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Is it possible that women may be exercising their free will by choosing to go into fields like medicine and law not into fields like computer science, simply be
by mtdewcmu 12y ago
Is it possible that women may be exercising their free will by choosing to go into fields like medicine and law not into fields like computer science, simply because more women prefer the former over the latter? It's apparently impossible to prove this, because the fact of women expressing a dislike for CS and not choosing to major in it is assumed to be problematic on the face and self-evident proof of bias and discrimination. It's a bad idea to even openly suggest the possibility. But consider, as a thought experiment, what the world might look like if there truly existed a preference among women for some school subjects and against certain other subjects, among them CS. It would probably look a lot like the world we are in. Now consider whether it's implausible that a difference in subject preferences could exist between men and women. It doesn't seem all that implausible to me. If my statistics are up to date, women are now attending college at a slightly higher rate than men. Since women make up a huge presence on college campuses, you might expect that if large numbers of women were interested in CS, but faced bias, there would be more of a grass-roots movement to bring attention to the subject. But, instead, the interest seems to be coming from researchers looking at statistics, not students with personal stories of discrimination. To me, the fact that women have entered equally-prestigious fields like biology and medicine with great success is evidence against the idea that women are being relegated to study less challenging subjects and settle for careers that are not intellectually demanding. I am skeptical that the lack of a 50/50 split between men and women in some technical subjects is evidence of a problem that needs a solution.