Data Circle

An interesting post from the WordPress development blog popped up in my RSS reader a couple of days ago, announcing the Summer of Code students who will be working on the software over the next few months. Whilst I was interested to see the potential new features and improvements, as I run WordPress on a number of sites, the final sentence of the post was what caught my attention:

“Seriously, we didn’t get more than a couple of applications from female student developers. Where are all the geek girls?”

That’s a bit disappointing, though perhaps not surprising—and the fact that it’s not surprising is disappointing in itself.

In my mind, there are three potential reasons why women don’t go into IT:

1. Concious discrimination from men: This can manifest itself in a number of ways, from men thinking “X is a girl/woman, and so can’t be up to the job” to paying women less than men for the same job or denying them promotional prospects.
2. Environmental factors: I suspect that the IT environment can be off-putting to some people, including women in particular. This could be because the industry is dominated by men, so women don’t feel like applying for jobs in IT, creating a vicious circle, or because there aren’t many strong female role models. I find the latter argument a bit odd, as I look up to people who are successful in business regardless of their gender, but perhaps I’m just awkward like that.
3. The type of work available: It’s possible that the type of work available in IT appeals more to men than it does to women, for biological or social reasons.

Clearly concious discrimination is something which should be stamped out—apart from anything else it’s both illegal and unfair to pay someone less for the same job or deny them promotion simply because of their gender, or indeed any other biological reason. I don’t know if concious gender discrimination is widespread within IT, as not being female I’ve yet to encounter it, but I can’t remember any of the geeks I know making discriminating comments about women in the industry.

Environmental factors are somewhat harder to change, as they’re not necessarily intentional—the fact that the gender balance is heavily weighted in favour of men doesn’t mean that every man working in IT wants to keep women out at all costs. One way round the lack of women in IT being a vicious circle is to discriminate in favour of women in some way, e.g. by mandating that a certain percentage of IT workers are female or by offering better salaries, incentives and bursaries only to women. The problem with this solution though is that it simply reverses the flow of discrimination against someone else, as discrimination in favour of one group is also discrimination against everyone who isn’t in that group. Even more dangerous is the possibility that it actually reinforces the view held by some people that women are not as capable with IT as men, because if they were surely they wouldn’t need all this special help to get into the industry? I don’t agree with the latter view, but I can see how people could jump to that conclusion. I also don’t think it’s fair to promote people based on their gender, whether that be male or female (or anything else, if you want to reject gender as an concept).

I think the type of work available is the least problematic, and probably also the easiest to solve. Every single company relies on IT to some extent, so even if you want to stereotype women as working in retail for example, there are still plenty of opportunities for IT positions.

So, what is the best way to encourage more women into the IT industry? Some suggestions of mine include:

1. Tougher enforcement of anti-discrimination laws: There’s no excuse for paying people different salaries/wages if they’re doing the same job, but it still happens and to my mind that’s a failure of the system to haul up discriminating employers and bosses in court and punish them for breaking the law.
2. Don’t fall into the trap of positive discrimination: It seems like a good idea at first, but it causes an awful lot of resentment and can ultimately undermine the perception of women in an industry.
3. Publicise the female-friendly factors of IT more: IT is an incredibly flexible industry—to a large degree you can work where you want, when you want and how you want (in theory at least). I can’t think of a better industry for women who are looking to start a family. Before anyone jumps on me for encouraging gender stereotypes, I know not all women have or want to have children, but many do, and the IT industry offers opportunities to combine childcare with getting back to work, which I think is good for both the employee and the employer.
4. Don’t just look at the numbers, look at the reasons: One of the big issues is that people look at the percentage of people in the IT industry who are female, and then panic because the gender ratio isn’t “correct” (which often means 50:50). No industry is ever going to have a perfect gender balance, and there might be perfectly good reasons for any inbalance. For example, men tend to be, on average, physically stronger than women, so it’s not surprising that there are more men than women in the construction industry. It may be that the nature of work in the IT industry appeals more to men than women because, ultimately, our brains work differently to a certain extent.

Of course, being a bloke I might be completely wrong about all the points above, and perhaps there is a lot more concious discrimination in IT than I think.