Saturday, May 2, 2015

dennis: RESPONDING TO 'AWAKENED HUSBAND'

(Note from Mark Remond: Awakened Husband’s comment to SERVING MS. BROWN, PT. 2, has elicited strong responses from other readers. Now dennis adds his response.)

Comment from ‘Awakened Husband’: “You mentioned this is a software company. Do women do the technical I.T. work, and are there women programmers? This is interesting because historically, the one strike against feminism has been that women do not seem to show any sincere interest in the physical sciences and technical disciplines. This makes women put themselves at a disadvantage when they go up against a male in this area, not to mention they come across as only wanting the big pay check and not really having any passion for the engineering side of things. Or is the company attitude along the lines of "Its not the engineering that makes the money, its the marketing and intellectual property structures", which of course would be dominated by women?”

*

Dennis responds:

i was amazed by the narrow-minded, ill-informed, misogynistic nature of your comments. Awakened husband, indeed! i will respond to each of your erroneous assertions as follows:

“You mentioned this is a software company. Do women do the technical I.T. work, and are there women programmers?”

Yes, it is a Woman-owned company, and Women fully participate in the daily work of this company, including programming, engineering, and IT work.

 If Women haven’t participated more fully in the pas,t it’s largely due to their being steered into traditionally Female areas such as care-giving, soft sciences, etc. Men on the other hand have been driven to do work in engineering and technology.  It’s patriarchy at work, preserving the male-dominated status quo by steering talented Women away from STEM fields. Our company partners with a local university to recruit Women into engineering and IT and to fully support them once they go down that academic path. We provide scholarships, grants, mentoring, and intern opportunities. Afterward we recruit Women into our ranks and support them when they join. Carol, our CEO, transformed our company from one run by a good-old-boy network to one where Women have opportunities in hi-tech. So, do we have Women programmers? Yes, we do and by many measures they outperform their male counterparts. How do we know? We have measures; the margin on Woman-run projects is higher; employee satisfaction on Woman-run projects and in Woman-run departments is higher. Women are seen as being more inclusive and this is by both men and Women.

“This is interesting because historically, the one strike against feminism has been that women do not seem to show any sincere interest in the physical sciences and technical disciplines.”

Strike against Feminism! You are kidding? Numerous studies have shown a pervasive attitude in society that has directed Women away from science and engineering into traditionally Female areas such a care-giving, homemaking, secretarial and administrative tasks. And i can argue, too, that men have been steered away from traditionally Female occupations such as homemaking by the same prejudicial thinking and by the fact that Female-dominated occupations traditionally pay less… And, guess what? When we sought to enhance the situation of our clerical and administrative staff when Carol first took over the company by raising salaries, we had a huge inrush of applications for these positions – from male applicants! This is good, of course, because it’s helping take down gender stereotypes. So, don’t tell me that Women aren’t interested when they have been systematically dissuaded and the same for men who otherwise might have desired to pursue a traditionally Female career.

“This makes women put themselves at a disadvantage when they go up against a male in this area, not to mention they come across as only wanting the big pay check and not really having any passion for the engineering side of things.”

Pure crap! Our experience – note some of our metrics, above – are that Women are at no disadvantage whatsoever – in fact, it may be the opposite. Women are seen as more effective leaders, as being more inclusive, and being more culturally sensitive. If you want a technical measure, surveys of our customers show us that usability is higher on Female-led projects. This is telling us that we need more Women in control of projects at a higher level. We’re positioning two high-performing Women – yes, they write software, oh my! – for roles as system architects who will be charged with driving things like standards, look and feel, usability, etc.

As far as “only wanting the big paycheck and not really having passion for the engineering side of things,” again, are you kidding? We work to earn our way in the world so our compensation is a part of any career choice. Science jobs pay well because of the skills required and limited number of graduates in these fields. We’re all Feminists here and realize that economic empowerment emancipates Women. In other words, Women don’t have to take orders from narrow-minded patriarchs if they have well paying careers. Is your “passion” going to keep you at your current company if your salary is suddenly cut in half?

“Or is the company attitude along the lines of ‘It’s not the engineering that makes the money, it’s the marketing and intellectual property structures,’ which of course would be dominated by women?”


It’s the job of a company to make money or contribute to its doing so across the board – we need to be good in all areas so I’m not quite sure what you are getting at. We actively recruit Women because they greatly help our business and because we have a strong Feminist philosophy. We believe that if Women are going to reach their full potential they are going to have to be economically independent, and this means they are going to need to fully participate in science, engineering, and IT. We’ve committed to helping them get there – to their benefit and ours.

9 comments:

Tony said...

Excellent comments, Dennis. Thinking about this some more, I seem to recall reading in several publications that colleges and universities are not properly preparing students for the transition to the 'working world'. I have personally have observed this as well. A great deal of new staff training is required by employers, or if no training is offered, then there may be higher turnover. My thought is a course, entitled 'Opportunity Management', and should include much of what you have said in your commentary. Let's better prepare our students and get rid of this nonsense which implies that certain types of jobs are geared to specific sexes. This should be settled by qualifications, pure and simple.

Anonymous said...

It is a historical fact that the ranks of programmers was pretty much 50/50 male/female, and probably higher than that for application programmers. In 1980 computer science grads were about 53% female. It all changed with the advent of home video games. These were marketed exclusively to boys. Boy began reaching their teenage years vastly more comfortable with computers and technology and pushed the girls aside. By the time we got to the internet era, and it's explosive growth, particularly in silicon valley, it had become a male-dominated profession.

Anonymous said...

It is a historical fact that the ranks of programmers was pretty much 50/50 male/female, and probably higher than that for application programmers. In 1980 computer science grads were about 53% female. It all changed with the advent of home video games. These were marketed exclusively to boys. Boy began reaching their teenage years vastly more comfortable with computers and technology and pushed the girls aside. By the time we got to the internet era, and it's explosive growth, particularly in silicon valley, it had become a male-dominated profession.

Anonymous said...

Erm http://www.businessinsider.com/25-powerful-women-engineers-2012-8?op=1&IR=T

Woman are great at tech, Ada Lovelace was the Mother of software engineering. There are so many examples of great Female engineers and artists out there throughout history who got no credit for what they did. Things are changing now - girls are more free to embrace their inner geek. I still think boys are persuaded against 'feminine' activities mostly by parents and peers. Anyway, the facts simply do not stack up that 'girls don't like science' - they just been told they should not from an early age. Don't get me wrong i think Women and men should have equal opportunities - i love to be dominated by a strong woman, but that's just me but i do prefer the way they get things done. Don't agree with all of dennis' postings, but this is spot on. i wish i knew where you worked dennis! every day must be a delight! keep on tending those shoes - on a lighter not i love to hear about your love for shoes (and the feet that slip into them). Keep up the good work.

AW

Mark Remond said...

dennis replies to AW:

Thanks for your refreshing post - i enjoyed it. The Woman-owned company where i work is a wonderful place and while we are looking to hire as many Women as possible to establish them in the STEM field we have many qualified men on staff, too. Women not only have great technical and programming skills but our experience is that they are very good at gathering and building teams and in designing software that scores well on usability.

Thanks again for your comments...

d

Anonymous said...

The old shiboleth of Women not being good at maths etc. The sexism of those marking with this already preconceived thinking and the forcing of Women away from science subjects because they are not "logical" is just patriarchy at its worst.

Femsup

Anonymous said...

...how many have ever held a patent or an invention? You seem to be ever focused on tiny percentages..

Anonymous said...

http://www.nber.org/papers/w17888

and

http://www.women-inventors.com/

and that's despite people like you!!!

AW

carpadeim said...

Let's go back in time for a glance at our elementary school class. Remember when we sat in class making paper footballs, or maybe shooting spit wads across the room? hahahaha Yeah I was one of those kids!

What were the girls doing? being serious about studying

What about later in life when we become teenagers? Lots of partying and troubles with the Law..

What were the girls doing? being serious about studying

You see my point, it doesn't take a scholar to see the female gender is far more focused and trained, not to mention cleaner and less foul mouthed.