Comment Re:And I'm the feminist deity (Score 4, Interesting) 446
The problem with this is that companies don't really pay that well for the labour, skills, experience, talent and education necessary to succeed in IT.
"IT" is a crap career no one should enter. Answering calls on the helpdesk? No thanks - well, better than starving, but so are a lot of things. But we were talking about software development
Why would girls want to sit in front of a computer for hours on end, sometimes, even evenings and work also on weekends in order to launch etc.?
Check out the hours lawyers work, or the oncall duties as a surgeon (or a vet - but dentists, that's the job!). It's not the hours that's the problem, it's the lack of dignity of the profession. When the field was doubling every few years, that meant most software developers were in their 20s, and management could get away with treating all of us like college students. My work environment is more like a dorm room or college lab than a professional office environment - that's what we need to push back against.
As far as pay, after your first 5 or so years in the field, jobs that pay well are there for the taking, though you may need to move to where the work is. If you're past your apprenticeship in the field and you're not making at least 1.5x the national median income, you're likely at a bottom-tier employer: shop around. While we may top out lower than the doctors and lawyers, they don't hit peak earning potential until later in life - a doctor or dentist is typically in his 40s before lifetime earnings net of school costs put him ahead of a plumber or other skilled tradesman.
Personally, I think many women are put off by the limited social interaction involved in the job, or at least that's my theory for why so many female software developers choose career advancement into management or product management over the dev tech track.