Hot on the heels of my post on The Nerd Girls, this weeks’ Computer World has an interview with the one of the researchers for the Athena Factor; a paper that looks at the reasons behind large numbers of women leaving science and tech careers. It really is a large amount:
Our research findings show that on the lower rungs of corporate career ladders, fully 41% of highly qualified scientists, engineers, and technologists are women. But the dropout rates are huge: Over time 52% of these talented women quit their jobs. Most strikingly, this female exodus is not a steady trickle. Rather, there seems to be a key moment in women’s lives—in their mid to late thirties—when most head for the door.
Looking at the age when they leave, I assumed that maybe the reason they left was to start a family. It’s already a sore spot with me how women are the ones who give up their career, or at least end up taking a break, when they have kids. Sure they may “choose” to do it, but the fathers aren’t even considered as an option to stay home while his wife works. There are more stay at home dads than several years ago, but society still sees the mom as the primary caregiver and dad as the bread winner. But I better stop before I digress into a separate rant. It turns out that hostility of the workplace culture is the most important factor driving women out.
We found that 63% of women in science, engineering and technology have experienced sexual harassment. That’s a really high figure.
They talk about demeaning and condescending attitudes, lots of off-color jokes, sexual innuendo, arrogance; colleagues, particularly in the tech culture, who genuinely think women don’t have what it takes — who see them as genetically inferior. It’s hard to take as a steady stream. It’s predatory and demeaning. It’s distressing to find this kind of data in 2008.
What many people think of as sexual harassment, like telling a woman she’ll get a raise if she sleeps with the boss, rape, or sexual assault on the job, do still exist. In my 15+ years of working in IT I am lucky that I have not witnessed or had that happen to me. However, I have heard off-color jokes, arrogance, the general machismo attitude toward women, and the sense that I had to work much harder to prove myself than a male college. The saddest part of that to me is that I feel lucky. A woman shouldn’t have to expect to endure any kind of harassment as part of her job, to be seen as “one of the guys” in order to be a team player. But it’s way too common, and plays into another reason…isolation.
She might be the only woman on the team or the only senior woman at a facility. Isolation in and of itself is debilitating, with no mentors, no role models, no buddies. And if you’re surrounded by men who don’t appreciate you, that can be corrosive.
I find that to be true, for the most part. With one exception, every IT job I’ve held I was either the only female, or like my current job, we are but 6 out of 20, with only myself on the hardware side. It ties in with the first one closely, in that if you’re the only female with a group of guys who routinely joke with each other and throw off the occasional sexist comment, it’s difficult to assert yourself. If you do stand up and complain about their comments, soon you will find they don’t talk to you except when needed. You feel like the outsider, a killjoy, to their guy club.
Another factor is risky behavior that’s rewarded.
Women have a hard time taking on those assignments because you can dive and fail to catch. If a man fails, his buddies dust him off and say, “It’s not your fault; try again next time.” A women fails and is never seen again. A woman cannot survive a failure.
I don’t see much of this in my job, but it reminded me of an xkcd comic.
The whole paper and interview is worth a read, even if it is depressing for women in tech. I think because I’ve worked in the public sector for the majority of my IT career is the reason I’ve been lucky with how much of these factors I’ve found true for me. But again, I shouldn’t feel like I’m lucky. I shouldn’t have to feel that expecting any kind of harassment or “guys club” atmosphere is part of the job. I wish I could say that it’s more of the older generation of IT people that are the perpetrators of the problems and that it will change once they retire, but it looks like unless the patterns are changed by powers in charge, women will continue to face difficulties in tech careers.
I’ve seen several drives to get women into science, IT, engineering, and other male dominated careers, but after reading this study, it looks like more emphasis needs to be put into keeping us around. And it sucks that I feel if there were this many men leaving a career path, we’d have already seen a major push, plus way more press about it. Sorry, but I am that cynical after hearing and seeing what myself and thousands of other women have been through over the years. I know it’s getting better, but it can’t come soon enough.
Technorati tags: women in tech, athena factor, feminism
