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It absolutely does not debunk the claim that women are innately less inclined to go into tech. Pre 1984, many professions like law, medicine, and more either we
by manfredo 7y ago
It absolutely does not debunk the claim that women are innately less inclined to go into tech. Pre 1984, many professions like law, medicine, and more either were not accessible to women or were not viewed as socially acceptable. This resulted in displacement of women from these fields into other ones, like computing. Increased gender equality, especially in the 90s, led to more women going into fields like law, medicine, publishing, and more. Since double majors are rare, this increase of women in those fields necessarily comes with a reduction in women in other fields. Counterintuitively, the higher rates of women in computing during the 1970s and early 1980s can be viewed as the product of sexism that existed in much of society. This pattern holds true globally. The greater amount of gender equality a country has, the lower the share of women in engineering and technology.
While I am not pleased by lower diversity in computing as a result of this, I cannot bring myself to condemn the fact that women are freer to choose careers even if the result is less women in CS.