Is Discrimination The Reason Women And Minorities Are Exiting I.T.?

InfoWorld reports in U.S. faces competitive disadvantage from lack of women in IT By Lucas Mearian,

Robert Birgeneau said of the top 50 university computer science department jobs in the U.S., not one is held by a woman of color. "How embarrassing," he said. "It's an astounding waste of talent in an increasingly competitive world."

Discrimination against women and minorities is putting the U.S. at a disadvantage in technology innovation, according to the chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley.

Birgeneau was the keynote speaker at a workshop on women in technology as part of the Emerging Technologies Conference being held at MIT this week.

He said that while the number of women and men enrolling in undergraduate and post graduate technology programs has evened out somewhat, women are far behind their male counterparts when it comes to academic positions.

Birgeneau cited a study released last fall by The National Academies titled "Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering." The study said that at the top research institutions, only 15.4 percent of the full professors in the social and behavioral sciences and 14.8 percent in the life sciences are women, "and these are the only fields in science and engineering where the proportion of women reaches into the double digits."

The study also showed that women will likely face discrimination in every field of science and engineering. "We're at a drastic disadvantage in the United States, which is outsourcing to other countries like India and China, who are working madly to compete with us and who are investing deeply in education," he said.

Karen Vogel, founder of The Women's Congress, a women's business-to-business conference, isn't quite as critical siting:

One factor contributing to the lack of advancement for women in technology jobs and faculty positions is that women often don't support other women when it comes to workplace advancement.

Other possible causes include lack of role models, corporate leaders who don't champion women and lack of access to the "Good Old Boy Network".

The article failed to directly mention the difference in how men and women relate with each other. Women respond best to direct feed back, while men don't like to directly give or receive feedback. Further in the I.T. industry, more than most, your worth is more directly inline with your actual knowledge and experience, rather than any perceived knowledge and experience.

Finally, don't leave out the fact that more and more the I.T. industry is considered a commodity "Dead End" industry and holds much less prestige than before "H-1B" meddling.

InfoWorld promises a more detailed report concerning the issue after further polling has been analyzed next spring.

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