JUNE 26, 2000
CAREER PATHS
Technology Is Still a Male Bastion
|
The tiny number of women in the field is hurting the labor-starved industry
|
Like hundreds of thousands of other 22-year-olds, Suzanne E. Till recently became the proud owner of a university sheepskin and is eager to put it to use in her new career.
What makes Till unusual is the combination of her sex, area of expertise, and
her chosen profession. This past spring, she earned her degree in mechanical
engineering, a discipline in which 88% of undergraduates are male. Furthermore, Till, who graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a joint bachelor/masters degree, intends to work in the computer industry, a field where women professionals are still relatively scarce. She has accepted a job at Intel, helping, among other things, to develop manufacturing processes for computer chips.
If only there were more like her, say workplace and computer-industry experts. About 72% of computer-systems analysts and scientists are male, according to the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among electrical and electronic engineers, 90% are male. In Till's specialty, mechanical engineering, only 7% of the workforce is female.
BEYOND DATA ENTRY. And despite women's mass entry into the workforce in recent decades, the female presence has actually shrunk in some key computer-related professions. Women occupied 32% of the computer scientists/systems analyst jobs in 1989, but only 28% today. The only computer-related fields in which women dominate are relatively low status occupations such as data-entry operators, 83% of whom are female.
The trend starts well before women get to college. Of the high school students who took the easier of two Advanced Placement exams in computer science last year, 17% were women, according to the Educational Testing Service, which administers the test. The result shows up at degree time. In 1997, the most recent year for which figures are available, 27% of those who earned bachelor degrees in computer science were women, according to a National Science Foundation analysis of Labor Dept. statistics.
There are a number of reasons why women shy away from the field, according to Jane E. Fountain, a fellow at the Radcliffe Public Policy Center who has studied women's role in IT fields. For one, she says, women, more than men, view computer work as solitary and ultimately unsatisfying. "They see much of information technology as a search to create more powerful machines, rather than a way of helping people," Fountain says. In addition, she maintains, women undergraduates are sometimes more intimidated than men by highly competitive introductory engineering and science courses.
MISSING OUT. An all-too-common phenomenon among younger students comes into play, too, adds Ruzena Bajcsy, who heads the division of computer and information science and engineering at the National Science Foundation. Around puberty, she says, many girls who performed as well as their male classmates in mathematics and the physical sciences turn away from the subjects, because they begin to perceive them as unfeminine. Finally, many young women fear that computer-related work is so intense that it's incompatible with family life, Bajcsy says.
Whatever the causes, the failure to pursue tech professions bodes ill for women's financial well-being. "They are cutting themselves off from opportunities. The job market in information technology is tremendous," Bajcsy says. Just look at incomes. In 1999, the median yearly salary for a computer systems analyst was about $47,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But in a professional specialty dominated by women, registered nursing, median yearly earnings were about $39,000.
For Harris N. Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of
America, a trade group in Arlington, Va., the lack of women in the field
presents a more practical problem. The computer industry is suffering
from a lack of skilled labor so severe that, to pluck one example, only about
half of the 214,000 openings for programmers and software engineers in the
U.S. this year are expected to be filled. "We have a workforce shortage,"
Miller says. "There just are not enough males out there to solve the problem."
Moreover, Bajcsy and Fountain assert, the industry suffers by failing to have the perspective of half the population. If more women were in the field, Bajcsy says, there might be more video games that eschew violence and, therefore, attract girl players. There might also be more products appealing to women and families, better programs to help care givers keep track of medical appointments for elderly relatives, for example. Suzanne Till adds: "Women bring different ways of thinking to problem-solving and team work, so new areas can be discovered and thought about that might be missed by a pure male team."
BOOSTING WOMEN. A number of new initiatives aim to prod more women to take the tech plunge. Among them is MentorNet, a nonprofit program that encourages more women to enter science and engineering professions by linking female science or engineering students with industry professionals. The hope is that if young women receive encouragement and advice from veterans, they will be more likely to stick with their studies and later seek jobs in occupations that are now heavily male. Housed in California's San Jose State University, the two-year-old project is run by Carole B. Muller, a former associate dean of engineering at Dartmouth College.
Among the MentorNet participants this past school year was Till. She says her e-mail exchanges with an engineer at an automobile company helped answer practical questions, such as how to make a good impression during a job interview. Till also quizzed her mentor on whether a vigorous climb up the engineering management ladder would rule out a full family life. He recommended some books on work-life balance and also offered friendly counsel. "He was very encouraging," says Till. "He said you could do both."
By Pam Mendels in New York
|
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Printer-Friendly Version