[rdtsc]

Not GP. But I have seen these kind of studies are often suggested:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

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We synthesized evidence from interest inventories over four decades and found large sex differences in vocational interests, with men preferring working with things and women preferring working with people.

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Engineering can be said to be involved with "things" and "med schools" with people?

Informally we could perhaps translate that to "Just because men like to sit in a cubicle all day and invert binary trees (a small pun on Google's hiring practices https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en) that everyone else, namely women, should enjoy doing same". I mean, they might and many do, but it is not an obvious thing like it is often presented and it should be discussed. Of course, we can then ask where do those interests come from and some will say because of how people are socialized and others will say because of hormones and other biological differences.

[mpweiher]

> Just because men like to sit in a cubicle all day and invert binary trees

Yes. Except that even most men don't want to do this. It's just that of the fairly small percentage of people overall that enjoy this, more are men than women.

I still do not understand why this is even (made into) an issue.

[rdtsc]

I don't either. It seems there are strong cultural components as well. At least it seems useful to continue talking about and studying.

[DanBC]

> still do not understand why this is even (made into) an issue

1) we don't know if it's true or not.

2) population level statistics are used to deny women jobs, so they're losing out on work and companies are losing out on best talent for a job.

[mpweiher]

> population level statistics are used to deny women jobs

I have never heard of this happening in tech. Can you elaborate?

I have seen population level statistics used to deny men jobs, not the other way around.