Entries Tagged 'women' ↓

The case for women in the technology business (The Register) interviews Rebecca George, director of director of UK government business at IBM and chair of the “Women in IT” forum. She seems to have a sensible approach to the issue, rejecting nonsensical positive discrimination policies and emphasising mainly the need for diverse teams as a key to success.

“A field like application development is, these days, about working in teams,” she points out. “Women bring many needed skills to the team, particularly in data analysis, for example. When you are working on the kind of diverse problems that software developers face now, it makes sense that a diverse team will lead to a better output. You need a variety of different approaches to solve things.”

[...]

She argues that the culture of a company is fundamental to its success or failure in retaining women, and that this is where the effort must go at a corporate level if companies want to have a diverse workforce.

“The kinds of programmes that are attractive to the whole workforce will be the ones that change the culture,” she says.

[...]

George is equally clear about how not to tackle the issue: “This is absolutely not about, and cannot be about positive discrimination. We don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t have quotas, and we don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t have targets.”

IT skills shortage threatens humanity (The Register):

The poll of 3,200 companies showed that 76 per cent of businesses which had problems finding staff have been forced to delay launching new products and services because of problems filling IT vacancies. One third of businesses are suffering such shortages. Part of the problem comes from the continued lack of women in the IT workforce - only 20 per cent of IT workers are female.

(emphasis mine)

From BBC News Maasai man in Kenya reveals all:

It is an unusual admission, as Maasai men, who often beat their wives, do not like to lose face before their community.

“If you do not beat your wife it’s taken that you’re a hen-pecked husband, which is not allowed in our community,” Maasai elder Johnson Ole Sipitiek told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

But Mr Mewet, who has reported the incident to the police, said he was so overcome with pain that he could not help but make a noise.

After hitting her husband and knocking out his front teeth, Mrs Mewet bit off his testicles and despite his struggles when he awoke, chewed off his penis.

“I don’t have a penis now,” he explained, showing the BBC’s reporter his wound.

[...]

“She knew that I had many girlfriends, and I don’t know why she complained when I got another girlfriend,” he said.

According to Mr Mewet, castration is unprecedented in Maasai culture, as there is no traditional punishment.

Mr Mewet said he was left with no option but to pursue an action against his wife through the courts.

Mr Mewet’s father said they planned to slaughter a sheep in the homestead in order to remove any dangers of a curse.

Forbes has published a list with “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women. The most powerful woman is Condoleezza Rice. In the Top Ten, there is only one executive: Carly Fiorina is the 10th most powerful woman.

The list is browsable by categories: Executives, Heiresses, Media & Entertainment, Presidents & Prime Ministers, Queens and Wives (!). Interesting category division. Where do they put the two US Supreme Court Justices that appear in the Top Ten? And why do they list Hillary Clinton is listed in the “Wives” category?

I can’t wait to read what the girls at misbehaving.net will write about this list…

IHT reports about a “Feminist uproar in Spain over Vogue photos”. The September issue of Spanish Vogue runs an article about the 8 female ministers in the Spanish government. The report is called “8 women for history” and talks about the political views of each of them and their reflections about the role of women in modern society. The article is accompanied by a photo session were the ministers pose in designer suits.

Some feminist groups are now outraged because of the ministers posing as models. I can understand, to some extent, that posing in expensive designer suits of prizes of up to 5.000 EUR does not help to bring the ministers “close to the voters”, but what I strongly disagree with is this ‘feminist’ message that ‘looking good’ is anti-feminist and old-fashioned. Apparently, caring for their image and posing for some elegant fashion pictures means that the Spanish ministers are un-professional and generally incompetent. So what then, to look professional a woman in Spain has to look as plain as possible?

A group picture from the Vogue article can be seen in this ‘El Mundo’ article.