Women in the IT industry

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fiireybabe

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#111136 25-Oct-2012 11:54

Hi all,

I am doing a research paper on Women in the IT industry.

I have a survey available if anyone would like to complete it, this would help me a huge deal in order to finish my paper.

Please follow the link below to Survey Monkey to start the survey

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/22BQBFC

Once again I would appreciate any help with this

fiireybabe

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#706208 25-Oct-2012 12:04

Just had a quick glance at your survey.

I'm not a statistics expert but question 3 is pointless unless you also ask the candidate how many employees in total.

Did Eric Clapton really think she looked wonderful...or was it after the 15th outfit she tried on and he just wanted to get to the party and get a drink?

eracode

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#706258 25-Oct-2012 13:09

You're off to a good start with this because as an industry, the 'IT' industry is inherently non-sexist by name, innit?

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fiireybabe

4 posts

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#706271 25-Oct-2012 13:39

hey, thanks for the feedback, but even though you are males, please feel free to comment what you think about the whole topic.

eracode

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#706276 25-Oct-2012 13:50

I don't work in the IT industry but I had a look at your survey.

Are you wanting both men and women to answer the survey?

To me it seems a very short and simple survey and I'm wondering what conclusions you will be able to draw from the types of questions and from the responses you get.

eg If someone answers 'no' to "do you think the industry needs more women?", you don't ask them why they think that. i.e. you only ask 'why' if the answer is 'yes'.

EDIT

Another eg: In Question 3, do you mean "How many women work in IT in your workplace"? If an IT person who worked in a bank was answering this, the number of women in the workplace might be 2,000 but number of women in IT in the bank might be 10.

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

fiireybabe

4 posts

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#706283 25-Oct-2012 13:57

Hi there

i have adjusted the survey, and both men and women are welcome to complete survey. What other questions do you think would be viable for this survey to be more productive?

eracode

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#706285 25-Oct-2012 13:59

See EDIT added to my post above

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

eracode

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#706293 25-Oct-2012 14:05

Maybe you are looking to find out:

- How many people in your workplace?

- How many women in your workplace?

- How many IT people in your workplace?

- How many women IT people in your workplace?

If you knew all this, you could start drawing conclusions about whether women are over- or under-represented in IT. Is this the sort of thing you are trying to find out?

EDIT

I see you have changed the survey to look more like my above comments - your changes and my comments crossed.

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eracode

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#706306 25-Oct-2012 14:38

I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to determine but wouldn't it be good to know:

- what proportion of employees in the respondent's workplace are women.

- what proportion of IT employees in the respondent's workplace are IT women.

If the two percentages are, say, 45% and 10% respectively, then you can say women are under-represented in IT in that workplace. And conversely.

As the survey now stands I don't think you are going to get this info.

Perhaps I should butt out now.

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

soliphony

7 posts

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#706511 25-Oct-2012 20:49

I agree the stats you come out with won't mean much unless you have something to compare them to. The number of women in a company will vary greatly by industry so might be misleading in some cases.

In my experience Statistics NZ has useful information you can use as a baseline.

And for question 5 it might be easier to ask how many employees are in the company and work out the percentage yourself afterwards.

Good luck

Elpie

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#706596 26-Oct-2012 00:05

I'm not sure what you hope to get from this survey but I hope you don't assume that the results reflect women in the IT industry. The survey is geared towards people working in large companies that have IT departments. There are very large numbers of us working outside of that kind of environment.

farcus

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#706618 26-Oct-2012 03:31

had a look at the survey and about the only thing I could imagine the results would be any good for is a year 8 (Intermediate school) math class homework project.

matisyahu

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#706619 26-Oct-2012 03:42

I don't think there is anything inherently sexist about the IT industry but with that being said it does have its 'own culture' which doesn't gel with what most women would prefer in a work place - I'm sure someone will scream sexism but stereotypes exist because there is an element of truth in them.

End of the day, I can't work out why there is this fixation on x number of a particular gender in a occupation.

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timmmay

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#706627 26-Oct-2012 07:28

I work in a really big IT department, I filled in the survey but I have no idea how many women there are in the place. IT fills two pretty big buildings, and there's plenty of women around. There are some women in very technical roles like development, but for the most part women tend to be in roles to do with testing, organisation, or management. Developers are about 5% women, they tend to be awful or awesome.

Elpie

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#706843 26-Oct-2012 12:36

kawaii:
End of the day, I can't work out why there is this fixation on x number of a particular gender in a occupation.

It's worth knowing if the representation of any particular group is increasing/declining/stagnant and, if so, for what reasons. If gender bias, for example, is costing an industry valuable talent it is something employers and everyone with a stake in the industry should be concerned about.

BlueShift

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#706890 26-Oct-2012 13:18

timmmay: Developers are about 5% women, they tend to be awful or awesome.

That goes for developers in general right?

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