The wage gap too plays a part. Why bother to train and learn to be technical as someone else yet receive less pay?
Which pay gap is that? Are you referring to the pay gap where people in the same company,
doing identical roles, are paid different amounts and therefore the company breaking the law? Where are huge numbers of highly public prosecutions for illegal employment behaviour for this wage gap? Or are you referring to the pay gap where people in the same company
doing different roles are paid different amounts?
IT is a relatively well paid role. I would have thought that if pay were a major factor then it would attract more women?
We know that salary cost is indeed a major factor in who a company employs for techinical roles. This is evidenced by the massive amount of offshoring that has taken place over the last 10 to 20 years. So if cost is such a massive factor, and if women are paid so much less for the identical role in the same company, then why aren't comapnies employing more women than men? Why are so many more men employed then women if women are cheaper and just as interested in the job? Why don't companies want to reduce salary costs by employing women... if it were true?
Also as demonstrated by that google leak some time ago, some men have outdated views, belittling women in technical roles. An environment hostile to the inclusion and advancement of women plays a part, suppressing their talents.
Progress is being made but there is still a way to go for equal representation.
The Google "leak" wasn't someone belittling women. It was someone suggesting that men and women are interested in different things in life and wanting to change the environment to improve that. What part of the memo was belittling women? If we're not allowed to discuss the possible causes of the difference for fear of people making such accusations then we will never understand the cause, and never fix it.
However even if what you said was true it doesn't explain why so few women are studying IT related subjects in education. At that early stage they wouldn't have yet experienced the suggested "belittling". That wouldn't happen until they reached the workplace. So if what you suggest was true then we'd see massive numbers of women join IT as juniors and then massive numbers leave again (with many cries of how awful the industry is to women). But we're not seeing that. What we're seeing is a massive disparity in men and women entering the industry.
While there have never been as many women in technology roles as men, what I find fascinating is that the percentage of women was actually much better until around the 1970's. Some of the early pioneers of Computing such as Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper were women. After that period the balance started started declining. So in an era where equality has improved in the western world, the balance of women has declined. That doesn't make sense. Surely improved employment laws and improved attitudes in the workplace should have resulted in a better balance? But we're not seeing that. Despite better employment laws and better attitudes the balance is worse than in the early years of Computing.
However, if we look at
where junior people are recruited from over time, then perhaps it may help explain one of the causes. In the 1940's, 50's, 60's and until the 1970's there wasn't much formal education in IT. Computers were rare and if a company wanted someone to work on them, possibly as a programmer or other technician, then they probably couldn't hire someone already trained. They would usually have to find someone in their company who showed an aptitude for it, and further train them. But Since the 1970's we started seeing formal education in IT. Nowadays it's very hard to get a role in IT without a degree.
What I don't yet understand is whether the number of women going into formal IT education is lower because of the courses, or because the industry itself holds little interest for them. The world isn't yet perfect. But it just doesn't make sense to me that in an era of much improved employmant law and an era of much improved workplace attitudes, that we are seeing a lower balance or women in the industry than when times were far worse in those areas. So something else is likely to be the cause.
From my own experience I recall having more female colleagues in 1987 when I started my career than I do now. But I think what's more marked is that I have very few female colleagues in development teams now; most of the women in my office are in support, service, management and organisational roles.
EDIT: Also thinking back to about five years ago I was on the graduate recruitment team for a large American bank working in London. I can only recall interviewing a very small number of women but a large number of men. The stage before that was a technical test and the stage before that was an online application. I don't know why there were few women that reached the interview stage but they certainly weren't being discarded at the interview stage; they either didn't each it or hadn't applied for it.
