While other professions are making up ground, cybersecurity still lags behind in female representation, thanks to a lack of respect and inclusion.

  •  Sonori   ( @sonori@beehaw.org ) 
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    62 months ago

    Except that isn’t really true, rates of young children interested in technical fields is pretty even. Moreover, up until the 1970s and 1980s, back when computers required far more technical knowledge to operate or repair, the field was almost exclusively comprised of women outside of managerial roles.

    No small part of what changed was as computers become more important to industry and wages increased, for some reason home computers and especially new applications like gaming consoles were exclusively as toys for boys, and with women being required to near universally use male pseudonyms focus and popular perception shifted from the women who silently operate the IBM mainframe to the man writing code in the basement or startup by the 90s.

    Practically gender roles have a lot more to do with how a field is perceived and how often kids are told ‘no, you don’t what to do that,’ or ‘that’s weird’, and especially how well they match with the image of the expected canadate in the head of the person hireing them. Even in your own comment you mention nursing, which is a far more technical role than say doctor or surgeon.