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by BurningFrog 2438 days ago
My programming demographic experience has been 80/20, FWIW.

Yeah, the smartest women go into medicine and law instead of programming. I claim it's largely because they find working with people more interesting than working with machines.

Your daughters being interested in "traditionally female" things might just be because they're female, and that is who they genuinely are.

2 comments

FWIW, in her debate with Steven Pinker, Elizabeth Spelke shreds the incorrect argument that females have more interest in people and males have more interest in things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hb3oe7-PJ8

Please think carefully about what happens if your claim turns out to be wrong. If males and females turn out to have equal interest in people and things, then your argument that you're spreading here is unintentionally a cultural gender based bias, in effect unconscious sexism.

> I claim it's largely because they find working with people more interesting than working with machines.

Well two in particular went into pathology and radiology, so its definitely not the social aspect (they don't regularly deal with patients). Also, what do you claim of the equal number of men who go into law and medicine?

> Your daughters being interested in "traditionally female" things might just be because they're female,

They aren't interested in much of anything yet -- they are 6 months and 2 years old.

Women are now a small but growing majority of both law and medical students:

https://www.enjuris.com/students/law-school-female-enrollmen... https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/12/19/women-a...

Breaking down the medical fields by gender distribution also follows expected patterns:

https://www.ama-assn.org/residents-students/specialty-profil...

I'm not saying these facts proves anything in particular, but they're good to be aware of.