Interesting article

[ironphoenix]

An article about women leaving tech fields in their thirties and forties, related to recent discussions. The article's main point is good and seems pretty sound to me, but there's a line that's tossed in about "the hostile macho cultures — the hard hat culture of engineering, the geek culture of technology or the lab culture of science" which doesn't get any further discussion. What are your impressions or experiences of that, and why is it one of "[t]he top two reasons why women leave" work in STEM fields?

Ganked from dracodraconis.

Comments

I made you a reply but LJ ated it

[beable]

Seriously - I posted a reply yesterday just as LJ went down for emergency maintenance so it didn't get posted.

Anyways, me experiences are based on comp sci and math rather than engineering but I never found the culture at school particularly macho or hostile to me as a female geek. But what would have been extremely hostile had I also been an adult student with kids was the geek student culture that assumed school could suck all your time (e.g. pulling all nighters, classes at all hours, lab crunches). The school/work/life balance was fairly extreme in it's "school" bent.

The only real "macho hostility" I have noticed in my field is an overabundance of the guys who explain things in comparison to the general population. I am a very poor debater who doesn't want to hold forth an argue when I am at all uncertain of my "facts" so I find the forth-holders annoying to deal with.

As for why women leave, I think it goes back to the work-life balance we were talking about at the cottage. Women in their thirties and forties are more likely to have simultaneously hit the point at which their career requries that work comes first if they want to move up in their workplace and when they are likely to be the sandwich generation at home (caring for kids, parents, and often both at the same time).

While men may not be happy about work meaning they don't have the time to spend with their families that they need, I think statistically women are more likely to choose to leave jobs that forces the choice between the 70-hour work weeks and family responsibilities. For most households the onus of caregiver is more on women and this doesn't mesh well with high pressure jobs.

Re: I made you a reply but LJ ated it

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Ah LJ, we love you, however you may taunt us!

The school/life balance is a good point. There are entire subcultures of oriental and Indian students who to all appearances study very intensely, but which are almost entirely dissociated from "geek culture" as I've seen and lived it, so it's not purely a geek thing. The geek thing seems to be doing that, and then piling a special project on top of it (e.g. the concrete canoe race, Formula SAE, IEEE student paper competitions...).

Why are men not expected to share in the caregiving and household work, I wonder? It's not been the case with us, certainly: whoever isn't working does more (i.e. nearly all of the) housework, and we've lived both sides of that balance.

Of course, I personally avoid 70-hour work weeks. Not only is it a shitty way to live, but it generally doesn't draw out my best or most efficient work. Typically, anything over 50 hours in any given week is pretty much unproductive time, and if I were working on my own, I would probably get as much done averaging 30 hours a week as I would averaging 37.5 in the long haul, with occasional "pushes" to fight through detail and scut work, and hit deadlines. Since I do more meetings now than I used to, the hours get used less efficiently overall because of scheduling conflicts and interrupts, so 35 hours would probably be my optimum now.