[f17]

Are women maltreated in technology? Yes. Capitalism is classist more than anything else and if you weren't born into generational wealth and connections, you're going to get fucked one way or another. Are women maltreated more than men? Eh, it's less clear, but the evidence on pay seems to suggest so. Still, I don't think that's all of why there's a dearth of women in technology. There are two really big factors that don't get a lot of volume behind them because they're politically incorrect (but keep in mind that I'm a leftist and mostly a feminist and I'm still saying this).

One: more women than men leave tech because they can. For every machine learning researcher getting paid $600k to be a basically a professor-in-residence, there are 250 losers doing Scrum. Whether you're a man or a woman, it's a horrible career; the bullshit and toxicity burn you out after 10 years. Men are socialized to believe that (a) making money is their main value both to society and to the people who will depend on them, and that (b) the market will treat them fairly because "meritocracy". We learn that (b) is false in early middle age, if not before, but can't really say it too loudly because we don't want to be tagged as bitter. It's a lot more socially acceptable for a woman to downshift her career to launch a small business than for a man. There's no intrinsic reason why it should be considered usual for men in heterosexual relationships to earn more than women, but emasculating and odd for the reverse to be the case, but you'd have to undo decades of socialization in billions of people to erase that prejudice. For now, it persists, and the common view is that a woman who leaves tech is brave for no longer putting up with the toxicity; a man who leaves tech is a wimp who couldn't hack it.

Two: smart women are more likely to go into medicine, law, and general management. Why? Look-ahead. A 22-year-old heterosexual woman has dated--or at least has friends who have dated--a few 25-year-old men, and maybe one or two in their early 30s. They see where the various paths lead. They see where most techies end up by age 30, and it ain't pretty... and they realize they don't want to go there. because they're smart. The 32-year-old doctor might still have a tough life--insurance companies are the pits, and residents don't make a lot of money--but at least he doesn't have to interview for his own fucking job every morning or deal with user stories and product managers.

[bradlys]

Just to be clear - the pay gap mostly disappears once you control for field, position, and experience. Women aren’t getting paid substantially less for the same job while having the same credentials. Also - even in fields like medicine… there’s a reason surgeons are overwhelmingly male. Women don’t want to keep doing training and intense hours during their final years of being able to have a kid. Whereas men will plough through and do it anyway. (Mainly because they have no other choice - men would choose otherwise if women would let them)

Women end up choosing a lot of lower paid fields whereas men choose higher paid ones. You can makeup whatever reasons you want for that but that’s just facts - and that’s what the “pay gap” is from.

[f17]

> Just to be clear - the pay gap mostly disappears once you control for field, position, and experience.

That doesn't mean anything, because controlling for position means you're factoring out huge disparities--although I will not argue that they necessarily benefit men over women; it is more complex than that--in terms of how performance is evaluated, who gets promoted, and who is offered opportunities for high-quality work experience.

The problem in today's corporate America isn't that people deliberately offer better opportunities and favorable treatment to preferred racial or gender categories (although sometimes they do) but that all this happens subconsciously the whole system is set up so that only a small set of people (the generationally well-connected) have a serious chance of getting a fair shake. The system simultaneously has 85% of its decision makers believing they are executing a meritocracy while, in fact, working to drive predetermined and usually anti-meritocratic results.

> Whereas men will plough through and do it anyway. (Mainly because they have no other choice - men would choose otherwise if women would let them)

Sadly, those men who bear down and suffer because women won't "let them" choose other careers are going to end up ill-treated no matter what they do. The winning strategy for them would be to go overseas, but that's another topic.

[bradlys]

You're trying to argue that pay gap exists due to societal issues which push women into lower paying professions. I'm not arguing against that. I'm saying that men and women who push against norms will not experience a pay gap.

The pay gap mostly does not exist if you're willing to go against societal norms - e.g. women should be nurses, men should be surgeons, etc. If you are willing to break societal norms - there is no pay gap.

Which is not something the media is publicizing because it doesn't fit well within our identity politics bullshit.

[drewcoo]

> smart women are more likely to go into medicine, law, and general management

Smart men are more likely to seek more lucrative fields, too.

Software is sort of a second tier profession. We're constantly trying to dumb things down to the point that we can fill all the open positions with human livestock. At least since COVID, most of us don't have to work in bullpens anymore.

[f17]

You're absolutely right, of course. I only note this: smart men are likely to seek more lucrative fields if they're informed about the actual odds. Having a high IQ doesn't mean all that much if you haven't got data.

Software plays on male quixotry, yes, but it's able to do so because the average 22-year-old man has friends of the same age group and has never dated anyone older than 22 (because, honestly, he can't... he has nothing to offer women 25+ and they aren't interested). Women, who usually have dated (or at least have friends who have dated) men in their late 20s and possibly 30s, are exposed to high-quality information about which careers actually deliver on their promises; men are not. Men might get advice from their parents, but that's going to be 30 years out of date, in a country where the career game has gone from Easy Mode to Psychopath Mode in a generation.

[rustybelt]

Great post, I will push back on this point though:

“There's no intrinsic reason why it should be considered usual for men in heterosexual relationships to earn more than women, but emasculating and odd for the reverse to be the case”

I think there is an intrinsic reason for this. Women choose partners, at least in part, based on their ability to provide resources. This makes higher earning men more attractive even too high earning women.

[f17]

I don't think it's intrinsic that (as you said) "Women choose partners, at least in part, based on their ability to provide resources." A hundred years ago, it was considered intrinsic that men were innately violent and needed experience with deadly conflict (hence, each generation "deserving" to "get" a war) or they would rot. We really know very little about what is intrinsic in us; we do, however, know that in the real world we have to deal with generations of toxic socialization.