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Comment by nnfy | Hacker News Reader

The problem is the inane assumption, which is now taken as a fact (without rigorous substantiation) that any male heavy gender ratio is a result of bias by white men (not even necessarily the majority, mind you, we simply ignore fields where women are over represented).

Not to mention the conflation of equality of opportunity with equality of achievement.

In our society it has become a taboo to even consider that stratification by gender and/or race of achievement could possibly be related to group wide differences in behavior or ability. This is, ironically, causing immense bias in modern culture; but it seems bias is OK when its the en vogue kind.

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Did you read the article? If it were just an assumption and no effort had been put into investigating the reasons for it and if/how those reasons can be addressed you would be right. From the article:

"A new study from Microsoft sheds some light...gender stereotypes, few female role models, peer pressure and a lack of encouragement from parents and teachers largely to blame."

So no assumptions are being made, this has been researched. This discussion is even about some of that research and it turns out girls are being discouraged by factors that are completely addressable.

> we simply ignore fields where women are over represented

Nobody's ignoring anything. My wife is a registered nurse here in the UK and encouraging men to get into nursing is definitely a thing. It turns out that men who do go into nursing have a significantly higher chance of promotion, which you'd hope would encourage them to and is it's own issue. But please, go off on a 'whataboutist' tangent as though the legitimate answer to every uncomfortable problem in the world is 'whatabout' some other problem.

Would it be plausible that young girls are encouraged to see happiness, and personally fulfilling careers, whilst young boys are encouraged to seek money or a specific career choice?

If this were the case, then the participation of women currently entering the workplace would represent the baseline distribution of inclination, whereas men represent a modified distribution caused by hostile attitudes (e.g. men are classically discouraged from becoming nurses, or teachers to young children).

There's often a view that whatever condition men have is the correct one, and ought to be emulated in the female population. For somethings maybe this is true (yes, suffrage is pretty good), but for things like work-life balance and professional-inclinations, I am not so sure.

> mind you, we simply ignore fields where women are over represented).

No, we don't. This point has been asked, and answered, so often (even on HN) that it probably falls under this bit of the guidelines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.

EDIT there are dozens of these:

4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5598659#5599061

3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7538789#7539557

5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3452516#3454185

The same trite point - "what about women in nursing? Are they oppressing men" ignores the fact that nursing is generally a low status job and that men in nursing get paid more and promoted faster than women, which is not what happens to women in tech.

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