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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> It makes a statistical observation that refutes the notion that sexism is the cause of gender disparity in the STEM fields.

It does no such thing, because:

(1) STEM fields, especially applied rather than theoretical ones, involve people as much as things

(2) While in some STEM fields gender disparities are apparent from fairly early in career progression, that's not true of all STEM fields; in some (many of them around biosciences) women are overrepresented in education and entry-level work, but still lag men in pay and advancement (problematically for the “it's about men wanting to deal with things and women wanting to deal with people” explanation of STEM gender disparities, this leaves women dealing more with things while the men move to higher levels where they deal with people.)

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>STEM fields, especially applied rather than theoretical ones, involve people as much as things

This doesn't negate my point.

You're correct that I oversimplified: some STEM fields are indeed less 'biologically geared' to men. But the principle remains: biologically established differences in interest can very plausibly explain the differences seen in gender representation in some STEM fields. It is the assertion of this fact that has invited unfounded accusations of sexism.

>women are overrepresented in education and entry-level work, but still lag men in pay and advancement

That alone says nothing about the presence or absence of systemic discrimination.

> That alone says nothing about the presence or absence of systemic discrimination.

And, you'll note, I never claimed it did: I cited it as a fact about the gender imbalance in STEM which is not explainable by the facile “men like dealing with things while women like dealing with people” explanation which you described upthread as being, on its own, a refutation of the idea that gender imbalances in STEM are in any part due to systemic discrimination (which could only be true if it explained all aspects of STEM gender imbalance and left no room for systemic discrimination.)

Were it offered merely as a factor which explained some subset of the gender imbalances in STEM, that would be more reasonable.

>Were it offered merely as a factor which explained some subset of the gender imbalances in STEM, that would be more reasonable.

Yes that is a more accurate construction. For the sake of expedience I wasn't this precise, and left it to the reader to sauce out this more precise meaning, which given the format, I think was entirely reasonable.

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