>>you'd have to want to be the only woman in a steel mill I guess that's the question being asked here. Why would that one woman be the only woman in the steel

>>you'd have to want to be the only woman in a steel mill I guess that's the question being asked here. Why would that one woman be the only woman in the steel mill. Why aren't thousands of women rushing to work at steel mills, or in war fronts, or in coal mines, or in any other stereotypical male dominated jobs. And you can't even blame this on some modern world conspiracy. These things have been true throughout history across times and cultures. The answer to that question is simple. Women are under represented but they are definitely far more cleverer than men. Once you prove you are likely to die from cave ins or lung disease in a mine, or that you are almost assured to get killed in a war, that fact now begins to itself act as a filter as to who wishes to sign up and who doesn't. You have to be stupid and brave beyond belief, to sign up for this kind of stuff. But then what happens is those people who fight wars, eventually dictate politics and positions of power. This ain't exactly a grand conspiracy. But millions of men have to die in battles for a few to be in power and become Generals/Rulers. So the process is largely self sustaining. You can chose to break this, then eventually you face a stronger army and get eliminated. This is where problems in software show up too. For years we have talked about open source work being unpaid labor. Now which intelligent person man or woman would sign up for this? So now you see if there is no gate keeping, no criteria apart from plain merit, ability to work and contribute code. Then the biggest bottleneck is you yourself. The fact that awkward nerds dominate this area is because you have to be that crazy and stupid enough to work for free building things for others. Eventually some crazy nerds will indeed write Linux or Perl or Emacs. Again its not exactly conspiracy. But it's a kind of brutal filter. In a way men are stupid, but that kind of stupidity leads to a better positions on the very long term, because last ones standing hold positions of power over whatever is left. But in the process millions of men have to suffer in wars, refugee zones, mines and highway labor to make it happen.