From: Francis Cianfrocca Date: 2007-05-05T05:31:03+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby love ------=_Part_21098_4171829.1178310662822 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline On 5/4/07, Gregory Brown wrote: > > Of the females on this list, how did you get into programming? How > can we be better at being supportive of getting women involved in > programming? > > These questions I think are important for us to think about... If > you've been to any users groups or conferences (and I know this isn't > just a Ruby problem), the gender imbalance is startling... > > This is most definitely a sensitive topic. I'm going to ask you a question that will seem flip but is actually serious. You say "these questions are important for us to think about." My question to you is: "why?" In other words, what exactly is undesirable about the fact that there is a gender imbalance in software development and computer tech in general? Are you concerned with getting more bodies into the profession? Don't worry, they're growing programmers like crazy in India and China. Are you concerned with getting more women into well-paying jobs? Well, that's another question entirely. I deal primarily with very large companies in my work, and I find that while the lower IT ranks (programmers, sysadmins and other techs) are still overwhelmingly male, women are nearly at a level with men in the higher-value-added (and better-paid) echelons. That would include CIOs, senior business analysts, program managers, and account representatives. In other words, we guys are interacting mostly with machines (and seem entirely content to), while the women are interacting with PEOPLE, and making decisions with real financial and business impact. How's this for a gender imbalance: look at the male-vs-female ranks in the medical schools today. In twenty years when today's med students are at the top of their careers, we'll be asking how the medical profession came to be so female-dominated and what (if anything) to do about it. In the law schools, men and women are now about even. (Since the MBA has come to be such a throwaway degree, I'm now convinced that the JD is a more attractive degree for people who aspire to senior management.) ------=_Part_21098_4171829.1178310662822--