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Comment by chrismealy | Hacker News Reader

In 1970 law and medical school graduates were about 10% female. Now it's about 50%. Did women change their interests? Are interests fixed? It doesn't matter. Just stop discriminating and give everyone the chance to develop their interests and capabilities.

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> Surely girls and women have, historically, been discriminated against in such fields. But discrimination in 1950 or 1970 does not constitute evidence of ongoing discrimination.

That quote is straight from the article. I think the author is arguing that everyone should be given a chance to develop their interests and abilities, rather than forcing anyone's interest to match a preconceived notion of the desired population outcome.

Considering that some fields, computer science in particular have fewer female participants than they did a few decades ago[0] its pretty clear something other than inherent differences in the sexes is at play.

0: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

Yes and no.

It turns out that the more egalitarian the society, the more the genders self-segregate.

The easy explanation is that once outside pressures reduce, innate differences have a much greater chance to exert themselves.

I think the bigger question here is: we now have over 50% of people enrolling in medical fields being women. It stands to reason that this is because discrimination was taken away. Why didn't the same thing happen in math and engineering fields? Are we really supposed to believe that women entered the medical field in vast numbers because the medical field rapidly became much more welcoming of women? Do we really believe that women didn't enter engineering fields, as they have done in medical fields, because of widespread discrimination everywhere in North America?

Particularly given the huge investment by the industry to incentive women to pursue careers in stem. I can't imagine a more welcoming environment, unless the Uber-esque fiascos really are commonplace and I've just had the good fortune to avoid these people.

I really doubt that Uber-esque fiascos are representative of the experience of most women working in STEM fields. Another point of comparison here though would be: was the medical field not very macho at some point? When the medical field was opened to women, early on, it was mostly men, in a field that had been traditionally masculine. Women had to make their place, and they did. Why did the same thing not happen in STEM? Why is it still not happening?

Surely tech companies now can't be less welcoming to women than the medical field in the 1950s-1980s? Particularly since this is an issue that everyone in tech is now consciously aware of.

I know you hear these crazy stories about these tech companies and they are so so so far outside anything i have ever experience at place of business and i am 41. Granted i am a guy but these things just don't happen where i worked when things even get mildly outside the box HR steps in and people fix their behavior or they terminated depending on the offense.

> Why didn't the same thing happen in math and engineering fields? Are we really supposed to believe that women entered the medical field in vast numbers because the medical field rapidly became much more welcoming of women?

No. You are supposed to believe that discrimination against women in medical fields was no higher than what existed in society unlike in fields like Finance and Tech where there always was and continue to be a disproportionately higher degree of bias

That kind of runs into the point of the article--that we're meant to believe that bias is very present and very potent in spite of the evidence.

The problem is with people claiming discrimination exists solely based on the outcomes "very few women in STEM" without any evidence of actual discrimination existing.

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