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Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

The report is apparently not online, though you can give them your email address here: http://www.ncwit.org/resources.thefacts.html [Edit: actually it is, just click "no thanks"]

There's another article here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/06/ncwit-report-...

"The NCWIT report contends that 56% of women in technology companies leave their organizations at the mid-level point (10-20 years) in their careers, a costly loss of talent."

Maybe this is just Silicon Valley bias, but I have to wonder about who stays with the same organization for 10-20 years! I would expect most people to have worked at two or three companies by then. I wonder whether they addressed that?

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You can skip the email request (click "No Thanks") and it starts the download for the "Women in IT: The Facts" report.

EDIT: Here's the pertinent section. They are saying they leave the field, not company, mid-career:

"In 2003, only one-third of women with a computer science bachelor’s degree were still employed in a science, engineering, or technical (SET) job two years after graduation. According to a study by the Center for Work-Life Policy, 74 percent of women in technology report “loving their work,” yet these women leave their careers at a staggering rate: 56 percent of technical women leave at the “mid-level” point just when the loss of their talent is most costly to companies. This is more than double the quit rate for men. It is also higher than the quit rate for women in science and engineering."

Thanks, skimmed too quickly. But after reading it, I see that all their statistics comes from another paper: "The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology" by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, et al, which Harvard Business Review will sell you for $300:

http://app.post.hbsp.harvard.edu/athena/athena13/landingpage...

There's a summary here:

http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v9/n10/full/embor2008178...

This might be a more accurate summary: "Although SET companies are struggling with a shortfall of skilled workers and can ill afford such a brain drain, roughly 52% of women between the ages of 35 and 40 leave their jobs largely because of 'hostile work environments and extreme job pressures', according to the study." Regardless of whether they go on to another company, it's alarming that there are that many hostile work environments out there.

I read that as 10-20 years since the beginning of their career (i.e., age 30-40 if it's their first career). Makes me wonder whether women are more likely to switch careers (though they say men trend to less risk-aversion), or more likely to take parental leave and not return. I agree that many years at a single tech company would be very surprising, even outside the valley.

I'm sure that taking a time off to raise small children until they are school age plays a big part in these stats. From birth to kindergarten that's about 5 years of being a stay at home parent.

If you're a developer, think of what difference 5 years makes. 5 years ago Rails was just a blip on the radar of web frameworks. 5 years ago, JQuery had not been released. 5 years ago, the Motorola Razr was a high end mobile phone.

So much can change in 5 years that your skills could be completely irrelevant. I couldn't blame anyone (man or woman) from switching careers completely after a multi-year hiatus. IT moves quick and the barrier to re-entry can be very high.

guessed pregnancy/parenting was a possible factor too.

What I love about any statistics-based argument or complaint regarding gender differences is that they always seem to start from a mindset that there are NO differences, physically, between males and females. Then they see a difference somewhere in their statistical data set (a 17% versus a 31%, or a 57% versus an 80%) and suddenly the hunt is on to try to find some way we can blame the difference on sexism or a conspiracy of some kind. It's like, "Hello, did you get the memo? Can we say: Breasts! Babies! Different body parts in the nether regions! Brain structure differences! Skeletal! Different hormone mix! Metabolism diffs! Maturity rate diffs! Aging diffs! Hello!"

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