[famouswaffles]

>Previous commenter mentioned career choices, not biological programming and certainly not anything about anyone being ill suited for a job. Men and women in aggregate often have different career preferences - is that controversial?

The OP commenter seemed to be implying that Men and Women have natural career choices because even countries with long histories of "gender equality" see women and men aggregate in different careers.

The real reasons for much of these discrepancies, legal and social pressures/conditioning (If a father won't buy his daughter(s) computers to tinker with at a young age like he might his sons, how much less interest do you imagine daughters would have in CS?) are not natural.

[nostromo]

Yours is a well-meaning, but ultimately insulting view. You argue that women don’t know what they really want, and only make choices due to “social conditioning.” You also center everything back on the decisions of men, claiming that the father needs to be buying computers for his daughters.

It’s a pretty insulting view of women that eliminates female agency. Instead I think we should let women make their own decisions. If they sometimes differ in aggregate than men’s, that’s ok.

(And it should go without saying that all genders should feel welcome in all careers. That’s a different topic entirely.)

[famouswaffles]

I don't think there's anything insulting about it and the bit with the father is just an example. Women can also enforce this conditioning on both boys and girls.

If a father is buying computers for his son then he damn well should buy for his daughters as well. You don't get to do anything else and go Pikachu face when she isn't as interested in those things.

Interest isn't magic. It's not spawned from the ether. Who you are today is in extremely large part, a result of what you have experienced right from childhood. Your upbringing especially will influence you for the rest of your life. You're not special. Neither am I. How much agency do you think children have or can have ?

The point is that gender equality or equality of any kind doesn't end with, "Oh it's law that women can do this now"- That's just Step 1. It's never that simple. Many countries still deal with blatant sexism and racism to this day.

Many women enter university to pursue STEM, get a degree, start work and ultimately exit the STEM workforce because the workplace is too toxic with coworkers that won't give them due respect and enormous uphill battle for career mobility.

These are the people with the interest, with the intelligence, with the competence. What do you think these women have to say? How do you think the resulting enthusiasm(or rather, lack thereof) affects the future generation of women?