Why there aren’t many girls in IT
At the recent Females in Telecommunications & Technology luncheon to celebrate International Women's Day, MP Jodi McKay highlighted that only 1 in 5 Australians studying to work in ICT was female. In Sydney on 24 March, Microsoft will hosting Girls from Years 9-11 for the first Australian DigiGirlz day.
I suppose it’s nice that they care, but…
IT is indoors with no heavy lifting, and it has more to do with what you know than who you know. If women don’t do this it’s either because they don’t find it appealing or they secretly think they’d be bad at it.
Generally women are bad at IT for the same reason they’re bad at engineering disciplines: it requires analytical modes of thought that are not their primary mode of operation. This is not to say that women can’t do things analytical. I merely suggest that most women aren’t in the habit of thinking this way, and I should also point out that a lot of men fit this description and are equally unsuited to IT.
Analytically weak people (they like to call themselves people persons) generally end up in sales type roles, substituting interpersonal skills (lying and manipulation) for useful skills. These people often genuinely believe that if they say something frequently and sincerely enough, it will become true. What actually happens is that other people are too lazy to check, and just repeat the last thing they heard. This doesn’t work with computers or with the people who like working with them, and analytically weak people rapidly learn resentment of an environment that is inimical to their only talent.
Your archetypal computer geek does not intentionally repel girls. If he thinks about them at all it is to wish he knew how to attract them. For those who thrive in IT, everything they do and say is rooted in a context that makes analytically weak people feel bored, uneasy or even threatened. It is fair to say that people who are analytical of mind regard those who are not as being either mentally deficient or lazy, and frequently lack both the social skills and any inclination to mask their contempt, compounding the situation.
Girls don’t want to be in a dominantly analytical environment. It’s inimical to them. I’m quite impressed that they figure this out so young.