I read the below article in The Times today and I think it’s a mixture of complete bollocks and some truth. I have no objection to being called a geek or a nerd, I earn more money than most of the women and some of the men I know so they can call me what they like - LOL!
Yes it’s a pain in the ass when you leave work to have kids and technology moves on, but it hasn’t shifted so drastically in the last 7 years. If you are supporting Mircosoft, XP and Server 2003 are largely based NT4 which has been about since the late 90’s and frankly if you can’t grasp/remember the basic concepts you are a moron and shouldn’t be working in IT anyway.
However there is a perception issue. I have *loads* of women who would like to come into IT and make a career change, talk to me about it (as I’m the only IT woman they know!). They think they have to be super qualified with an IT degree, have done an Open University course, or paid some shyster a fortune for a ‘recognised qualification’. As a result they rarely join the profession which is so sad.
If I were hiring a newbie (man or woman), I’d hire someone who has a good working knowledge of a PC, Windows and bloody good attitude who can answer a phone and not talk down to people. You can pretty much train anyone after that to do the job. However recruiters are hell bent that you should have experience in a certain technology, rather than the ability to learn.
Men can be a bit pissy about women in IT, but it’s generally not the techie geeks who I have to say in the 10 year ‘ve been doing this have been, without exception lovely and supportive. However men users…..well they can be utter fuckers to be frank. God help you if you know more than a user - they can hate it and which never fails to amuse me - LOL!
However if you’re a woman who want to work in IT, go for it! The hours are fantastic, you can work from home, the money is great (I doubled my salary going from office work to IT!), and I’ve met lots of lovely men who have become wonderful friends. Also how many careers can you walk out of for 3 years to have a baby and then go back to on the same money?
Microsoft should be in the front line advertising how bloody great a career it can be - sort it out!! Btw if anyone at Microsoft would like to give me a job to bulk up there numbers that would be great 
Here’s the article
Who wants to be a nerd? We don’t
by Penny Wark
So you think that information technology is for geeks? A cliché, I know, but apparently this is a significant explanation for women not working in the technology industry.
Hot on the heels of times2’s 20 reasons why ambitious women fail to get to the boardroom comes a missive from Microsoft bewailing the lack of women in IT and pondering why women don’t want to be nerds.
Sorry, that’s even worse than being a geek, but they said it, not us. Apparently, having a baby is tricky for female nerds because by the time they’ve taken a few months out, technology has moved on.
Women techies also think that colleagues question their commitment if they breed, and that part-time and flexible work is hard to find. And they think they’re seen as nerdy by other women, which is strange because it is not a word that women use of each other.
Though obviously they do in IT. Then there are the long hours when they do their clever stuff long after the rest of us have gone home. Add to that the horrid men who assume that women are no good at technology and it all sounds pretty miserable.
Naturally, Microsoft is keen to put all this right. A suggestion – they could start by deleting the G and N words from their manual.
