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Cultural inertia is surely a factor, but I doubt it's as severe as the parent is insinuating. For instance, how do you explain women overtaking men in say, vete
by lr4444lr 9y ago
Cultural inertia is surely a factor, but I doubt it's as severe as the parent is insinuating. For instance, how do you explain women overtaking men in say, veterinary medicine? At one point, the field was entirely male dominated.
- JimboOmega 9y agoSo was nursing, and really most(all?) fields. Of course going from nursing to veterinary work is not as huge a leap. And in all cases, somebody has to be the first one; somebody has to show a path, often against institutionalized sexism. Once the door is open (especially when there are few doors) I can see careers tipping fast. Of course computer science used to have a lot of women; especially when they were being used as human calculators(!), so I don't know what exactly changed that made it a boys' club. Regardless of the cause, it has the perception, which makes it self perpetuating in some sense - women see articles about how tough it is to be a woman in tech, and are turned off by it, even if the higher pay is there and it's all just rumors. I suppose though there is something of a reverse impact in some fields (in terms of labor force participation) - like nursing, which is so female dominated, there's actually negative pressure for men who try to enter it . But it also just isn't held up as high as medicine at the MD level.