I don’t know why, but most of my female friends leave their high tech jobs in their 30s. Most of them do not leave to spend more time with their children, as the predominate urban legend goes. Why do they leave? I don’t think women are more fed up then men, I think women are more able to leave a field. Men might change jobs, but women are more likely to feel empowered to quit altogether, quit a job, quit a career, or leave for a lower paying job. Men, I think, have a much harder time quitting.
This article, Where Have All The Women Gone?,
says we are spending too much money trying to bring in talent to the
country and worrying about women entering into technical fields when they should
be worrying about why women leave technical fields.
I think we should focus our efforts on changing IT jobs not on getting women to stay in unpleasant jobs.