Women in Security

Whenever I attend an information security association meeting or event, I estimate the number of women in the room, compared to men.  Rarely are women more than ten percent of the participants.

I know that extrapolating from my own experience is not statistically sound but many of the women I’ve tried to mentor had to move on to other kinds of jobs because that’s what they could get.  I don’t blame them.  But then I hear how there are so many information security jobs begging to be filled and it doesn’t make sense.

This has been true for a generation as far as I can tell.  What makes me speak of it today is a recent study, reported here by Tracy Lien in the LA Times.

Women in tech still earn far less than men, study finds 

“Significant gaps also existed in tech jobs such as video game artists (15.8%), information security specialists (14.7%) and front-end engineers (9.7%).”  (I added the emphasis.)

Tracy goes on to quote Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor, “My view is that in heavily male-dominated fields, the people who are making the decisions about pay and promotion are disproportionately men, and that can play a role in why we’re seeing gaps in male and female pay,”

These same people make hiring decisions.

I’m just saying…