There's a notion of "Prestige" in language (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_(sociolinguistics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_(sociolinguistic

There's a notion of "Prestige" in language (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_(sociolinguistics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_(sociolinguistics) ). So, languages and dialects have some sort of (nebulously defined) level of prestige relative to any particular population, and the prestige of a particular language/dialect is one of those factors for a bunch of cultural phenomena, such as where and whether it's appropriate to use a particular language/dialect in a particular social setting, and whether a language is taught to children, etc, etc, etc. Anyway, point being, prestige is also one of those things you see in careers too. It may be that there aren't more men banging down the doors to get into dietetics and nursing because those jobs aren't perceived to be as prestigious as being a doctor. People aspire to being the President of the United States, or a doctor, or lawyer or whatever. They don't aspire to being middle management, or nursing home attendants, or city clerks. (p.s. I think that gender imbalance in any field is questionable/problematic. But on a pragmatic basis there's actual material harm when all of the prestigious and high earning fields are particularly biased.)