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by demallien
5291 days ago
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There are many reasons for women being difficult to recruit in tech. Here's one - if you are an intelligent young woman having just finished high school, and about to choose your university courses you might have a look at the expected pay that you will receive in different industries. You note that in medicine and law women are no longer a minority, and that they receive equal pay, and nearly equal social power as their male counterparts. You note that in engineering this is not at all the case. Studies repeatedly show female engineers receiving less than their male counterparts[1]. Women are rarely promoted up in engineering organisations and engineering organisations are unusually hostile to flexible work arrangements[2]. The result is that unless you are absolutely passionate about engineering, the reasonable thing to do is to take a pass on engineering, and go for one of the many other rewarding careers available to you. If you want to bring women into the industry, you need to make the industry appealing to women. With current discriminatory practices that is just not the case, and until that changes, there won't even be an opportunity to recruit women, because those with anything less than a burning passion for the career are going to look elsewhere. [1] http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/engineering-pay-gap-glassdoor-...
[2] http://www.studyofwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/NSF_Wo... page 27 |
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There has been a lot of efforts to bring women at par with men in terms of returns they gain. And there have also been efforts that aim at increasing their count. Both, are required. You are pointed out at the first category of efforts and I am pointed out the consequences of affirmation actions that belong to the second category. There are two forces at play here - (1) Discriminatory, against women. (2) Affirmative action, for women. Now the second point in the privileges is because affirmative actions have a very obvious but mean side effect. It leads to undermining the potential of those who receive benefit from them because affirmative action is done at an expense of some people who otherwise deserved the benefit if standard parameters of judgement are used. This leads to unrest and hence my refute to privilege (2). While my refute to privilege (1) was the overwhelming of discriminatory forces by affirmative actions in my experience from my point of view. This is as biased an opinion as possible, hence you can choose to ignore it. But if many seem to face a similar experience, that would mean that affirmative action needs to be done at a lower level or be stopped for it has served its purpose.