Comment by camgunz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by camgunz | Hacker News Reader

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> Why are women disadvantaged by the fact that men outnumber them as programmers, but women aren't disadvantaged by the fact that men outnumber women as Mechanics, Architects, Electricians, Sheet metal workers, Engineers, and Lawyers?

I don't think I made that claim, but still it has merit. Women face challenges in workplaces where there are few of them, sometimes benefits don't handle birth control, or maternity leave is non-existent or laughably short, or there are few women in leadership roles, or there is a workplace culture that is overtly sexist, or there are persistent sexual harassment problems, or they get paid way less for the same work, or they get stuck with "women's work" and treated like secretaries and assistants.

> Why aren't men disadvantaged by the fact that women outnumber men as Speech-language pathologists, Dental hygienists, Physical therapists, Counselors, Nurse practitioners, Hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists?

Men actually do face their own set of challenges. Consider all the jokes in popular culture about male nurses or male cosmetologists. Or consider Mississippi v. Hogan where a man sued successfully for the right to be admitted to the Mississippi University for Women School of Nursing, a historically all-woman school: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1981/81-406

I'm not super clear if I understood your question, let me know if I didn't get it right and I'll try again haha.

Thanks for doing your best.

The gist of the question was that if you follow that link you can see that it is the case that most jobs have a sex ratio that is far off from 50/50, jobs with a ratio closer to 50/50 are the exception rather than the rule. I don't think this is a problem, or "problematic" as the kids like to say. I think this is just the way things are. You can learn a lot about the world just by looking.

The interesting thing that I raised in the question above is that some people do think these divergent sex ratios are "a problem," well sort of, the interesting thing is that they think in only a narrow selection of occupations is this a problem, totally ignoring that there is nothing particularly unusual about a divergent sex ratio for a given job. This may not be the case for you, but for the vast majority of problem addicts it is a very narrow focus on just a few occupations, totally ignoring the fact that it is a totally natural and normal thing.

It's like saying that something broadly true about the world is a problem. I can see the Vox headline now, Asians like rice, that's a problem

I don't like this constant grievance mongering worldview where everything is looked at through this lens of who has a "disadvantage" what is "problematic," why can't we just accept the world as it is? The people constantly going out and raising a ruckus about this or that issue would do far more good for the world by simply putting their own lives in order first.

> The interesting thing that I raised in the question above is that some people do think these divergent sex ratios are "a problem," well sort of, the interesting thing is that they think in only a narrow selection of occupations is this a problem, totally ignoring that there is nothing particularly unusual about a divergent sex ratio for a given job.

This is a misrepresentation of the "pro-diversity" argument. The vast majority of the "pro-diversity" posters do not think that every industry needs to have a 50/50 ratio. They don't even think the tech industry needs to have a 50/50 ratio. A better summary of the argument is this:

1. The tech industry has a tendency to be sexist towards women (which comes in many forms: whether they are subconscious cultural biases, or explicit sexual harassment, or sexist behaviors).

2. This tendency causes the gender ratio to be lower than what it would otherwise be in a "sexism free" tech industry.

3. We should work towards reducing these sexist tendencies because that is a worthy goal in and of itself.

4. If we succeed and reduce the sexism in the tech industry, the gender ratio will increase. It will not necessarily land at 50%, because there are other reasons that the gender gap exists.* But that is okay, because that was never the goal to begin with.

(Note that this is much different from saying "the gender gap is bad and is caused by sexism".)

> I don't like this constant grievance mongering worldview where everything is looked at through this lens of who has a "disadvantage" what is "problematic," why can't we just accept the world as it is?

Because the "world as it is" with regards to the tech industry tends to be sexist towards women, and we should work towards fixing that?

* Yes, I do think lack of interest is a valid reason for this. But it's not the only reason, and attempting to reduce such a complex issue into a single root cause is rather misguided.

Pretty sure the question was "why is this tech discussion board always focusing on women in tech and not some random other industry, and is this evidence that nobody really cares about equality and it is all just a horrible conspiracy to make people think tech has issues with gender equality?"

Well that's very obvious, it's just that it's uncomfortable to say it out loud: tech jobs are nicer and more desirable than most. We have very nice working conditions of many types and get well paid for it.

No significant amount of equal-rights activists will ever take up the torch to fight for <insert discriminated group>'s to be able to have more of said undesirable jobs. It's hypocritical but entirely understandable.

Apparently they aren't desirable to women.

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