Is there gender inequality in IT or cyber security?

[SpaceGhostC2C]

5 hours ago, kingkickolas said:

The wage gap explicitly compares similar situations, it doesn't ignore it. Where are you getting all of this from? 

TV and the like most probably. Part of the problem is that, while there is a measurable wage gap (in the order of 10%) in most economies for which good estimates exist, after controlling for all obvious wage determinants, those figures are rarely quoted by media pieces and public figures. Instead, most broad audience outlets keep hammering completely raw, not controlling for anything, figures (in the order of 20-30%). 

Hence, everyone willing to believe there's no such thing and unwilling to dig for proper studies will comfortably point at the flaws of those widely publicized figures and use them to confirm their prior beliefs.

[mr moose]

5 minutes ago, kingkickolas said:

I still can't get over that this thread started as "This industry expert says X is happening, but let me ask the 13 year olds over on linus tech tips dot com to get the REAL SCOOP."

 

lmao

Besides the fact you might be projecting your own age,  you and everyone else who I have asked has been unable to explain how any authority on the gender pay gap can conclude that without actually showing a single documented case.  As I said before, it is illegal to pay someone less for the same work.  So if they have evidence that is happening then where are the charges? 

 

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, kingkickolas said:

I still can't get over that this thread started as "This industry expert says X is happening, but let me ask the 13 year olds over on linus tech tips dot com to get the REAL SCOOP."

 

lmao

As I said before, maybe you need to read. The wage gap is a fallacy in the sense wages are different for the same work. In a company where numerous arbitrary positions exist, an individual can do the same amount of work under a different guise. Women and men can both do the same amount of work, but credited differently. They are paid for appropriate work due to their roles, but one is paid less. 

[imreloadin]

31 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Some people have advantages and disadvantages.  That will always be so.

Exactly, so people should stop using it as an excuse for their own shortcomings. Some people have to work twice as hard to do things like graduating college due to learning disabilities or having to work full time while attending classes. That's called life in the real world. There will ALWAYS be people who have it better than you as well as people who have it worse so you can't really use that as an excuse.

 

The truth in the matter is that there are only so many people who possess the qualifications to perform a specific job. I hate to break it to you but STEM jobs are hard and it's difficult to get the qualifications to perform those jobs. Add onto that the fact that people tend to take the path of least resistance so not many people do intellectually difficult work.

[kingkickolas]

4 minutes ago, floofer said:

As I said before, maybe you need to read. The wage gap is a fallacy in the sense wages are different for the same work. In a company where numerous arbitrary positions exist, an individual can do the same amount of work under a different guise. Women and men can both do the same amount of work, but credited differently. They are paid for appropriate work due to their roles, but one is paid less. 

You could just save characters and type "Well actually..." instead lmao. Every one of these sentences could be interpreted as mocking/ironic and they would be absolutely hilarious. +1 from me.

[mr moose]

10 minutes ago, kingkickolas said:

Ahh the "clearly mega corporations and powerful industries never get away with doing illegal things, I mean that would be illegal!" defense. Rofl you're killing me dude.

You do understand how the tax system works here right?  Payslips must include the hours worked and all relevant payments they earned.   If a company is underpaying it's workers I can guarantee you they are underpaying all their workers. Not just the females.  

 

 

Edited April 13, 2019 by mr moose
deleted unecessary comments

[kingkickolas]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

You do understand how the tax system works here right?  Payslips must include the hours worked and all relevant payments they earned.   If a company is underpaying it's workers I can guarantee you they are underpaying all their workers. Not just the females.   That is some A grade clutching at straws rhetoric. 

Ah yes, I love hand carrying my payslips to the Office of Holding Corporations Accountable for Paying People Enough and getting my free money from my company (takes up to a week though) and then going back into work on Monday.

 

Okay you guys can drop it now, you've been mega trolling me right? Y'all can't honestly be this dumb. 

[imreloadin]

It also kills me that whenever gender inequality in things like pay come up the people complaining about it don't even realize the pay inequality within the same gender. I hate to break it to you but if men on average make $25 an hour for a job that doesn't mean all of the men make that much.

 

At my previous job my coworker (who is male) and I had similar qualifications and did the same work however I made $3 an hour more than him simply because I was better at negotiating my pay rate than he was.

[lewdicrous]

I'm surprised that no one brought up the fact that females make up less that 5% (on some channels) of the whole demographic when it comes to channels related to tech..

 

 

Here's an article with some numbers (Not tech in particular, but YouTube as a whole)

https://digiday.com/media/demographics-youtube-5-charts/

 

Just now, imreloadin said:

It also kills me that whenever gender inequality in things like pay come up the people complaining about it don't even realize the pay inequality within the same gender. I hate to break it to you but if men on average make $25 an hour for a job that doesn't mean all of the men make that much.

 

At my previous job my coworker (who is male) and I had similar qualifications and did the same work however I made $3 an hour more than him simply because I was better at negotiating my pay rate than he was.

From the things they say, I don't think they'll ever care about that.

[wasab]

23 minutes ago, kingkickolas said:

Woah woah woah, you should tell @mr moose about this!! He has connections that can get your coworker the money he earned!

This may come as a shock to you, but did you know that it's illegal (audience 'oohs' and 'ahhs') to underpay people for the same job?!?!? 

Nope, it just means the employee's arent negotiating hard enough when they signed up. If you are not gonna ask for raises, employers are more than happy not to give it to you. This often ends up in some workers getting paid a lot more than others. Also, sometimes people will pay their family more. I remember i used to work for my cousins back in high school. He pays me like 25% more than the other workers cuz family connections lol. Of course, we hide this from all the other employees. 

[kingkickolas]

1 minute ago, wasab said:

Nope, it just means the employee's arent negotiating hard enough when they signed up. If you are not gonna ask for raises, employers are more than happy not to give it to you. This often ends up in some workers getting paid a lot more than others. Also, sometimes people will pay their family more. I remember i used to work for my cousins back in high school. He pays me like 25% more than the other workers cuz family connections lol. Of course, we hide this from all the other employees. 

Thank you for addressing my concerns. I can see now that there is no possible way that a workplace could be unfair to their employees. You have been a very big help to me.

[wasab]

Just now, kingkickolas said:

Thank you for addressing my concerns. I can see now that there is no possible way that a workplace could be unfair to their employees. You have been a very big help to me.

My case only happens because my cousin operates a small mom and pop shop. You arent going to see this in big corporations. Everyone has equal opportunity to negotiate wages. 

[leadeater]

Thread cleaned. Stay on topic and no trolling or similar comments.

[leadeater]

Since I work in IT and have done so for some time in multiple companies I would like to add in what I have seen in regards to pay, this is confined to my country however.

 

What I have seen, I have yet to come across a company that doesn't do this that isn't like 5 employees, is that companies have what is called Pay Grades. An employee applying for a job is given a job description, that job description in relation to the business has a job role and assessment assigned to it and there is specific criteria that is used to evaluate the job role and give it a pay grade. This criteria is not IT specific it just looks at the role responsibilities, reporting lines and required training, certification and competencies.

 

The Pay Grade is a defined scale of pay i.e. 55k-75k. When you apply for the job and get an offer you can negotiate starting pay but you cannot be above or below the pay grade of the job position you applied for. Every year you get a pay review (not a performance review) and your pay goes up by the defined amount for the Pay Grade, this happens every year until you reach the top of the scale. Each year the scale is increased to adjust for inflation, the annual pay increase is more than this so you will over time get to top of scale.

 

All employee job positions, pay, tax etc are directly reported to the IRD and the employer sends your income tax directly to the IRD so the pay you get is excluding tax as it's done for you.

 

For example I am a Systems Engineer and the job role has a pay grade of G, another person is a Security Engineer in a different team under and different manager but that role is also pay grade G. I know anyone in any job role within the company that has the same pay grade as mine is paid roughly the same as me, IT, FM or HR or anything else. Are there people on the same pay grade getting more than others, yes but that is down to many factors like how long they have been employed for, qualifications or certifications meaning starting higher on the scale etc.

 

Companies using well defined job grading systems, pay grades, employee evaluation etc don't have large pay discrepancies and any such thing is difficult to hide because of the reporting to the IRD and regular financial audits, on top of the ability for any employee to look at any job role and know it's pay grade.

[leadeater]

19 hours ago, TheoryInPractice said:

Then again, my social circle is narrow, so what do you think? Is this a problem to be addressed here, is climbing the corporate ladder in IT harder if you're a woman?

Where I work the CIO is Female, my manager reports to our Associate Director (AD) who is Female who reports to the CIO. There are 3 AD's and two are Female, the Vice Chancellor is also a Female (top dog since most probably don't know what the VC is). Within ITS I think we have more Female managers than Male and the top execs are majority Female. Couple of years ago it was more 50/50 split but people have moved on, an AD position was dissolved.

 

I would say we are not typical of most places though, last company was very, very male dominated.

[Taja]

My ex-gf studies and works in IT, and in my experience the problem is the amount of women working in this field. 

It is a male dominated field, so in a class of 30 people, usually only 5 are women. It is getting better, just like engineering (which is my course) only had 1 women to 1000 man, nowadays the gap is closing. But that takes a lot of time.

 

Edit: just to be clear, not saying IT is the same as engineering. It is undeniable that some jobs are (for some reason I cant wrap my head around) dominated by certain people.

Here for example: it is almost impossible to find a female bus driver. Some people take the bus their whole life and see only 1-2 female drivers. 

[lewdicrous]

15 minutes ago, Taja said:

My ex-gf studies and works in IT, and in my experience the problem is the amount of women working in this field. 

It is a male dominated field, so in a class of 30 people, usually only 5 are women. It is getting better, just like engineering (which is my course) only had 1 women to 1000 man, nowadays the gap is closing. But that takes a lot of time.

 

Edit: just to be clear, not saying IT is the same as engineering. It is undeniable that some jobs are (for some reason I cant wrap my head around) dominated by certain people.

Here for example: it is almost impossible to find a female bus driver. Some people take the bus their whole life and see only 1-2 female drivers. 

My college is dominated by women to the point where they sometimes make up +80% of the whole class.

 

If you check the demographic of most tech channels on YouTube, you'd see that females make up about 5% of the audience, if that. So maybe that's clue as to why there are very few women on those fields (compared to other fields at least).

[Taja]

16 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

 

If you check the demographic of most tech channels on YouTube, you'd see that females make up about 5% of the audience, if that. So maybe that's clue as to why there are very few women on those fields (compared to other fields at least).

Well, yeah. But thats what im saying: think about games. They are not inherently for man, but historically man always played more games. I grow up playing, and most women I know didnt. Today that is different, research suggests there are the same amiunt of man and women playing, BUT still that does not translate well because man play a lot more.

Unlike sports, there is no reason women cant play pro games in the same teams as man, but that still is VERY uncommon - but in the future I believe that will change, as it already is. On IT I think the same will happen, more women are getting interested, building careers and closing the gap in the tech space.

[Bouzoo]

In my company, I work for a carrier, my boss is female, her boss is a female and her boss is a female, and her boss is a male who is a board member. 

In my uni, tech best IT uni in country (where I am going for masters), is mostly male dominated. There are a lot of women but it's like, 70% male or so? It's basically the same in every other IT uni that I know. Interestingly, in my previous uni where I got bachelor's in mathematics is female dominated. Not a lot, but more than 50% are women. It all depends in which STEM are you are going. Women in general are not into tech as much as men are, it's a statistical fact. 

I have heard more stories  and have seen more wage gaps in the same sex than in the opposite sex. I am not telling it may not exist, of course there will be people/companies like that, but there are much less of them than the public wants us to believe.

 

Also, this: https://fee.org/articles/harvard-study-gender-pay-gap-explained-entirely-by-work-choices-of-men-and-women/

[Sauron]

On 4/12/2019 at 3:36 PM, TheoryInPractice said:

She outlined several times that there's fewer women in IT and especially in management positions, Is that true?

Yes, it's true.

On 4/12/2019 at 3:36 PM, TheoryInPractice said:

Is climbing the corporate ladder in IT harder if you're a woman?

It's hard to measure something like that and it would depend on the company, but the statistics seem to indicate that it is - the sex distribution in IT management positions is lower for women than that in the IT industry in general. Google, for instance, has a workforce consisting of about 30% women, but only about 20% of management positions are held by women (though not everyone who works at google is a computer scientist or engineer, so IT specific data may vary).

On 4/12/2019 at 3:36 PM, TheoryInPractice said:

I know few friends who are managers in IT companies but usually it's PR or HR, rarely I meet female developers.

Apparently, only 12% of engineers at google are female.

 

Stats I referenced: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-state-of-women-in-technology-15-data-points-you-should-know/

it's an article from 2014, so current numbers may vary slightly. I think it still offers a good overview.

 

In the CS classes I followed and in all universities I've been to, the number of girls has been drastically inferior to the number of guys, though the ratio seems to become a bit better when you get to the doctorate stage. In my first year of university, studying IT Engineering, out of 120 students only 10 were female. I'm in Germany for an Erasmus at the moment and I have only seen a couple of girls in classes of 50+ people, so clearly it's not a situation that is limited to my local area.

 

As for why this is, in my opinion it has a lot to do with the stereotypes about computer science; girls are taught that it's a "boys' thing" and most media tends to show computer scientists as asocial and insufferable men who often exhibit some degree of misogyny. Even things like computer games, which are many people's first gateway into CS, are very often disproportionally marketed towards males even though girls can have just as much fun with them - as a kid I had some great mario kart races with my sister though she later lost interest, probably because of social expectations. Since you're a woman you probably experienced at least some of this growing up, though you may not have given it much weight.

 

With that said, I wouldn't let that discourage me if I were you; CS is a varied field and there are definitely plenty of opportunities to shine, even as a woman.

[Commodus]

5 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Apparently, only 12% of engineers at google are female.

 

Stats I referenced: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-state-of-women-in-technology-15-data-points-you-should-know/

it's an article from 2014, so current numbers may vary slightly. I think it still offers a good overview.

 

In the CS classes I followed and in all universities I've been to, the number of girls has been drastically inferior to the number of guys, though the ratio seems to become a bit better when you get to the doctorate stage. In my first year of university, studying IT Engineering, out of 120 students only 10 were female. I'm in Germany for an Erasmus at the moment and I have only seen a couple of girls in classes of 50+ people, so clearly it's not a situation that is limited to my local area.

 

As for why this is, in my opinion it has a lot to do with the stereotypes about computer science; girls are taught that it's a "boys' thing" and most media tends to show computer scientists as asocial and insufferable men who often exhibit some degree of misogyny. Even things like computer games, which are many people's first gateway into CS, are very often disproportionally marketed towards males even though girls can have just as much fun with them - as a kid I had some great mario kart races with my sister though she later lost interest, probably because of social expectations. Since you're a woman you probably experienced at least some of this growing up, though you may not have given it much weight.

 

With that said, I wouldn't let that discourage me if I were you; CS is a varied field and there are definitely plenty of opportunities to shine, even as a woman.

A lot of it does seem to stem from girls being discouraged from pursuing the education and hobbies that would lead to jobs in computer science.  I've seen numerous first-hand accounts from women whose high school staff or peers pushed them away from math and science because it wasn't something they 'should' do, not because of their skill at it.

 

I imagine that the ratios improve as you edge toward doctorates simply because the women who are willing to persevere are usually willing to continue all the way to a graduate degree.  I'm reminded of a high school classmate who was clearly both very bright and hard-working (it was common for her to get marks over 90% in math courses), and you knew that she wasn't going to let anyone stop her from pursuing her dreams -- she went on to get a PhD, research particle physics and (more recently) gain a professorship.  The problem, of course, is that there were likely other girls in school who could have done what she did but got discouraged along the way.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, Bouzoo said:

Also, this: https://fee.org/articles/harvard-study-gender-pay-gap-explained-entirely-by-work-choices-of-men-and-women/

The premise of that study is flawed: it assumes that there was no gender specific social pressure and obstacles on the path towards those work "choices". Furthermore, it only looked at a very specific industry (public transports) in a limited area. It doesn't discredit the idea that women are unjustly paid less overall, nor that they are discriminated against for managerial positions.

[imreloadin]

16 hours ago, Raskolnikov said:

90 % of nurses are women = that's just how it is. 

90 % of men in construction = something needs to be done. 

Right, where are the feminists clamoring over the under-representation of women in the trash collection or septic tank servicing industries? Oh yeah, they don't WANT those jobs so the "inequality" isn't an issue anymore...I've always found it interesting how you only hear complaints about inequality when it comes to jobs that have a high average salary. Honestly, it says a lot about the people who are campaigning for shit like this, it just shows that in the end it isn't actually about equality.

[Trik'Stari]

No.

 

If you go an actually look at the data and research that has been done, the more equal you make men and women in terms of legal rights, and actual opportunities, the more different they will actually become in their job and life choices. Because both have natural preferences. There are outliers of course.

 

Men are more interested in stuff, than women are, women are more interested in people. These are general statements and there are outliers of course.

 

Jordan Peterson does a great job of explaining this in a lot of his talks. This isn't new information, it's information we as a species have known about for about 20 years.

 

Equality means equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Equality of outcome is impossible to achieve and only causes harm to society.

[wasab]

1 hour ago, imreloadin said:

Right, where are the feminists clamoring over the under-representation of women in the trash collection or septic tank servicing industries? Oh yeah, they don't WANT those jobs so the "inequality" isn't an issue anymore...I've always found it interesting how you only hear complaints about inequality when it comes to jobs that have a high average salary. Honestly, it says a lot about the people who are campaigning for shit like this, it just shows that in the end it isn't actually about equality.

Feminists aren't lobbying for military conscription either even though it excludes female in most western countries. People just like to stick to their gender roles, both males and females. I doubt you see women wearing skirts because of social pressure. They just want to look cute and pretty