Today's current event has to do with women in the tech world. We started talking about the gender gap in computer-science-related jobs today and had an intriguing discussion, so I looked up some articles about women in tech jobs. It turns out the outlook is even worse than I thought it was. This article from the LA Times talks about how we are not only not really gaining in terms of proportion of female tech workers, we're actually losing some.
According to the article, many women who are interested in tech positions have left or will leave at some point, many due to "hostile work environments". As much as we'd all like to claim that we all believe women are just as qualified as men or more so, it appears to be only lip service. If so many women who are actually motivated to get into these positions are being driven out of them, how many more women will never get into them in the first place because of these prevailing attitudes? I think a lot of affirmative action and equal opportunity programs are silly because they can end up prioritizing a less qualified minority worker over someone who really knows their stuff, but we obviously can't get rid of any of these quotas because the work environment is apparently too toxic for women to remain. The worst part about it is that the environment hasn't changed, despite everything that's been attempted in the recent and less recent past. I can't say that I have any answer to the issue, but I sure hope that someone comes up with one soon.
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