[kubrickslair]

This article is pretty relevant, whatever side you are on, it's worth a read.

My fundamentalism is better than your fundamentalism http://blog.fawny.org/2010/07/28/stubbornella/

Bear in mind that the author is not a computer scientist, and views narrow-minded geekery with some distaste. But he raises quite a few interesting points. I quote:

>“Underrepresentation” is an insulting concept. Who exactly gets to decide how many women should hold down jobs in a certain field? Who then gets to decide when too few women hold down those jobs? In short, who says women are underrepresented in technology? Who sets the quota? I don’t exactly hear complaints that men are underrepresented in kindergarten teaching and nursing. (Actually, there are men in nursing, but many of them are gay. So are lots of male teachers. Perhaps that explains why this is a topic women’s advocates do not want to discuss.)

>“Merit” is a misnomer. Hence “women[’s] being unable to compete on merit” means nothing. But the airy dismissal of merit as a real issue incurs collateral damage. There isn’t any dispute that typical female brains differ from typical male brains, though the extent of the differences is disputed. Susan Pinker, in The Sexual Paradox, characterizes the differences as significant, while Lise Eliot, in Pink Brain, Blue Brain, argues that within-sex differences dwarf between-sex differences.