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by bfe 5435 days ago
No we wouldn't need to try to balance genders in any given profession at the end of the day if everyone had completely equal opportunity at every stage of intellectual and educational and professional growth. But if you think we're anywhere near that point you are living in a self-serving shell and haven't educated yourself at all about this.
1 comments

But that's exactly what you're arguing:

> We could easily unleash almost twice as much human potential of the human race we are right now in coding, and engineering and science in general, if we go back and inspect all the hideous details and biases inhibiting girls and women from pursuing scientific and technical interests and positions of authority.

In other words, women are in a minority in this field, therefore someone must be oppressing them.

> But if you think we're anywhere near [the point of everyone having completely equal opportunity] you are living in a self-serving shell and haven't educated yourself at all about this.

I'm of the opinion that modern young men and women have equal enough opportunities in education and in the programming job market that a lack of opportunity probably is not a primary cause of the gender gap in computer science, any more than I think a lack of opportunity for men accounts for the predominance of women in education for example. You keep talking about discrimination but you still fail to provide any evidence; if you want us to believe there is a legitimate gender discrimination problem here, the burden of proof is on you to show that it actually exists. At the moment all you offer is hand-waving.

I guess default perception of burden of proof, prior to sufficient learning on the topic, has a lot to do with life experience, and I'm not going to spend my Saturday night looking up citations for someone who is wrong on the Internet, especially when they could easily find them themselves if they were actually interested, but I am certain if you are able to discuss it with woman friends who trust you, in any of a wide variety of professional fields, they will be able to tell you enough experiences they've had to, at the least, shift your perceived burden of proof.