Comment by JCThoughtscream | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JCThoughtscream | Hacker News Reader

JCThoughtscream

In response to some of the comments made in this page, doesn't the very fact that some jobs seem more "natural" to one gender or another actually only serve to magnify the problem here?

Why are plumbers and programmers alike seen more as a male profession, and cosmetology a female one? There's no evolutionary basis for it - feats of strength and endurance kind of go out of the window when we're all utilizing tools to minimize the job's physical impact. Lawyers certainly aren't reliant on any gender-specific genetic traits to perform their job.

It seems as if most readers here seem to be missing the picture: much of these biases, and they are biases, are entirely cultural, not sex-specific. There is a /cultural/ problem with programming that causes the field to innately repel most potential female programmers.

Saying that there's some things women do and some thing men do, and never the two shall meet, isn't just an obsolete 1950s attitude - it's like a bunch of schoolchildren whining about cooties. Asserting that the field /shouldn't/ try and attract a more diverse workforce has all sorts of nasty underlying implications that I'm sure most of you don't mean. The tech industry isn't and shouldn't be a boys-only club - it should be an industry that prizes intelligence and capability above all other factors, especially gender.

Why are plumbers and programmers alike seen more as a male profession, and cosmetology a female one? There's no evolutionary basis for it

How do you know that? Male and female minds are certainly constructed differently, and appear to be interested in different things. Cosmetology, for instance: most girls and most women are fascinated by makeup, and the opportunities it provides to look marginally prettier. Men care much less... of course men don't wear makeup, but for the most part they don't even care much whether their women do. Just ask any man who has spent twenty minutes waiting for a woman to put on her face, only to find that she looks hardly different when she comes out from the bathroom than she did when she went in. (Protip: don't tell her this).

As for plumbing, well, I don't think anyone is really interested in plumbing, but men are much less deterred by the prospect of getting their hands dirty than women are.

Are these differences cultural? They might be, but there's pretty good reasons to think they're innate. It makes evolutionary sense for women to invest heavily in being good-looking and men to invest heavily in, y'know, accomplishing actual stuff.

>It makes evolutionary sense for women to invest heavily in being good-looking and men to invest heavily in, y'know, accomplishing actual stuff.

You really have no understanding of what housekeeping entailed before the washing machine, dryer, running water, the supermarket, etc. These were fundamentally hard tasks. Women had to get their hands dirty just as much, if not more than men. This historic role of women has disappeared because it is no longer an accomplishment to say "I did the laundry." The idea that a woman's ability to reproduce is a function of looks is a product of the past century, during which society's gender roles have not kept pace with the obsolescence of formerly 'feminine' tasks. All of the tasks once reserved for women due to their difficulty (and possibly innate ability) have become trivial tasks. As such the only thing that influences reproduction is looks.

At least, unless we can start using that wasted human power to, y'know, accomplish actual stuff.

In the conditions under which humans evolved I'm pretty sure there was no such thing as "doing the laundry. I do concede, though, that I was overly facetious in describing what men do as "actual stuff".

Still, men and women are under greatly different selection pressures. Men place a greater emphasis on appearance when choosing their mates, women place a greater emphasis on power and status.

Perhaps this is because traditionally-female skills are such that there's not a great deal of benefit in being especially good at them. A man gains a small benefit from having as a wife the best basket-weaver in the tribe, but a woman and her children gain a huge benefit from having as a husband the tribe's chief or its best hunter.

> I do concede, though, that I was overly facetious in describing what men do as "actual stuff".

1. It's not funny. 2. People actually believe that (even if you don't). 3. That's the problem!

> Just ask any man who has spent twenty minutes waiting for a woman to put on her face, only to find that she looks hardly different when she comes out from the bathroom than she did when she went in.

> It makes evolutionary sense for women to invest heavily in being good-looking

It seems like it would only make evolutionary sense if the males noticed the difference.

Some fields, plumbing, auto mechanic, HVAC, etc... tend to require significant physical strength which will naturally select toward men.

You say "tools to minimize the job's physical impact", but the reality is that when you're trying to loosen a corroded pipe fitting in a small space with a pipe wrench, you have to apply massive torque to a very small lever in a small space, when a lug nut is frozen beyond the ability of your impact wrench, it's time to get out the breaker bar and put your back into it, when you and your co-worker need to lift the furnace up onto the stand/base you need to lift several hundred pounds.

I've done all of those things, and there's countless times where if I wasn't 6'2" and pretty strong, there's no way I could have accomplished the task.

You are assuming that evolution/biology only affects physical traits and does not affect intellectual/personality traits. You provide no evidence for this.

Modern research into children's behaviours suggests that even completely exposed to both elements, generally, boys tend to be attracted to functions and objects, girls to personal interaction and representations thereof.

This is pretty evolutionary and to suggest that it doesn't play a role in the overall representation of the sexes in careers is choosing a conclusion before reviewing all the evidence at hand.

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