[tudelo]

Why can't it be a combination of both, ignoring compensation? Why can't one sex have a higher propensity towards a profession than the other, independent of compensation? It seems to me that it is a complex issue that has a lot more factors than simply discrimination.

[cdmcmahon]

I suppose it can be. The natural follow up is what you think it is about, say, engineering or law or finance or [insert field here] that men have a higher propensity toward? And why is it that nearly all of the most lucrative and powerful fields are the ones that men have a higher propensity towards? Trying to answer these gets prett hairy (and depending on your answers, very revealing about yourself) if you are trying to minimize the role of discrimination.

[tudelo]

Maybe men and women are not driven to accomplish the same goals. For example, take a look at the StackOverflow developer survey. There is certainly a difference in what men consider valuable for a job and what women consider valuable given that specific data point. I don't wish to make broad assumptions about every man or every woman. I also don't think to point out these things has much to do with discrimination. Men and women have been evolving for a lot longer than men and women have been working in desks next to each other... it's no simple feat to coexist when the rules of the game are not clear. I think it only gets hairy if you don't fundamentally think there is a difference between a man and a woman, really the rest follows axiomatically.