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> Why is "women enjoy things other than technology" not a plausible theory? Because it doesn’t explain anything, stopping at that conclusion. It’s just “it is

> Why is "women enjoy things other than technology" not a plausible theory? Because it doesn’t explain anything, stopping at that conclusion. It’s just “it is the way it is” sort of argument. When you quote the statistics you are simply looking in the wrong direction. Thanks to anti-discrimination laws and affirmative action problem in recruiting isn’t that big as before. It was the most obvious and the easiest to fix. Imagine a thought experiment: a group of people since childhood is taught that cats are better for them than dogs. They learn to love cats and stay away from dogs which are “for others”. In adulthood they are presented the opportunity to own a dog. There exist dog lover meetups and you can even get a puppy for free. How many people from that group will try to have a dog? Not many probably, because they just enjoy cats more. This is what happens with gender inequality. Girls get dolls and join cheerleading teams. Social pressure requires them to learn about makeup and fashion, to socialize and to participate in housekeeping. Popular culture maintains stereotypes, social media define the acceptable behavior and punish those who don’t fit. Same happens to boys, of course. Not everyone who is subject to such pressure can grow as a person able to make a free choice. If we deprive children of the free choice, what is it if not gender discrimination? And then there exists also drop-off possibility. Just today I learned about yet another case of harassment on the workplace in some big company. The victim complained to her manager about the behavior of their D-level superior but nothing happened, despite all the laws etc. Many women are subject to this regularly. How many of them will remain in the workforce for long despite such experience? How many will get promoted if they complain about such things? #metoo was a good start, but we are far from workplace being fixed. This naturally reduces the share of women on senior and management positions. (Edit) necessary note: please do not expect me to explain it in full detail and with references. It is a huge topic, there exist books and numerous resources about it. I won’t be able to cover everything I know from learning or personal experience in a comment. Do your own research and try to dig deeper.

Manuel_D 2y ago
It looks like you agree with the notion that it's not discrimination leading to lower representation of women in tech, but rather that women choose not to enter tech fields? If so, then nothing you're writing here contradicts my previous comment. If you think that some cultural factors are causing women not to choose to enter technology, that's a separate claim from discrimination happening within the tech field. Go ahead and abolish cheerleading if you think that's going to increase women's representation in software above 20%. But until that happens, we're going to see most companies hiring female developers at a rate of about 20%. > This is what happens with gender inequality. Girls get dolls and join cheerleading teams. Social pressure requires them to learn about makeup and fashion, to socialize and to participate in housekeeping. Popular culture maintains stereotypes, social media define the acceptable behavior and punish those who don’t fit. Same happens to boys, of course. Not everyone who is subject to such pressure can grow as a person able to make a free choice. If we deprive children of the free choice, what is it if not gender discrimination? (Emphasis mine). It's preferences. Girls get dolls because they play with dolls way more than trucks, and parents buy toys accordingly. Companies do indeed try to build and market trucks and mechanical toys to girls, and dolls to boys but those efforts aren't very fruitful. Social norms are emergent behavior from innate preferences. It's not society pressuring girls to play with dolls. It's girls exerting their own preferences, and society reacting to those preferences. You can't just assume that it's the preferences that are downstream from society and not the other way around. Furthermore, we can test your hypothesis that it's society creating preferences. If disparities in behavior were not innate, then children raised in carefully-curated environments to avoid any hints of gender roles should produce boys and girls with the same distribution of interests. But experiments to achieve this fail: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/swedish-preschools-disrupt-traditional-gender-roles/ https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/swedish-preschools... Again: the assumption that any differences in behavior between the genders is due to discrimination or social pressure isn't the antidote to gender-essentialism. It's just a different flavor of gender-essentialism.

Manuel_D 2y ago

It looks like you agree with the notion that it's not discrimination leading to lower representation of women in tech, but rather that women choose not to enter tech fields? If so, then nothing you're writing here contradicts my previous comment. If you think that some cultural factors are causing women not to choose to enter technology, that's a separate claim from discrimination happening within the tech field. Go ahead and abolish cheerleading if you think that's going to increase women's representation in software above 20%. But until that happens, we're going to see most companies hiring female developers at a rate of about 20%. > This is what happens with gender inequality. Girls get dolls and join cheerleading teams. Social pressure requires them to learn about makeup and fashion, to socialize and to participate in housekeeping. Popular culture maintains stereotypes, social media define the acceptable behavior and punish those who don’t fit. Same happens to boys, of course. Not everyone who is subject to such pressure can grow as a person able to make a free choice. If we deprive children of the free choice, what is it if not gender discrimination? (Emphasis mine). It's preferences. Girls get dolls because they play with dolls way more than trucks, and parents buy toys accordingly. Companies do indeed try to build and market trucks and mechanical toys to girls, and dolls to boys but those efforts aren't very fruitful. Social norms are emergent behavior from innate preferences. It's not society pressuring girls to play with dolls. It's girls exerting their own preferences, and society reacting to those preferences. You can't just assume that it's the preferences that are downstream from society and not the other way around. Furthermore, we can test your hypothesis that it's society creating preferences. If disparities in behavior were not innate, then children raised in carefully-curated environments to avoid any hints of gender roles should produce boys and girls with the same distribution of interests. But experiments to achieve this fail: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/swedish-preschools-disrupt-traditional-gender-roles/ https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/swedish-preschools... Again: the assumption that any differences in behavior between the genders is due to discrimination or social pressure isn't the antidote to gender-essentialism. It's just a different flavor of gender-essentialism.