My parents have recently asked me to think about getting married. Sure, why not, everybody seems to be doing. But I would need to find a girl and I seriously wonder how somebody working at least 60~70 hours a week, would find the time to socialize let alone date. And it got me thinking about something else.
When I was in school my class had about one girl for every guy. As I moved to Junior college that dropped to 4 out of 10 and when I finally reached college it hit about 2 out of 10. Surely it couldn't get any worse. And then I took a job, where that number hit 1 out of 10 (any lower and we'd have to have half a woman! ). Now admittedly I joined a group that did IT for Prop trading, a ferociously demanding and competitive part of the Investment banking world, with long and irregular hours. When I look around and see other groups in my firm or even other firms, they are marginally better but still have same big-Oh (read as "trend" for for those not familiar with computing parlance ) when it comes to the number of women at the workplace. A lot of my friends work in the software industry and though they have slightly more women in their work force it's still nowhere near 50-50.
In school most of the girls I remember were hardworking, sincere and motivated, all qualities you would associate with a successful modern career and not with brash school boys who seemed to eventually have these successful careers. So where did all the women go ? Where did we push them out of mainstream ?Remember these are women who were from middle class homes. Growing up I don't remember girls being treated differently than guys, not at least till after college and definitely not while they were in college.
Or maybe there is a secret office where all the women work. I'm sure that's it.
When I was in school my class had about one girl for every guy. As I moved to Junior college that dropped to 4 out of 10 and when I finally reached college it hit about 2 out of 10. Surely it couldn't get any worse. And then I took a job, where that number hit 1 out of 10 (any lower and we'd have to have half a woman! ). Now admittedly I joined a group that did IT for Prop trading, a ferociously demanding and competitive part of the Investment banking world, with long and irregular hours. When I look around and see other groups in my firm or even other firms, they are marginally better but still have same big-Oh (read as "trend" for for those not familiar with computing parlance ) when it comes to the number of women at the workplace. A lot of my friends work in the software industry and though they have slightly more women in their work force it's still nowhere near 50-50.
In school most of the girls I remember were hardworking, sincere and motivated, all qualities you would associate with a successful modern career and not with brash school boys who seemed to eventually have these successful careers. So where did all the women go ? Where did we push them out of mainstream ?Remember these are women who were from middle class homes. Growing up I don't remember girls being treated differently than guys, not at least till after college and definitely not while they were in college.
Or maybe there is a secret office where all the women work. I'm sure that's it.
