[squirrelicus]

It's not clear what it's evidence of. At the very least, it's part of a very large, universal, and systemic body of societal evidence that

(1) Women and men tend to (when considering large numbers) choose different professions when they are choosing freely for themselves

(2) The more egalitarian and socially inclusive a society is, the more the differences between women and men are exaggerated, especially in career choices.

I want women and men to choose occupations that are easy for them to find long term meaning in. I don't want my girls choosing STEM because they feel like they're less-than if they don't.

Here's a reductio ad absurdum: is it a diversity and inclusion problem that there are almost no female bering sea crab fisherwomen or oil rig workers? Men are more willing to choose more lethal professions, it's part of what our hormones tell us to do.

[rhacker]

However, and this is where things get interesting, but as we equalize genders more, the stereotypes DO break down. Girls at a young age play with tonka trucks (if those even exist still). And start wearing pants. More people are gay, but also more people are doing jobs that they would have rather done. The sex we see in porn stops objectifying women, perhaps men instead even.

I definitely see more women in construction, more men in nursing, and definitely in non-Western countries women in software development.

[squirrelicus]

Yeah the data contradict your assertions about career choices. I don't want "I definitely see"s. Data is not the plural of anecdote.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/02/does-gender-equality-...

EDIT: To be clear, I wish you were right. I want you to be right. But you're just not, and it's slightly tragic, but mostly the data should cause us to reorient ourselves around how we interpret the data, because the social constructionists' theories are just wrong.

[rhacker]

I just realized what you might have been reacting to in my last sentence. It should have been "I definitely see.... than about 10 years ago" or something to that effect. I didn't mean there are more women in construction - stop. Sorry about that.

Personally witnessed a few extremely technical women (one of them an ex boss) who, in general could hold up a CS or specific data flow discussion with me that I came up with. She would be on the same page in less than a minute. No other male employee I have ever been in company was able to do what she did (you'd have to have met her). She was from China originally, is a very active CTO in a SV company. She has women friends in similar situations. I'm not saying that you have to be chinese, but the evidence of they way we bring up women in western societies is a much much stronger determiner of personal preferences than "hormones LOL". (And not that China doesn't have other problems either)

[squirrelicus]

> they way we bring up women in western societies is a much much stronger determiner of personal preferences

That's what I'm saying the data explicitly disproves.

Look, this might come as a shock, but let me lay out what everyone on both sides of this argument believes: Everyone who chooses the profession and performs well should be included. The contention is whether their genetics should matter, and those who reject the assertion that there's an inclusion problem answer "no".

Here's a more direct point: the fact that women tend not to choose STEM tells you nothing about each individual woman. The mere fact that someone got the job is explicit evidence that they're probably just as capable as everyone else that got the job. Membership in a social class as defined by the progressive left is just... meaningless. As it should be. #MLK

[kcmastrpc]

We can't compare high-risk jobs with IT, for obvious reasons. I'm merely suggesting a correlation between the proliferation of alcohol in our industry, the parties, the trade shows, with the prevalence of young white males in our line of work.

I merely found data which loosely supports (and you could successfully argue that it has no correlation) my hypothesis.

[squirrelicus]

It's not clear what the obvious reasons are.

There's a very large body of universal, systemic evidence that women are (in large numbers) more interested in people than things, and vice versa for males. IT is a very thing-oriented industry. When women choose not to do IT freely of their own preferences, we should not react by suggesting that men are the problem.