> I think the fact that sexism reduces the desire of women to participate in something is established. Nope, I can send you videos from several hip-hop concert

> I think the fact that sexism reduces the desire of women to participate in something is established. Nope, I can send you videos from several hip-hop concerts that strongly contradict this statement. I wouldn't though, because that would be an isolated example, taken out of context. I would, however, like to see if, for example – there are other fields which in which women participate a lot despite them being more sexist. 'yummyfajitas mentioned some examples and it would be interesting to ask people in them, "What makes you go into this field despite it having an atmosphere that we in the tech field might describe as being sexist?", and learn something from them. As people who would preferably like to see carefully constructed arguments starting from first principles, statements like "oh, of course, something is established, so someone who is questioning the statement has an axe to grind" give off a petulant, uncompromising vibe, and should, in my opinion, be avoided. Broadening our horizons a bit as to how people behave in different circumstances might give us some new insights into increasing female participation in tech. > Most people are socially aware enough to understand that 'sexism doesn't repel women' is a poor null hypothesis I would like to replace "most people" here with "people in cynicalkane's particular socio-economic milieu". Again, this takes the form of "It is obvious that...", and should be avoided if we want a nuanced, carefully discussed argument about the fairly broad umbrella of sexism.