Comment by adrienne
11 years ago
Wrong. Yes, there is a pipeline problem; however, women also leave STEM fields at more than twice the rate men do.[0] And when we do, the reasons we cite include the fact that it's a boys' club, as well as outright harassment.
[0]: (This is an overview, but also cites some actual peer-reviewed studies) http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/08/science-engineering-gender-...
People come up with all sorts of excuses when they fail, usually ones that place the blame on an external factor rather than internal (lack of work ethic, unsuitability for a role, etc).
This is hardly new, or confined to a single gender. It's like when they study obesity and find that people who "can't" lose weight massively under report their calories.
Well, at the small software companies I know there are many (e.g. 20x) more male software engineers than female and the problem is 100% due to the pipeline (I'm not aware of any female engineer having left). In my experience female candidates also receive more offers than comparable male candidates, which is great and again not indicative of a cultural cause of the unequal workplace proportions.