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I hate to say it, but ITguy is right about the drawbacks to IT jobs. We women often want more of a balance in our lives between personal/family time and work time. In many ways the industry is geared toward single men, or married men whose role is limited almost solely to earning money. The demands on your "off" hours are so heavy and require such crazy hours that there's not much room for anyone who has other obligations. The first time an IT worker is called in at 3 a.m. for a server problem or suddenly has to stay late and arrange emergency babysitting, s/he will know what I mean.

Compounding the problem, everything from IT articles to coworkers to customers assumes that IT workers are male until proven otherwise. Women IT workers are being constantly reminded, both on and off the job, that we are different. We can't just relax and do our job, because we are treated as women first, and then as IT workers... but only after proving we don't fit the stereotypes of female technological ineptitude.

Lastly, we do our girls (and society in general) a serious disservice by channeling them into stereotypical "women's" careers such as secretary, nursing, etc. Such careers pay significantly less than stereotypical "men's" careers or those with more gender equality. Since society tells our females in countless ways what their "place" is (ever seen a male actor in a commercial for household cleaners?) we are much more easily discouraged if we run into problems or there are no mentors expressly encouraging us to explore non-traditional careers. Girls miss out by being directed away from what could have been rewarding and lucrative careers, and we all miss out from having only slightly more than half our society participating in the technologies.

So, if the article is to be believed, women make up 60% of the workforce but still believe they are underrepresented?

Whose statistics are we to believ?

"Specifically, these women spoke about valuing a career that afforded them the opportunity to supervise, manage, and coordinate the work of others."

It's not about the computers and shit. They just want to be the boss of someone. But IT isn't the type of career where females can easily bullshit their way into management like with human resources or marketing.

In the scientific literature, there's two general trends based on empirical evidence and correlated with neurological evidence:
1) Women tend to do better on the 'soft' skills, and are better at multi-tasking.
2) Men tend to do better on the 'hard' skills, and can be more focused on a single task.

That's not to say that either men or women are better in any way, simply that men and women are different.

Surprisingly, this means that men and women *tend* to be better at different jobs. There will of course be exceptions.

So jobs which are very mathematical or scientific, and require intense focus have men gravitate towards them because men *tend* to be better at those jobs. Such jobs include programming.

But jobs which require good inter-personal skills and multi-tasking have women gravitate towards them because women *tend* to be better at those jobs. Such jobs include business analysis.

Management is a separate issue altogether. The management skills required in any given situation vary; there are times when a stereotypical masculine approach is needed amd there are times when a stereotypical feminine approaches are needed. There's a great deal of literature on the optimal management type for a given worker type. Go read it if you're interested.

As a manager, I care greatly about the lack of women in the IT workforce because the participation rate of women in the overall workforce is increasing and the participation rate of men in the overall workforce is decreasing. This means that more women than men are going to be in the workforce. If you are only successfull at recruiting men, it means that you are going to be recruiting from a shrinking candidate pool.

So do you really want to be in charge if you've got no one to do the work? Male or female?

Yes, there are some IT workplaces which are sexist. There are also IT workplaces which aren't. The issue there is a workplace that tolerates discrimination, harassment and bullying. The issue is not what the gender balance is.

I love that the examples given were a woman "who had a traumatic childhood", a woman doesn't like her current IT job, and a woman who took IT as the next best thing to make money, after law?

Where're the examples from women who _like_ their IT jobs, and like them because of the job, rather than because they were traumatised or really didn't care what they did? Those are the examples we should be sampling.

I hope the entire (tiny tiny) sample set wasn't of these sort of mindsets, but if not, why not use one of the better examples as an example?

First, this article really says very little about anything:

"Human-resources personnel need to recognize that women have diverse values and motivations throughout their careers and tailor hiring and retention practices to fit those needs"

No s**t? Women are somehow unique there?

Next, why isn't there an uproar about the lack of men in nursing, veterinary medicine, or education?

Answer? Who cares? Last time I checked, men and women are different. Is there something wrong with that?

so women wants jobs that have no promotion prospects and zero job security? Don't see anyone stopping them.

After reading this article, I tried to identify any of those "soft-skills" in myself. I couldn't think of any: I don't multitask well, I like projects, and rarely gossip. I very much dis-like having to talk to anyone at all before 9am. If someone interrupts me in the middle of a project I continue to work until they go away. I work in a place with about 30 people and there are only 2 women (myself included). I don't like to generalize and I don't like being lumped in with the "soft-skilled" females but I have to admit, I would much rather work with 30 other men than 30 other women. I've never had to steer-clear of any of my male co-workers because they were having a bitchy day. Anyhow, my point is there ARE women who have the kinds of personalities and skills that fit with IT but (in my case at least) no one suggested that I might like IT back in high-school when it came time to choose a career, so I went to school for something else and fell into an IT job afterwards. I'm not saying that parents, teachers & guidance counselors are steering females away from IT, but I don't think they're suggesting it either.

Maybe more women would go into science if we got toys like leggos instead of stupid dolls.

I had to steal the fun toys from my brother to get to play with them. I think the formulation of our brains starts early, and the ridiculous emphasis on dolls during a part of our lives when we are learning how to think is detrimental.

Fortunately, I did steal the fun toys, and am now a programmer/engineer.