jbank wrote:
A little bit of social awareness would tell you this is not a good debate for a male to enter into at work, no matter how they carefully craft their argument. I'm guessing that google hires a few men who are not terribly socially aware.
An interesting question is what evidence would be sufficient to persuade you that there is some inherent difference that explains the gender disparity in tech. Even more interesting is what data would be sufficient to persuade a woman who works in tech of the same thing.
Interesting question, what would it take to convince women there is a difference whether or not it an inherent difference or self made.
Working in IT. Even in an organization with almost equal men/women and over 1000 IT staff members, Women/men seem to be distributed amongst groups in a non random pattern. I will find some women in the tech groups like DBAs, Unix administrators, network administrators etc. So no question women can do these jobs, but what I have found is more women gravitate to management positions and developer/analyst positions than the tech groups. And that men are far more likely to have these tech jobs. Have women done this to themselves through self selecting career choices, or have they been pushed to certain areas? perhaps for there own "good". I.e. Organizations often have special tracks for women and minorities who they believe will rise high in the organization. They get pushed to positions that will set them up for other future promotions. Getting stuck in certain tech positions is unlikely to further their advancement.
So I think there are certainly differences in where men/women end up in IT, I'm not sure it inherent in the gender. it may be self imposed.