Report: Women make up just 17% of IT workforce, paid 15% less than men

A confounding factor may be the applicant's required qualifications. If you can't get the entry level jobs, then you can't get the experience to apply for the higher level jobs - there's a filter on applications as well as a result of that. There's a temporal component to the workforce availability. Point is definitely taken, though. This is a crude analysis.

When hiring the number of women applying for jobs is always a tiny fraction.

Generally the people getting paid silly amounts are those whom:-

1) Know a peice of software or protocol to such a degree that people will pay them whatever they want to fix a problem.

2) Wrote a peice of software or protocol and people will pay them whatever they want to have some development done.

3) Know so much about how a system works in an organisation that the organisation will pay them very good money to stay there because they'd have to hire 2+ other people.

4) Are willing to put in absurd numbers of anti social hours to get a job done.

None of the things above are inpacted by being female and with the exception of some pervy young staff who don't usually encounter women elseware I don't think there is much of a discrimination problem in IT. Generally nobody cares as long as your competent. Computers are after all incapable of discrimination.

There is however an undeniable shortage of woman willing to work in our sector, which is likely to do with it being a pretty awful working enviroment requiring a lot of time worked out of hours which most sane people tend to want to spend with their families. Companies generally want maintenance done when people aren't using the system, which is pretty much the definition of unsocial hours.

Nice ideas can't beat market forces. Female employees are often less desirable for employers. You would need for starters to make say maternity leave of zero cost and zero impact to employers (especially small businesses) for that ever to change.

Agreed.

I'd also be interested to see how this breaks down internationally.

I work for a UK company that was bought by an Israeli one, with a large Indian offshore development centre.

My UK office is still at maybe 95% male in technical roles - but in 'the mothership' and offshore, maybe 2/3 male - still not equal, but massively different from the UK.

If I had to guess why it's simply that IT is thought of as 'a decent job' and doesn't have the same stigma attached.

These myths that try to induce you into thinking that women are *still* being discriminated in this day and age have been more than debunked already: if there are only 17% of women in IT is simply because they prefer doing other things. In very pro-women countries like Norway and Sweden were women are totally free and indeed encouraged to go for professions typically associated with men, they STILL prefer otherwise. Men and women are different, live with it.

As for the salary discrepancies, if women were indeed much cheaper labor than men, sane companies would *only* hire women: they would save A TON of money. No, people - men and women - get paid in proportion to their competence and time given to the job. So either women are just not as competent as men (they are!) or they are simply not willing to invest as much time as men usually do because they prioritize raising their families and taking care of their children (as it should be!).

I've worked in many little jobs...

Where women outnumber men by a lot more than 17%. Now I do agree that this proves nothing. As those jobs might be worse than IT or other more privileged jobs. Just an observation I've had from the other side of the battle.

But I agree, treating anyone poorly is dreadful. I've seen men chosen because they can move large objects and women chosen because they have a bit of makeup on. Sad really.

Well said.

I have said this many times, the problem isn't the environment (well could be that women think all guys in it a 'geeks' and don't want to work with them) . The problem is women don't want to work in IT because they are not interested. At where i work, we have had the first female applicant since i first started working there (over 10 years ago) and she was hired. The IT department is 100% male at the moment.

The problem generally isn't the working environment, its that women are not attracted to it. It could be just this type of work isn't something most women want to do, it could also be that most women don't see it as something women do, or it could be that it starts at the education level.

Just like with men, there are jobs that men rarely do, because it is either seen as something women generally do, or something that men generally are not interested in.

Ah so it's the wimmin's fault they are paid less! Of *course* it is. Yup. Understood.

"This ones for the ladies, please please do your homework when applying for roles, look at what the going rate is and demand you get it"

My wife works in IT, I work in engineering (mostly using computers...). We both work part time, so that one of us is always around for our kids before and after school. I work 30 hours a week, she works 22.5.

She *earns* 20% more than me, but we think *she* is the one who is underpaid for her job and may be part of the statistic which says that women are underpaid.

Neither of us feels able to change jobs, because we think we've got "good" employers and will have trouble getting a similar part-time roll elsewhere.

Re: Delusional liberals and their sacred cow of diversity

Isn't this hypocrisy?

Yes.

A good point - complaints are directed at 'good jobs'

But there are all manner of low paid jobs where women are massively over-represented (e.g. carers).

I can't off the top of my head think of a well-paid role that women are over-represented in, though.

Only stretch I could possibly make, would be stuff like "Director of HR" which is where one woman has clambered up to the top of a massively female dept.

Re: Delusional liberals and their sacred cow of diversity

Don't know about septic tank cleaners, but there has been litigation about access to construction work, mining, and a number of other tough jobs in the US. These jobs are not well paid compared to law or much of IT, but as blue collar jobs go they pay well, and some women want them. Some women who have wanted them in the past have had to go to court to get hired, and often enough put up with a bad time at the work site.

Having said that, I don't know the hand-wringing over IT is particularly worth it.

But "Sacred Cow of Diversity" would be fine name for a band.

Re: Delusional liberals and their sacred cow of diversity

Seems to me they're cherry picking 'gender equality', and merely going after the high-paying, prestigious, cushy jobs.

Why IT if that is the case?

I've not found IT particularly cushy, prestigious or high paying...

Regarded as a slightly glorified semi-skilled clerk, in my experience, populated mostly by the socially stilted, worst type of geeky, even if they aren't on-call all night, sit playing games or mererly puttering on a computer almost 24/7, only ever get passionate about how much they hate company X/Y/Z.

I'm not surprised there's not many women want to be bothered with it.

Re: A non report

All I needed to see was the subhed:

"UK industry body calls for top-down change on diversity"

The key words "top down" are what matter. This article is meant to (hopefully) induce punitive actions by government against all companies that don't cave in to the feminist's demands. That cannot be achieved in this case except by use of (and only use of) raw percentages, because those figures hide all the inconvenient details.

Re: You have to teach yourself to program

But this isn't about women in programming, it's about women in IT.