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by adjkant
3176 days ago
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This is obviously a huge can of worms being opened up here by the topic itself, but to keep it short and general, here are a few considerations, by no means exhaustive: 1. Are there cultural factors and discrimination preventing men from being nurses or women from garbage/construction like there are in tech? 2. Say there should be an aim for other thing X - whichever leads to more equality in power (aka is currently a big inequality of power) should be a focus, yes? Do women have less power because they are not garbage collectors? I think the answer is no. Tech is focused on because of the reasons for the imbalance, and the resulting unjust power imbalance. |
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I think we need to be clear on what we mean by "cultural factors." When I told my father that I wasn't going to pursue a career as a tenure-track physics professor at a research lab he was clearly and obviously disappointed, and was always apologetic about me and let me know he had 'covered for me' when talking about me to his peers. I'm simply not smart enough to have done that without being completely consumed by it.
I would call that a cultural bias. Do women suffer that same cultural bias? I don't have sisters so I don't know.
I do know that the doors have been opened for women in sci/tech since the early 1980s, if not before. Nobody has been trying to keep them out. The ones I know who didn't pursue it got out because it wasn't a lifestyle they wanted. When it comes to misogyny, harassment, and all of the other factors that can get in the way of outstanding females, we see nearly every day that this happens in other fields too- even Hollywood (thinking Weinstein 2017-Oct-08 for future eyes). That doesn't seem to keep females out of the field, because they want to do that work.
I wonder how much of the dearth of women in tech is because women actually feel like they have more options than the men do. One of the most brilliant women I knew (as a graduate student) was also Victoria-secret-model attractive. She said to me while in her Ph.D. (physics) program: "I'm too smart for this."