back to article Women shun careers in IT security

Women are shunning cyber security even more than they shun the rest of IT, according to a survey. Of the 2,500 people who took cyber security training at QA in 2012, just 6.2 per cent were women. The number of women choosing to take up security courses also declined overall by 19.5 per cent between 2011 and 2012, while the …

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  1. Pen-y-gors
    Headmaster

    footnote...

    and of course the Blackadder dialogue was inspired by the original Johnson quote:

    "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: footnote...

      Yep - and of course the journo knew that, but went ahead hoping to get a rise, particularly from people who's idea of humor might not be confined to detailed memory of quotes from 30 year old shows.

      Ha. Ha. Ha. A long career in IT has taught me that most men don't indulge in that kind of juvenile 'humour', and that the ones who do are rarely worth listening to. It's also taught me to be a bit sad about the ones who didn't learn that lesson, who've gone on to other things.

      Another woman in IT.

      1. Robin
        Meh

        Re: footnote...

        'making a reference to' != 'confined to'

      2. CADmonkey
        Flame

        @Mrs.AC

        How is Ben Elton's line any more or less "juvenile" than Dr.Johnson's?

        I agree, you must be a bit sad

    2. Throatwobbler Mangrove
      Joke

      Ma ütlen, ma ütlen, ma ütlen ...

      ...mul ei ole nina.

  2. Uberseehandel

    I am not the least bit surprised that few women are drawn to security training.

    Several times in my career i have had to support strong competent women who have been viciously and pointlessly attacked by security specialists. In all these instances, the source of the trouble has been a male security specialist who has worn a uniform in a former career.

    Whilst the security sector continue to provide a cultural home for superannuated, under educated sociopaths, I can't see this situation changing. And in case you are wondering, I don't have a problem with people in uniform, I just want them to but it behind them when the quit.

  3. Admiral Grace Hopper

    I did IDS for a while

    Which certainly counted as cyber security. I have since moved on to other things. It's got nothing to do with my gender though.

    Why are fewer women putting themselves forward for training? I've no idea. I moved on because the role became subsumed with a different empire within in my company which I didn't want to join. This looks to me like QA using a handy stat to drum up some free publicity.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It ought to be easy to work out

    If Women are shunning cyber security even more than they shun the rest of IT, then it might be reasonable to suppose that the reasons for women shunning IT in general apply even more so to the Cyber-Security field. I am of course assuming that the reasons for the general case are understood. If they're not, then I doubt that there is any point asking the question about Cyber-Security.

    My money is on them not wanting to get involved in a field which is full of hype, bullshit and aggressive career building on the efforts and work of others.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I sit next to a dog who speaks Estonian

    Or put another way, she's no oil painting.

  6. Wilco
    Thumb Down

    Oh FFS

    Can you not see it's just a tiny bit offensive to compare women to dogs? Even in jest. Hello? El Reg? The 1970's wants it's attitude back.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oh FFS

      Get a life and learn how to click on a reply button.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oh FFS

        You sir, are a complete tool.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My company has an office in Thailand and there is like a 50% mix out there male/female. Maybe it's just British women who have this attitude. IT is seen as 'geeky' and 'nerdy' over here, whereas in other places there is a little less of an anti-intellectual attitude.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Holmes

      You fear you might find the "a woman takes pride in being clueless" attitude all over the continent. Maybe less so in Germany though.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "whereas in other places there is a little less of an anti-intellectual attitude."

      You may be right, but I suspect it may be more of a "there isn't an entrenched gender division".

      In the West, engineering grew up as a heavy, dirty, male occupation, and all the industries that inherit from engineering seem to have the same attitude. In countries where they went straight from Third World to late 20th century - which includes places like South Korea - that bit of traditional gender roles got missed entirely.

      Apparently one of the things that really, really pissed off German prisoners after the Battle of the Kursk was that many of them surrendered to Russian tanks crewed by women.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "whereas in other places there is a little less of an anti-intellectual attitude."

        "many of them surrendered to Russian tanks crewed by women."

        Similar attitudes caused Israel to no longer put women in front combat roles because Egyptian soldiers -- male only -- would not surrender to female soldiers (and fought on).

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Wtf ?

    In what universe is 18 per cent considered rare ? You think one dog in six can talk do you ,.

  9. The Axe
    Flame

    Women in IT is rare, so are men in teaching

    So it's rare for women to be in IT. It's also rare for men to be in teaching, especially primary schools. But because the gender equality feminists are misandrists they want to force men to allow women into male dominated sectors using gender rather than ability as the criteria. But when it comes to female dominated sectors, they still keep men out. Thats because feminists are misandrists and have no interest in equality, it's just a narrative they can use as a cover for the more gullible of their followers.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Women in IT is rare, so are men in teaching

      I considered a career in teaching, but the thought of crap pay, terrible conditions and the ever present threat of being accused of kiddy fiddling or being punched in the face by an irate mother because I dared to tell her little angel off kind of put me off.

      A bloke.

  10. smudge

    What's in a name?

    I agree with the correspondents above who note that gender differences probably have a lot to do with it.

    But I can't help thinking that the term "cyber security" must put off a lot of people, especially women. To me - and I've worked in this area since before some of you were born - it suggests robotic machines, automatic locks and cameras and weapons, the Terminator, certain enemies of Dr Who. Hard, nasty things. Attractive to macho blokes, maybe - to women, not.

    So maybe a gentler, less in-yer-face term might make a difference. A more empathetic term. Might even make an improvement to the whole subject area, if followed through. For starters, I suggest the well-used term "information assurance". Any more?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Re: What's in a name?

      LOL at the idea of bloke sin IT Security being 'Macho'.

  11. Compact101

    I work for a large International IT company any have many women on our projects in all roles.

    Though I will admit the more geekier perceived the role, the less chance of finding women.

    BUT...

    We have plenty of Indian colleagues working both off & onshore and they have a good mix of both male and female working in all areas. So maybe just a Uk thing

  12. Eurydice Sophie Exintaris
    Holmes

    I was literally the only woman there!

    I beg to differ. Yes, I like being obnoxious, but no, that's not why.

    I am a woman. I wear skirts, paint my face (you know, that eyeliner thing?0, and have a bigger collection of shoes and earrings than you have web-based accounts. Trust me. (although I'd compete very directly on that front too). But. My life is inextricably linked with technology. I love it, I work with it, in it, I evangelise about it. I'm a woman, I'm a techie, and I'm a geek. A geek? Yes, a tech geek. I loved it, I studied it, I live it. Nobody told me "no, you're a girl, you should give sponge baths". Read on...

    In my high school, you chose to specialise in Maths or Biology. In my class, I was the one and only girl who chose Maths... Even our Maths teacher was a man. I did feel singled out, but it wasn't by my classmates. Then, I went on to study Computer Engineering, another place where I was one amongst maybe 20 women, at best, in a classroom of 100-150. I noticed it, but it never meant anything. It was just a statistic. Just like the fact I was one of three students from my high school who made it -at all- into that University. Just a number. It never mattered.

    So maybe I'm the dog who speaks... Last night, I went to a "Women in European Business" conference. At the end, there was networking. I walked out of the auditorium onto a floor full of women, elbow-to-elbow, as far as the eye could see. And I didn't know a single one of them. You wouldn't believe how quickly I ran off... Too many women! It just wasn't my element. If I'm a dog who speaks, I am most comfortable around others of my species (tech geeks). Or, you know, men... who are in tech... (sense a trend?)

    Reading this, I now wonder if being more comfortable around men (than women) is (as a woman) as singular an occurrence as a dog speaking estonian. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it's that technology is my favourite common ground with people, and I'd never properly noticed gender issues. There were statistics, not issues.

    I hope that women do not feel discouraged from studying maths, computer science or engineering. Being able to solve problems isn't a male-only thing. It's a being-human thing. Get on with it.

    Epilogue: For the record, I do work in IT, will always have an IT-centric role (technology - and its advocacy - is a huge part of my life), and I have never, not even for a second, contemplated going into security.

    And trust me, it's not because it's full of men. I think we've already established I prefer that.

  13. Andy_S_London

    We've got 6 (will shortly be 7) women in our information security team (which will be 35% of the current total). We've generally had a number of quality female applicants for roles advertised in the last couple of years.

    It's fair to say that the majority work on the policy, risk mgmt, awareness, compliance side of the function rather than in the more technical roles.

  14. Electric Panda
    Meh

    There are plenty of women in IT security. I'm a man working in that field and have met more than my fair share of women in said same field, often doing technical and practical roles.

    Women don't use computers, though, so who am I kidding?

  15. AndrueC Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    The paucity of women in programming is a shame. The few I've come across seem to be very competent. They tend not to rush into coding without thinking about it first and take it more seriously.

    They are also nice to look at :)

  16. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Joke

    Ridiculous

    "Everybody knows dogs don't speak, hey Gaspode?"

    "Yeah right, bark, bark"

  17. Bluenose

    Many of the comments here reinforce stereotypes

    And what makes it worse is that the stereotypes are being applied to both genders.

    Our "brain wiring" is just as much a product of what we do regularly and as our nature. Those women who work in security develop the appropriate wiring in order to do their job. This is true of DIY or any other work, the reason practice makes perfect is because it naturally reinforces the brain's processing of specific tasks.

    On the other side is the fact that many women see IT security (and probably IT in general) as the domain of spotty geeky glasses wearing male teenagers who rarely raise their heads above battlements of pizza boxes and fizzy drink tins. We who work in the industry know that such an image is unrealistic in the main and that most of us work in brightly illuminated rooms in buildings where it is as easy to get a nice salad as pizza.

    The reason why women are not in IT is because we who are allow the media to continue to portray as the "Plague" of the "Girl Who.." books or the hacker in Die Hard 4.0. And to make it worse we accept such negative stereotyping. Perhaps if we pushed a modern and realistic image of our industry then we would get a better set of potential candidates from both genders.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Many of the comments here reinforce stereotypes

      "Our "brain wiring" is just as much a product of what we do regularly and as our nature"

      Exactly. Our brains don't get fully wired until we are adults (and even later - London taxi drivers are notorious because a part of their brain grows as they do "the Knowledge").

      The problem I see is peer pressure. Once children go to play school they are exposed to tiny tots whose parents are already heavily into gender stereotyping. Little boys come back pointing sticks and saying "bang", but they don't know why, just that other little boys do it.

    2. magrathea

      Re: Many of the comments here reinforce stereotypes

      "Our "brain wiring" is just as much a product of what we do regularly and as our nature."

      That’s supposition.

      We do know there are significant physiological differences between men and women and in all cultures men and women display significantly different preferences and responses in aggregate. Even if your assertion were true, wiring would take overwhelming precedence in most cases because it is there without further action

      “On the other side is the fact that many women see IT security (and probably IT in general) as the domain of spotty geeky glasses wearing male teenagers who rarely raise their heads above battlements of pizza boxes and fizzy drink tins”

      Perhaps; and perhaps the perception of nerdy-low-status is very important and negative to women because of their wiring regarding the social status of males.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Many of the comments here reinforce stereotypes

        We may not be fully wired unti lwe're adults, but the groundwork is still laid while we're in the womb.

        You can't just rip all that up, sure you can put in relays, parallel circuits etc, but that initial feminine brain wiring is still there. And once again I reiterate feminine / masculine refers to the testosterone and estrogen levels during the first trimester, not to the actual gender of the fetus / child / adult / person.

        Lets go for a house analogy shall we? You have a south facing house with a garden, and a north facing house with a garage.

        You can add a garden to one or a garage to the other, but one is still north facing, and the other is still south facing.

        You can let teh garage fall into disrepair and you can let the garden get overgrown, but it's still a garage, and it's stil a garden.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Many of the comments here reinforce stereotypes

          The only things wrong with your analogy is that the brain is nothing at all like a house and its wiring is not fixed. New neurons are constantly being formed*, old ones are dying, and the development of different parts of the brain is influenced by the things we think about - hence the documented brain changes in taxi drivers. During the life of a neuron the number of synapses can alter. It looks increasingly as if long term memory is created by a rewiring of connections.

          "Initial feminine brain wiring" is about as scientific as astrology.

          *You will still read on the Internets that brain cells do not form after birth but recent research has shown this is far from the truth. The reasons for this belief are not clear. It's well known, for instance, that the brains of songbirds develop enormously in Spring and shrink equally dramatically in the Autumn. Perhaps it was the, still very common, bias of scientists to believe that human beings are in some way unique, a belief that is really just as lacking theoretical and experimental foundations as the "men are fundamentally different from women" belief.

      2. AndrueC Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Many of the comments here reinforce stereotypes

        Perhaps; and perhaps the perception of nerdy-low-status is very important and negative to women because of their wiring regarding the social status of males.

        Working with computers means communicating with them but perhaps it only satisfies men with their relatively poor communication skills. Maybe women, being generally better communicators, find it unsatisfying. One other thing I've noticed is that men are more likely to swear and shout at a computer suggesting we are more invested in it and that women know it's just a machine.

  18. DAN*tastik
    WTF?

    There are videos of dogs saying "Hello" on the internet

    But I didn't see any of women typing "Hello world". Not even one by David Attenborough!

    Do they really exist???

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "It needs to be easier, more affordable and more appealing to women, in order for them to enter this vital segment of the IT economy.”

    They are not barred. If only 6.2% of women are in the program it is probably because only 6.2% of them were female applicants.

    This "There must be 50% women in all jobs" is BS. You are free to choose whatever career you want. Are we going to mandate that 50% of all nail and hair care stylists be male? Women want access to all-male gyms citing discrimination. A man applies to join an all female gym and he's a perv.

    I know in Canada they set a goal of 20% of all combat troops be female. I think they reached 4% max. Women don't want to be in a fox hole getting shot at. You set standards, you then live by them. If women don't apply (or minorities or different religious groups) or qualify for the position then you deal with it and move on.

    Women have a right to apply for any position they want and will bloody well sue if they are discriminated against. Do not legislate how jobs should be staffed by global census otherwise half of you will be replaced by the Chinese and Indians.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Horse riding, anyone?

    A little off-topic: horse-riding magazines are aimed at both sexes. (I know of no other sport where men and women compete on equal footings at all levels.)

    A little on-topic: I wish a lot of men had chosen another career rather than IT.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    women in IT?

    From what I have seen, if a woman is qualified and has experience in the relevant IT career, she is more than likely to be considered more than a male candidate is due to the over populated scenario of IT as this article points out.

    However if a man has experience and is more than qualified in a typical female job i.e. admin work he stands no chance.

    The bottom line is men are less discreminating than women when it comes to these things and this is a fact - I have read this in some experiment done for the latter part of my comment.

  22. ElPoto
    Stop

    Where are they

    I know like 8, and I personally work with 2 women, in IT security... There are also like 3 dogs in cages outside that I think are used to watch the building, but I never get close enough to hear what are they speaking.

  23. roselan
    Holmes

    A WOMAN IN IT SECURITY...

    is like an animted gif on el reg: unique!

  24. MegC

    Right so...

    We (as a society, in general) tell girls to play with dolls from a young age and boys to play with computers and gadgets like that...

    Is it any wonder why a greater percentage of women grow up to be Hairdressers, Nurses, Make Up Artists and boys are generally more likely to be Mechanics, Electricians and I.T. Professionals?

    I don't think its a physical "wiring" of the brain because of hormones issue, its a "society" issue.

    But hey, as a women in I.T. surrounded by guys that's just my tuppence.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not an exciting area

    I was thinking of getting into IT security at one point, I was put off by a colleague who had done it for a spell, according to him he spent all his time dealing with sad pimply, socially outcast, 15 year old boys who thought they were super hackers because they had downloaded a script to exploit IIS from some internet site they had found on Google.

    I know a number of women in testing, development and graphics in IT, and as a matter of fact GIS systems seem to have an overabundance of them from my experience.

  26. Stephen Channell
    Flame

    Time was when Computing was "women's work"

    Shocking as Eadon (and other pontificates) may find it, but in 150 year history of Computing, the time dominated by men amounts to 20% - 30% of time... in statistical terms that is still short enough to count as a "blip". When electronic computers were introduced 50 years ago, it was thought that men did not have the diligence for computer programming, and only changed when the Apollo programme made computer programming a glamorous activity for Engineers.

  27. Maharg

    Kids toys

    I am a man with a twin sister.

    My parents in their wisdom raised us to share very rarely got separate presents on our birthday, I remember one birthday maybe 7 or 8 years old where the two ‘main’ presents were a paint set and an electronic game where you had to more an animated man towards a dragon and try to steal his eggs, you could move backwards and forwards and had to time it so the dragon wasn’t looking otherwise he would breath fire on you, (this might date me somewhat). Neither me nor my sister were told which to play with, even the wrapping paper was the same on both presents, but my sister went straight to the paint set and I spent hours on that game.

    The point I am trying to make is that I neither of us was forced to go one way, neither was told not to play with certain toys, but while we did share our toys, inevitably I went towards the more ‘male’ toys and my sister towards ‘female’ toys.

    Women in IT has very little to do with discrimination, and more to do with them just not being interested in the subject, and while IT is maybe 90% male the HR and Marketing departments are 90% female, does this mean men are discriminated against when it comes to HR & Marketing?

    If someone can do the job well they get the job, regardless of gender, however you can’t have more female IT staff if more female IT staff don’t apply, and I honestly think that’s not going to change regardless of any government set figures.

  28. SirDigalot

    Women are generally not in IT

    Because they are smarter than men and realize IT is crap and makes people grumpy.

    and they are generally better looking.

    and I am bitter

    and twisted

  29. Lars Silver badge
    Happy

    So what

    What this article says is that the number of female taking part in cyber security is low. So what.

    This question about the lack of women in professions with more men than women is old. So far there has been less about professions with more women than men.Open source, any programming. There are those who try find a reason for it among the messages here. Good ones or bad ones, who knows.

    Tradition is surely one reason. If you want to have your hair cut in Northern Europe it will most likely be done by a woman. In Spain, Italy and so forth most likely by a man. Probably no difference in the result.

    When I was seven our teacher, a women, asked us about what we would like to become as adults. The boys wanted to become fire fighters, captains, policemen, soldiers and so forth. Then there was, suddenly, one guy who wanted to become a dentist. Complete silence in the class and then a huge laugh. Who wants to become a dentist. Poor bastard, I suppose his father was a dentist, perhaps he become one too, or did we kill him. Now I cannot remember anything about what the girls wanted to be, too dull stuff to remember, perhaps. Tradition and family are certaily thing who affect us as children. But where is the problem. I had absolutely no feeling to become a nurse regardless of the lack of a vagina. Forgive me, trying to add humour to this, I think I failed. Anyway, I have known several superb programmers from the opposite sex. The only difference I have seen is that men have some inbuilt tendency to fuck around with stuff like using side effects of instructions that sometimes are very clever but awfully ugly to maintain, if you do not know it in advance. Men have a tendency to try to squeeze their cook into the code. Women whose code I have seen never seem to do that. More straight forward, no gimmicks, but on the other hand, you hardly see them at work at nights or weekends, children, husbands, better things to do or just more intelligent, who knows.

    About women testers, I remember one who was given a list of codes the program was supposed to accept. It did, only it did accept almost any other code too. I suppose any guy would have made the same mistake too. Proves nothing, of course.

    So where is the problem. If a women does not feel like working in IT. So what.

    OK. there has been a lot about the difference between brains, and why not. There was a program about Chimps where the kids where handed human kid toys and the girls took the "soft" toys and boys the "boys" toys. And so what. I do think there is a difference between men and women but is that difference bigger than the one among men and women, perhaps not, and so what

  30. John Tserkezis

    It's been called Technophobia.

    Aside from what you'd expect from the term, a sheer feer of technology, society has beaten women into roles that are "acceptable", because society (and I'm poining fingers at parents here) doesn't understand and actively fears technology.

    All that "be what you want to be" mantra has been mostly thrown by the wayside by the parents (mothers?) of the girls who grow up not having any interest in technology to start with - because they've been taught that way.

    I'm not buying the "brains are wired that way" argument, because at least in this instance, it doesn't factor, or in some cases, is a benefit over men's wiring.

    I've worked with very few women over my career, and on average, their performance wasn't always stellar - but then again, I've worked with some blokes in my time too - and I've seen some fecking monumental morons there...

    On the upside, at least from my casual observation, girls (the younger ones) are much more tech savvy and interested than the ones that were brought up with a 50's mindset - that said, again just from my casual observation - parentage has a LOT to do with it too.

    So if you're going to blame anyone, blame the parents.

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