A UK-based IT magazine that I follow has been doing a survey of the state of the industry. One of the questions that it asked was, “Does the IT industry discriminate against women?”
Personally I thought this was a no-brainer, but apparently the largest number of respondents was in the “don’t know” category. Amongst female respondents, 41% were in the “agree” or “strongly agree” categories, while amongst male respondents 46% were in the “disagree” or “strongly disagree” categories. Gee, I wonder why that could be?
Mostly, however, I am depressed to see a supposedly professional piece of journalism in which 44% is described as “a majority”. This does not exactly fill me with confidence in the survey.
My business partner has been in IT all her career and says she has never been aware of any discrimination on the basis of her gender – possibly because people are too busy discriminating against her disability. (To be fair, even this is in most cases rare, but it’s been a factor far more often than her gender.)