[gaius]

I'm imagining a hypothetical News.YC frequented by primary school teachers, getting worked up every few days about that field's lack of men. Or nurses. Or librarians. Or maybe gender imbalances in certain professions are actually a complete non-issue?

[chrisyeh]

It may be that at teaching/nursing/library science conferences, there are presentations that feature images of Chippendales dancers and fireman calendars and are met with hoots of approval. If I were a man sitting in the audience at these hypothetical conferences, I'd feel pretty uncomfortable.

The fact that a field lacks gender balance isn't the point. The point is that whatever the field, people shouldn't be made to feel uncomfortable.

[antihero]

Perhaps the more women go into IT, the more jobs there will be for guys in nursing or teaching or whatever? :)

But on a more serious note, you cannot equate anti-male sexism with anti-female sexism, not yet, because one has a history of being both the oppressed gender and the exploited class, and the other just the exploited class.

[nl]

Gender imbalance isn't a problem on its own.

Behaviour that discriminates on the basis on gender is.