I think that the "environmental" issues of unpaid, expected, massive overtime makes technology an incredibly daunting and difficult field for a woman who doesn't "have a wife at home" to take care of things like child care etc. The sexisim of your clients is usually a bit off-putting too, but it's the OT that eventually burned me out.

I am a woman in technology (software/firmware developer, intermediate bordering on senior), and I've basically decided to leave the field and retrain in something with more stable or predictable hours. My husband is in the tech community as well, and we can't both be in a field where we have to drop and run, 24/7, to take care of emergencies... we have little kids and you while you can toss the dog in the basement with some food and a promise for a midnight walk, that doesn't work with kids.

The field has been male dominated for so long, that the expectation to put in the massive overtime with no regard for personal health or family time is deeply ingrained.

Actually, it's a bit deeper than it being male dominated, though that's certainly also a problem -- in part, it's because the upbringing of women leads them to fight less when they're being screwed over, even (or perhaps especially) when they're being screwed over by other women. (Of course, when they do fight back, a lot of men start describing them in rather unflattering terms, but while you might get beat on for resisting, you definitely get walked on if you don't. That's a rant for another day, though.)

I keep seeing this, where women who aren't getting the respect (or pay) they deserve to begin with aren't willing to reach out and just *take* it, even after some encouragement. Men get belligerent, macho, and become a royal pain in the ass, and as unpleasant as this sounds, it's actually a corporate survival trait.

I remember with some remaining bitterness an incident from a job ten years ago. A woman technician I was working with was being paid at secretary wages because that's how she was originally hired, despite the fact that she had self-taught herself out of force of necessity when she kept getting passed more and more technical work. By the time I was hired (as a contractor), she knew more about the systems they were using there than I did.

I eventually discovered, and was somewhat taken aback, by discovering that she was officially still a secretary. The company had long since given up any pretense of assigning her secretarial work; she was taking exactly the same workload that I was, at what I suspect was about two-thirds the pay (I don't know the exact figures, but she told me she was still drawing secretary-level pay, and I know what they were offering new secretarial new hires). Considering that she was effectively one of the most senior techs they had, and one of the most vital, she had considerable leverage to fix this, but she didn't want to fight her manager (also a woman, and the person who originally hired her) over it.

I drew her aside a few times and told her that she was being scammed, deliberately (her manager was a real piece of work, too — I have heard of very few managers that have reached such a depth that morale and work speed *visibly* plummet whenever they are near, as was the case here). This actually nearly got me fired. Someone overheard me one time when I drew her aside and told her what she was worth on the open market. This was still tech bubble era, and it was definitely a worker's market, but word got back to the manager, who was not happy.

I managed to avoid getting fired, but I never could get my co-worker to push for what she deserved, or to start looking for a better job elsewhere. I (voluntarily) left the company a short time later for unrelated reasons.

Extreme working conditions (as mentioned by Wookie) can also be a problem, but they're not universal (or at least, not universally awful), and aren't deliberately targeted at stopping women. We had late hours at that aforementioned job, but the overtime accrued normally, and was generally looked upon as a positive thing (with the exception of our coordinator, we were a young, single crowd working there). Men get frustrated with that kind of lifestyle too, though, and there *are* other jobs available. My current job gets me the occasional late night call or weekend work, but most of what I do can be done remotely (I'm basically telecommuting for over half of my hours most of the time anyway), so I generally don't have to leave the apartment when it happens. I'm salaried now, so I don't get paid overtime, but by the same token, nobody crosses me when I take time off for the extra time I worked, so I can more or less set my own schedule.

The market kind of sucks now, but some decent jobs are still available.

Yeah, big fucking surprise. When you make a point of taking off your sexist blinders and stop presuming that half the population isn't eligible to help you, you suddenly realize there's more talent out there--some of it as good or better, even!--and your business improves.

Most women have flooded the market place and lowered the wages in many feilds just by their presence. If millions of women stayed out of the workforce and home married and with children 30 million women would not be working for minimum wage in America.

ONly 50 percent of women work anyways. Compared to 95% of men...

What I find intriguing is that no one seems to question the necessity of a 50+ hour work week, or how being on call 24/7, or not taking your vacation or sick leave really translates into "team playing" or "corporate loyalty". I find the system itself in some careers really skewed for BOTH men and women, assuming that they want to have any sort of a life outside of the workplace. Why hasn't that type of corporate culture been re-examined recently in the light of more people wanting to have better family lives?