[tuesdayrain]

>Can someone explain this in logical, non-political, terms.

Probably not, because it's ultimately a political phenomenon. In left-leaning circles it's popular to deny that there can be significant statistical differences between demographics for any reason other than discrimination. Based on that logic they view all unequal gender ratios as problems that need to be solved.

[Godel_unicode]

This is does not quite fit the general "left-leaning" belief that I have heard.

I would rephrase it as "it's popular to deny that there's an underlying preference at play when jobs which used to be female dominated, like programming, became male dominated shortly after they became lucrative."

Bringing it back to the subject of the article, this entire discussion is really about tribalism. Humans tend to look favorably on their group and askance at other groups. Where people get into trouble with this is assuming you know from the outside what groups someone thinks they belong to (e.g. do you see yourself as a man who happens to be a programmer or a programmer who happens to be a man).

[throwaway894345]

I've heard a lot of people argue that women and men would have identical preferences, and their different preferences are entirely attributable to differences in socialization from a young age.

As for the "jobs became male dominated when they became lucrative" observation, it seems like very weak evidence for discrimination. If I were a betting man, I would guess that as the field became lucrative, the number of jobs in the field rapidly outpaced the supply of qualified women (how many women were literate in math or programming in a time when it wasn't common for women to go to college at all).

Moreover, women achieved parity with men in fields like medicine and law in the 80s and 90s when discrimination and harassment were pervasive, explicit, and severe by today's standards. What's going on in tech today that only 20% of our workforce is female despite many, considerable advantages:

* Explicit sexual discrimination and harassment have been illegal and taboo for decades

* The overwhelming majority of US tech jobs have been concentrated in the most ideologically progressive counties for decades (one would expect lower levels of harassment and discrimination in these places)

* Every sizable tech company has a dedicated DEI department and quarterly DEI seminars

* Most tech companies have diversity hiring and retention targets

And not only that, but there appears to be a pronounced inverse correlation between gender equality in a society and the careers that women select into. In other words, the societies in which women are the most free are often the societies that have the least even gender/job distributions and vice versa.

All of this is to say that your perception of "left leaning beliefs" is hardly better than the parent's.

[lodi]

> ... when jobs which used to be female dominated, like programming, became male dominated shortly after they became lucrative.

Programming was never female dominated. What we call "programmer" now (writing algorithms to compute artillery trajectories or whatever) would have just been "scientist" back then. "Coder" (and before that, human "computer") were indeed female-dominated positions but there's no analog to that in the modern world; we've completely replaced those jobs with assemblers/compilers and electronic calculators respectively.

[tuesdayrain]

This is what I was referring to: https://twitter.com/clairlemon/status/1195528833157386240

I feel like my interpretation of that quote is fairly accurate.

[vineyardmike]

> a political phenomenon... In left-leaning circle

its a political phenomenon if you make it about left/right. There is evidence of discrimination society wide. That doesn't have to be political.

Discrimination is wrong and can be fixed.

In left-leaning circles, people accept that there is discrimination, regardless of other reasons.

In right-leaning circles, people deny that they or others have done anything wrong, and don't solve real issues encountered.

Source: There are lots of accounts of people being discriminated against in hiring or professional opportunities.