[tptacek]

A few years ago when this came up, we pulled up the stats for gender parity in all the different STEM fields. Physics, engineering, and CS were the only ones where there was clearly apparent pressure against female participation. Everyone who's ever been to both an academic cryptography conference and an academic CS conference has probably noticed this: there are way more women in cryptography than computer science in general, because cryptography pulls in mathematicians.

People have all sorts of just-so explanations for why this should be; boys are more interested in manipulating physical objects, or more interested in building things. But none of it holds up when you compare across all the fields; moreover, 40 years ago you could be making the same sorts of just-so stories up about law or medicine.

[philodeon]

“Veterinary medicine has been predominantly female in the US since 2009. That trend is continuing, with 87.3% of current veterinary school applicants identifying as female, as well as 88% of veterinary technicians.”

(Source: aaha.org)

Given that the gender imbalance in physics/engineering/CS is always blamed on men pressuring women against participating, one wonders, what kind of monstrous women are gatekeeping the veterinary field, and what kind of harassment are they inflicting on men who try to participate?

[tptacek]

If you want to make the argument that there are structure impediments to men becoming vets, I'm receptive.

[sealeck]

This is really strange reasoning: "people claim that in field X, group Y doesn't enter for reason Z. Therefore if in field A group B isn't entering it MUST be for reason Z, and couldn't possibly be for another reason".

[philodeon]

The actual logical problem I was pointing out was in tptacek’s implied argument that “if a field is 80+% one gender, the only possible explanation is that the dominant gender is gatekeeping the minority gender”.

[jqwizard]

That kind of gets to what I was trying to say, though. The 'just-so' story I hear often is that men in STEM fields are incredibly sexist and this is just how it is and certain policies are the only way to fix it. I'm willing to accept that might be true but I would like to know why.

I don't really buy the "computers were marketed towards men" argument that was mentioned a few child comments down. I also don't really buy into the idea that men are just inherently sexist and women aren't, especially since I've heard both mysogynist and mysandrist comments from women in my workplace...

Why are fields like law, medicine, and mathematics more receptive to women?

[johnnyanmac]

40 years ago, the personal computer was marketed at boys. That's just a type of marketing we are still trying to correct over 2 generations later.

And that's how we should treat it. It's too later to get people interested in engineering in college. you need to start 5 years earlier minimum. Ideally 10 years earlier.

[sabbaticaldev]

nobody marketed personal computer to me 25 years ago. but my interest in hacking it was so much bigger than my sisters I became a programmer. Changing that isn’t a matter of correction. You need to actively remove boys that are more interested which not yield the best results

[johnnyanmac]

>but my interest in hacking it was so much bigger than my sisters I became a programm

That's a whole generation off the ads of the 80's that was selling this as a toy for boys. The bulk of that marketing was already culturally set by the new millennium.

And you may have missed the 90's marketing too. If you watched Hackers (1995) or any other media featuring "nerds" with computers in that decade and weren't at least turned off, the marketing worked. Because you chose to go through and it likely portrayed hacking as an undesirable male hobby for women.

> Changing that isn’t a matter of correction. You need to actively remove boys that are more interested which not yield the best results

You underestimate the power of marketing. Going from barely any women in the 2000s to 20% in the next decade (half a generation) is herculean effort. That doesn't happen naturally.

[loeg]

One of the main characters in Hackers was a woman and she was portrayed as the best, or among the best. Not sure how this supports your argument.

[Jensson]

> moreover, 40 years ago you could be making the same sorts of just-so stories up about law or medicine.

No you couldn't as women were barred from those fields pretty recently then. No women working today has been barred from physics or engineering, the situation is not the same.