Quote:
Originally Posted by WILDCAT
My sister works for Intel. I'll have to get a quick opinion sex ratio from her (then their stats), for the higher paid positions. But, you're also talking about attitudes. Stat that (?) At least I know where she is they are a bit progressive with regards towards gay employees. Well, gay men, I'm not sure if it's equal in attitude with gay women. I'm not sure about transsexuals. I will "dig" around a bit with her.
WILD
Just my wooden nickel's worth anyway for a good thread start. Good luck.
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I can bet, as I work with a large corporation that is up-and-coming in the software world, the higher Board of Director positions will be rarely women. Women in IT aren't really known. In fact, can you name any? You can name Bill Gates, Woz, Jobs, Torvalds but do you know of Ada Lovelace (first programmer), Grace Hopper (created COBOL language that's used in the majority of banks and other large institutions as the main language; this was also the language that caused all that stir about Y2K), Susan Kare (did all those graphics for icons and such on the Apple when it first appeared), Sally Floyd (worked on TCP, part of the protocols that built the internet) and so on.. Heck, there was Carly Fiorina, CEO of HP who walked out when she fought with the board and even my own company's first CEO, Diane Green, who also left after differences of opinion.
When I was an instructor at a private IT school, the majority of networking admin types (non-programmers) were guys. Very few women went through the course (odd since network admin requires more human contact and socialization if we're to look at gender roles and how communications are done) while programming (often a solitary job) was nearly or over 50% women.
Although IT tries to come across as being whacky and unique and not necessarily caring about gender, the reality is true. We expect IT support, admins and engineers to be men. We expect answers from men and the image of a geek is either the nerdy Matthew Broderick (see
Wargames) or, if a woman, it's Angelina Jolie (
Hackers). It's interesting that Sandra Bullock's character from
The Net isn't something that comes to mind for people when thinking about women in science.
It's interesting that Google came up with those images as it's contrary to what I envisioned. When I think of scientist my first thought is an older woman in a lab coat. Bing's search results were similar but their first female images are better than the ones listed here. I know that there are (were?) programs in place to encourage women into math and sciences more but those programs don't seem as prominent as they used to be. Are they still in place?