I work in the UK as a developer in an office with just over 100 employees. This covers Development, QA, Support, Product and Office Staff.
There are a total of 2 female employees, both of them have non-technical roles. And I really feel like this is a shame. I went to university with people of all genders and I feel like gender diversity is great for a team/office.
It's just a stark difference from my previous workplace which was very much evenly split.
I just wanted to get a little insight, how many females do you work with?
Call it maybe 30-35% XX vs ~70% XY, with most of the XX concentrated mostly in QA, Finance, and Project Mgmt roles. Actual Infrastructure, Ops, and Dev roles are mostly men, and are mostly offshore'd at this point.
In fact, all of the women on the "technical side" (Dev/Ops/whatever) are entirely offshore resources, with 2-3 notable exceptions. None of the exceptions are American, either, for that matter (Indian/Russian/German).
It's not down to companies.
Changing that requires a long term plan focusing on primary and secondary education. University is too late. In the UK many schools encourage pupils to develop interests in all subjects these days and to teach them that they can be whatever they want, so that girls may find that they like engineering and boys that they like nursing (for example). I think it's the right way forward but obviously it is a slow evolution.
If that's the case, and especially if it's more so than other industries, then companies are likely to blame for at least a portion of the difference, although not necessarily at hiring.
After graduation they may choose jobs differently than men.
Then women are more likely to stop working when they have children, or to choose a job with a schedule mores suited to looking after a family.
To me it still boils down to early education and to change the view of both genders on jobs and industries that are seen as "for boys" or "for girls".
I guess in cities the ratios would be better. All the women in tech I know work in London.
I would say the UK is quite good at not gender shaming roles (Except nursing for males unfortunately)
SW Dev seems to be male dominated for as long as I remember myself in it. Made a motto out of it that I hope I'm gonna pass to my kids: "steer away from any environment where the gender stats are skewed beyond 60-40. This is just not normal."
I wouldn't ask how many males do you work with, I would just way "how many men do you work with."
Similarly, I would say "How many women do you work with?"
But maybe that's an issue as well. I don't know. This language policing is mostly a minefield I don't care to navigate. The OP clearly wasn't trying to be offensive or anything like that, so i think (and hope) it's fine.
Sorry.
None of whom would find it acceptable to be called “females”.
That’s not “language policing” as described elsewhere in the thread.
You don’t see men in the workplace being called “males”. “Female” and “male” as nouns are used to describe animals. It’s dehumanizing. Don’t do it.
Ha, it's amazing how you people always talk in the same way. Literally ordering other people what to do. Yet you object to being called the "language police". It's priceless.
That's orthogonal to whether it is correct information backing a warranted suggestion.
In terms of women in the office:
- 2 developers
- 1 project manager
- 1 QA manager
- 1 HR
- 1 office manager
It's a little low for this city and country. In most larger companies, the ratio is 60-40. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower.
Romania is a former communist country and the state did not make a difference between male/female. It didn't matter. You had to work. This kind of thinking has kind of continued.
It's starting to change though. Romania has extremely favorable laws for women. Pregnant women work 6 hours / day till 32 weeks at 100% pay. After giving birth, they can stay home for up to two years at 85% pay. Fortunately, most of them return to work after two years.
