- female engineers will be commonplace in many or most countries.

 

[Revoltingest]

I read this interesting article, Here's the Real Reason There Are Not More Women in Technology - Forbes
So what do you think? Whose fault is it?

Clearly, women are at fault. Their superior social skills divert them from obsessing over
arcane technical stuff. The solution is for them to get in touch with their inner aspie.
I suppose another partial solution is to improve teaching of science, particularly math.
Too many smart students I know dropped out of tech stuff because it was made needlessly
difficult, & applications weren't made meaningful. This problem affects all genders.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

I read this interesting article, Here's the Real Reason There Are Not More Women in Technology - Forbes
So what do you think? Whose fault is it?

In my experience, it's not anyone's fault. Who's fault is it that there aren't more male nurses or kindergarten teachers?

 

[Quintessence]

Clearly, women are at fault. Their superior social skills divert them from obsessing over
arcane technical stuff. The solution is for them to get in touch with their inner aspie.
I suppose another partial solution is to improve teaching of science, particularly math.
Too many smart students I know dropped out of tech stuff because it was made needlessly
difficult, & applications weren't made meaningful. This problem affects all genders.

Yes, yes, yes! QFT.

My interest in computer programing was killed utterly after I went to a summer workshop at a university that was just terrible. The instructor literally went "make a program do this" and told us nothing about how to actually code anything. Apparently, we were supposed to figure out how to code by intellectual osmosis. It was easily the worst summer education experience I had as a kid. That workshop was the definition of "needlessly difficult."

 

[freethinker44]

Clearly, women are at fault. Their superior social skills divert them from obsessing over
arcane technical stuff. The solution is for them to get in touch with their inner aspie.
I suppose another partial solution is to improve teaching of science, particularly math.
Too many smart students I know dropped out of tech stuff because it was made needlessly
difficult, & applications weren't made meaningful. This problem affects all genders.

I don't really think teaching math or science is the problem here. It's a problem overall, but I don't think it is responsible for women not pursuing tech jobs. For example, I'm in a computer science program in college and the math and sciences course I have to take are filled with engineers and nurses. And I know I'm using a personal anecdote and it could just be the exception, but if other nursing programs are similar then it isn't math and science that is keeping women out of those fields. And I know a few women who got into the computer science program with a low GPA simply because so few women apply the administrators were just happy to get them in even if they technically weren't qualified.

So if that is indicative of the whole and not the exception then it isn't how tough the courses are or that women simply aren't qualified, it's that they just aren't interested or are dissuaded for some reason, at least that's what I'm seeing from perspective at towards the bottom of the totem pole.

 

[Draupadi]

I believe it is because the women have started working in these fields later than the men, so they need time to catch up.

 

[Penumbra]

Something as broad as this never just has a single reason, or one thing to blame.

As others have said, I think it's just a matter of time. In the mid-1800's, there were zero women going to medical school, now about exactly half of people in medical school are women.

Before, there were almost no women in science and technology, and now there are more, but still not enough. Over 1/3rd of the technical staff in my office are women. The software tech lead is a woman, and the electronics tech lead is me. Mechanics and aerospace tech leads are men. The manager is a man but his manager is a woman, and her manager is a man and his manager is a woman executive. I'm pretty satisfied with gender in my workplace.

Over time I think it's mostly a matter of cultural shift. It used to be that women in science in technology would have been considered fairly unusual. Today that has improved but there are still cultural effects. Boys and girls are not socialized identically, generally speaking. The expectations of the parents for the child, and all of the things they do for those expectations ranging from what types of toys they give, what types of activities they do, what types of feedback and compliments they give, are not identical.

There's also some degree of measurable sexism still in the science and technology industries (and business as well), and not just by men against women, but sometimes by both men and women against women. I think it's mostly unconscious and unrecognized by the people doing it, judging by the data. That certainly isn't the whole explanation but it's a headwind against women.

I posted this in another thread but it's relevant here:

One example:

But in a groundbreaking study published in PNAS [in 2012] by Corinne Moss-Racusin and colleagues, that is exactly what was done. On Wednesday, Sean Carroll blogged about and brought to light the research from Yale that had scientists presented with application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position and who intended to go on to graduate school. Half the scientists were given the application with a male name attached, and half were given the exact same application with a female name attached. Results found that the “female” applicants were rated significantly lower than the “males” in competence, hireability, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student.

Source.

Another, for business:

Researchers presented 222 MBA students with mock prospectuses with data based on a cosmetic surgery company that went through a real IPO led by Goldman Sachs. The prospectuses were identical except for the gender of the CEO and the sex ratio of the top management team. Photos of senior executives were included (and had been pre-tested to ensure they were ranked equally in terms of levels of attractiveness) and showed only Caucasian executives to control for the influence of ethnic or racial biases on the results. While the male: female ratio of the top management team didn’t have an effect on how students evaluated the IPOs, the recommended percentage to invest in the IPO was almost four times higher for firms with male CEOs at the helm than for those with female CEOs. Also, the anticipated share price of IPOs led by male CEOs was approximately 11% higher than those of female-led IPOs. Although both male and female respondents evaluated CEOs of their own gender more favorably, the effect was more pronounced for male respondents. According to the researchers:

“Taken as a whole, our results suggest that gender stereotypes are alive and well. Moreover that such stereotypes impact investment decisions, even though information is available to investors that clearly is counter to the prescriptive implications of stereotypical thinking.”

Source.

Simply changing the gender on an otherwise totally identical set of data, diminishes the quality of that data if it's a woman, in the eyes of people reviewing it.

So in certain fields that have historically been and still are somewhat male-dominated, there is measurable unconscious bias against women.

I think the only way that's going to change is for more and more women to gradually enter the field, like what happened with medicine. A woman physician would have been considered an oddity and heavily biased against in the 19th century, and now it's accepted as totally commonplace.

 

[MD]

Sometimes I wish more women were politicians, perhaps the world would be more peaceful and there would be fewer atrocities.

 

[freethinker44]

Sometimes I wish more women were politicians, perhaps the world would be more peaceful and there would be fewer atrocities.

There is no reason to assume that. The "vindictive woman" stereotype is just as common as the "aggressive man" stereotype. Remember, "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned".

 

[Apex]

Sometimes I wish more women were politicians, perhaps the world would be more peaceful and there would be fewer atrocities.

So women are inherently more peaceful than men?

 

[Revoltingest]

So women are inherently more peaceful than men?

Only 27 days out of each month.


You know I just had to say it!

 

[Sunstone]

There is no reason to assume that. The "vindictive woman" stereotype is just as common as the "aggressive man" stereotype. Remember, "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned".

Umm...so you're suggesting that Thatcher would have bombed the United States if Reagan had refused to date her?

 

[freethinker44]

Umm...so you're suggesting that Thatcher would have bombed the United States if Reagan had refused to date her?

Either that or passive-aggressively nag him until he snapped and he bombed the United States himself.

 

[MD]

How many women do you see roaming around in hordes, blasting the brains out of thousands on camera whose religious beliefs differ slightly from their own?

Ans: 0

 

[Revoltingest]

How many women do you see roaming around in hordes, blasting the brains out of thousands on camera whose religious beliefs differ slightly from their own?
Ans: 0

Could the problem be not gender but religion & country of origin?

 

[Draupadi]

How many women do you see roaming around in hordes, blasting the brains out of thousands on camera whose religious beliefs differ slightly from their own?

Ans: 0

I am a woman and I will still say what I have said before. We need time to catch up with these. As Revoltingest said it differs from religion, country of origin, etc. Most Muslims suicide bombers I know are tempted by the houris in heaven. But women have no such thing to look forward to and in Islam women were never encouraged to go in battles, although never discouraged. So you will see female Islamic terrorists but less in number. But I would like to clarify one thing here. Islam doesn't support terrorism in it's name.