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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

The reason women dominate in certain fields is that those fields were generally seen as less important, so women were pushed into them. E.g., doctors were men, women were nurses, and there was an enormous pay and prestige difference between the two. (Hint: it did not favor the nurses.)

If you're interested in learning more, researching "pink ghetto" will get you started.

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Its actually the other way around. Men face more pressure to earn a higher income than women, so more men enter higher paying careers.

1. Women prefer to marry a guy who makes more money than her. So there is significant sexual pressure to become a high status ($) man.

2. Men (statistically) can't marry up large income gaps. So they know that what ever lifestyle they want, they have to be solely responsible for it.

Women on the other hand have more freedom to do what they desire since men care far less about their partners income, and women have the economic security of being able to marry a higher income partner.

Men also end up working in far more dangerous jobs, which pay more. The gap in workplace accidents and deaths affecting men vs women is staggering. Over 90% of workplace deaths are men.

"Men face more pressure to earn a higher income than women, so more men enter higher paying careers."

Citation?

That sounds good, but, it's mainly retrograde sexist bunk. It also ignores the long history of women fighting for access to those professions and being actively denied.

Which you presumably know as well, which is why you created a new, anonymous account rather than owning your words.

That is a theory that can explain some fields. However, so many exceptions exist that it can't be the whole story. For example, women dominate

* Clinical psychology

* Veterinary medicine

* Biology

All of which are important, fulfilling, well-paying fields. In all of them it's hard to say women were "pushed" there, rather women were very interested in them, and arrived in larger numbers than men.

I don't recall saying it was the whole story. It's a big world. I'm just telling the "OMG discrimination" guy that it's important to understand the history.

But if you'd like to claim those as important exceptions, you'd have to show that those fields are important and well-paying relative to other options available to those women.

This is a little weird comment to me. I have lots of friends who are nurses that make 90k and higher on the east cost, and have way more prestige,class, respect from other people than me a software engineer.

Ok?

I am not denying that, but I'm not seeing how it's connected to me telling the "OMG helping women is sexism" guy that there's a history here that he should pay attention to.

In particular, the historical comparator to nurses isn't software engineers, it's doctors. Take a look at the gender distribution of medical school graduates:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/SwyK7qFvLaI/AAAAAAAAL_...

You can see it take off with Title IX, which banned outright institutional discrimination by gender.

A lot of women with interest in and talent for medicine who wanted to become doctors instead became nurses, which fed that historical imbalance. We've fixed the schooling, but we're still working on the outcome; the gender distribution of doctors is still not great: 66% male in the US.

So when this guy whines that there are no organizations helping men become nurses, my reply is that the reason women have historically dominated that field is not anti-male barriers to dudes who really want to be nurses, but previous anti-female barriers in the higher-status profession of doctors (and other things they could have done).

Why do we have to work on the equality of outcome ? Isn't equality of opportunity enough ?

My friends who are nurses wanted to be nurses, they didn't want to go medical school. They didn't want to wait to make money until their 30's, they considered career paths in relation to having a family. As long as they had the option, I don't see why forcing outcome is important here.

As for helping men into nursing, if diversity is good in one field its probably helpful in another. Men might want a male nurse who can emphasize with male concerns. Being a woman, I'm just taking guesses here, like prostate issues, balding, infertility, and whatever else.

Maybe we should help men get into fields like nursing and teaching. So boys and girls both have role models in lots of fields.

I get the historical context, but I don't think forcing an over reaction in the other direction is better. I think we all benefit from choices and freedom.

We don't have to force an equality of outcome. But it behooves us to be suspicious when the outcomes aren't equal. For centuries we had unequal outcomes in terms of doctor gender; one defense was "women don't want to be doctors". But when we finally removed the barriers, we see medical school admissions run about equal.

I'm all for men going into nursing. You can work on shifting that ratio if you like. But I'm not personally going to work on that because I don't think it is a result of oppression in the same way that keeping women out of medicine was.

I'm also fine with a little bit of what looks like overreaction in the moment, because that's how we find out where the balance is. People thought Title IX was an overreaction at the time, too.

Two wrongs don't make a right. All throughout history rich men AND WOMEN of all races, colors and creed tortured the poor.

The real issue isn't color, or gender. Its Class.

I disagree with your notion that in all the world there is only one real issue.

well that's fair.

but why do you think the over reaction is ok, which punishes innocent people not the people who created the system.

again two wrongs don't make a right, all it does is continue a negative cycle.

The people who created the system are dead. But the people who benefit from the broken system are still alive. (I am one of them.) And pushing the system toward fairness is not actually punishing them.

Loss of privilege feels is definitely experienced as loss, so I can see why people would see it as punishment. Note all the rich people who cry rivers over having to pay their fair share or taxes. But reducing injustice is not punishment.

Two wrongs don't make a right. But allowing a harmful system to persevere is what continues the negative cycle.

I struggle to make a living,and I am a human being too. just because you made it doesn't mean we all have that middle upper class male privilege. The harmful system is not pursuing equality the right way. As you phrase you views, I have Less sympathy to help women because its clear this is not about equality,and I know I'm not the only one.

What I am after is equality. I just think to do that we have to acknowledge the historical situation in which a lot of the inequality is rooted. (And I'll note that I didn't have "upper class privilege", just white and male privilege.)

If you decline to have sympathy for other downtrodden people, I believe that's your problem, and I don't think blaming me will help.

80% of people working in PR are women. Is that a pink ghetto as well?

And PR is not very well paid.

Definitely.

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