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Study find sexist hiring practices in STEM jobs

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Comments

  • #102
    nokia69
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,050 ✭✭✭nokia69


    hopgog wrote: »
    Intel have a place in Ireland and have gender quotas, why is that allowed, why is that not undemocratic?

    fortune.com/2015/01/12/intel-diversity/

    do Intel do serious R&D work in Ireland

    I doubt they have any kind of quotas in their top R&D labs


  • #103
    fizzypish
    Registered Users Posts: 1,000 ✭✭✭fizzypish


    Intel probably do have quotas but on the floor I worked I think there was maybe 2-3 women. There are lots of women in Intel but not necessarily in engineering related positions.


  • #104
    Moonves
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 14 ✭Moonves


    circadian wrote: »
    Pretty much this.

    The issue isn't employers. The problem is the education system and a social one. How many young girls are encouraged/interested in engineering type skills? I'd imagine plenty are interested and show an aptitude but I think the encouragement and guidance is often lacking.

    Can any females on boards comment on how these types of subjects were taught at an all girls school?

    Maybe just maybe there is something about how a female brain is built that means they are less likely to be interested in engineering. So maybe we shouldn't try to engineer:D a situation where equal numbers of women study engineering.


  • #105
    jumbo
    Registered Users Posts: 68 ✭✭jumbo


    My girlfriend is a medical scientist, she works almost entirely with other ladies. She recently did a Masters in the area, and again her course was almost entirely ladies.

    I think this discussion around "STEM" is a little broad - there seems to be plenty of interest for women in science. I know loads of ladies/girls/women that studied this at third level. More than half the people I know that work in pharma are girls.

    Even in software development, the big consulting and professional services companies have a lot of women.

    So what exactly are we talking about? Commercial engineering organisations? The specialised engineering professions such as software and electronic engineering, but why single these out? Why not architecture? Or 3D animation? Hows about accountancy or auctioneering, or oil drilling?

    It's probably more to do with the novelty of examining the social dynamics of a new sector of the economy...

    But I will concur with many before me on this thread, that getting anywhere in any of these industries does actually require you spend a few years studying it and there is a corresponding absence of the fairer sex in the courses that teach this stuff. I would make the point that the lack of female interest in these is well founded: These courses are tremendously dull, and looking back I definitely would have been prepared to be doing something more fun at that stage of my life ...

    So maybe it's girls that have the good sense to do something more spiritually nourishing with their youth than sitting in a computer lab trapped in a REPL loop, but why don't men have this sense? It could be the oft cited gender difference on the age at which each develops "sense" (crucially around the time such decisions are made), but it could just as well be that many of the guys doing these courses didn't follow their own dreams and go for one of the more traditionally female dominated professions such as catering, childcare, teaching, nursing, psychology, HR or marketing. Where's the outcry there?


  • #106
    hopgog
    Closed Accounts Posts: 167 ✭✭hopgog


    jumbo wrote: »
    girls that have the good sense to do something more spiritually nourishing with their youth than sitting in a computer lab trapped in a REPL loop

    Like hanging out doing BIS getting drunk taking duckface selfies in nightclubs an failing in HR


  • #107
    jumbo
    Registered Users Posts: 68 ✭✭jumbo


    hopgog wrote: »
    Like hanging out doing BIS getting drunk taking duckface selfies in nightclubs an failing in HR

    Speaking as somebody who was once an eighteen year old, that is precisely the kind of thing I'm thinking of! Or at least photobombing said girls, and trying to hook up with them later on ...


  • #108
    pinkywoo
    Registered Users Posts: 20 ✭pinkywoo


    circadian wrote: »
    Pretty much this.

    The issue isn't employers. The problem is the education system and a social one. How many young girls are encouraged/interested in engineering type skills? I'd imagine plenty are interested and show an aptitude but I think the encouragement and guidance is often lacking.

    Can any females on boards comment on how these types of subjects were taught at an all girls school?

    I am a girl who did engineering in university and im currently working in an engineering role for the last yr. When I started there was 4 girls by graduation I was the only girl left, it is very though been a girl in a male dominated sector, and many times I was tempted to drop out Of college. There does need to b something done for girls in engineering cause you do get picked on for been a girl and not taken as serious I found in college anyways from classmates which does have a knock on effect on your confidence for doing assignments and applying for jobs. I would like to think a company would hire someone best suited to the role and not their gender


  • #109
    jumbo
    Registered Users Posts: 68 ✭✭jumbo


    I saw this article the other day and it reminded me of this thread; basically what I have described is what's called a "pipeline" problem (i.e. there aren't enough female students "in the pipeline"):

    - https://medium.com/@racheltho/if-you-think-women-in-tech-is-just-a-pipeline-problem-you-haven-t-been-paying-attention-cb7a2073b996

    There are some good points in here about the nature of gender discrimination in the workplace. One of the responses to that article alleges that if you look at the amount of contribution to open source projects it is overwhelmingly male (though how they determined gender is a little bit 'fuzzy').

    - http://alyssafrazee.com/gender-and-github-code.html [Female author]
    - http://bpodgursky.com/2013/08/02/github-demographics/ [Male author]

    But this last article, about gender differences in Chess is brilliant. Well researched and written you can tell she really understands the game:

    - http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/why-dont-more-women-play-chess/

    One interesting finding she discusses is that there is *no* gender difference for chess players, when their gender is obscured in online games!

    Food for thought perhaps .. could the github stats be skewed again by gender persona? Could female contributors be discouraged by their male peers, or furthermore could it be that some "male" contributors are actually females who have obscured gender in order to get by? Food for thought ...


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