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Comment by telesilla | Hacker News Reader

Let's turn the argument on it's head.

Statistics say boys are more heavily inclined to have a STEM career. Does this mean they feel they cannot consider a career in other fields like teaching, nursing or other female-dominated fields?

As a woman I often wonder, what's so great about STEM aside from the paycheck? It depends on your bosses (or being your own if you are lucky and that way inclined), but I don't think we've shown many girls that STEM is really rewarding and it looks on TV like it involves a lot of staring at computer screens. Boring! So I expect that will change when we get to use more interactive interfaces. Also, I hope society does more work to let boys grow up feeling STEM isn't their only hope.

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Obviously I cannot speak for others, but for me tech and coding was and still is inspired almost entirely by the “mathematical beauty” and “creative” aspects of the tech itself; it has little to nothing to do with pay, social reasons, or anything else.

It really does involve a lot of “staring at a screen” (or paper/whiteboard brainstorming) though, and just talking about it excites me, still — it’s the intellectual/mathematical beauty and creative potential of what is being sketched on those “authoring mediums” that is so very stimulating.

When I first started coding, I was 8 years old, and I didn’t even know the first thing about whether this field would pay well, whether it would be socially engaging, etc. In fact to some extent I was actively doscourage from it, rather than joining the family gardening business (manual labor care of plants — just not for me).

None of the circumstantial reasons for or against programming mattered to me. It was the coding, the very process of staring at a screen with complex patterns and ideas as they’re authored, that excited me. It still does; creating beautiful code that does intricately complex things, that all work correctly every single time to produce the designed results, feels almost like being a modern day wizard creating magic.

Because the work itself is intrinsically motivating, it never gets old, and no amount of social pressures could sway me away from doing this.

Yes thank you, people seem to forget that the reason why STEM gets a higher paycheck is because there's less people willing to go for it, both female and male, the paycheck is not a prize you get for being male, it's a prize you get for the sacrifice you make. Look at it this way: no one is complaining about the lack of girls in the blue collar industry.

> less people willing to go for it

Or capable. I imagine the IQ bar is set quite a bit higher for STEM-like courses and careers... Also, there's much less room for bullshit (at least in programming - your code either works, or it doesn't work, and that's really easy to verify at university and when applying to jobs - as opposed to e.g. marketing, where it's much harder to quantify someone's skill).

Citation needed; I don't buy that men in STEM generally consider it a sacrifice compared to working other jobs. I am lucky to have an entertaining IT job that happens to be extremely well paid. I never wish I was a nurse working my ass off on a night shift, or any other less well paid profession.

>Look at it this way: no one is complaining about the lack of girls in the blue collar industry.

Actually, I remember hearing quite a bit of complaining back when I was in middle and high school. However, it occurred alongside a concerted effort by the Province of Ontario to increase the supply of tradespeople at a time when there was a shortage of 'qualified' (read: certified by provincial licensing bodies) ones in Ontario, which led to exorbitant prices on associated goods and services. So, to be cynical, this could be much more about price correction than anything else.

>no one is complaining about the lack of girls in the blue collar industry.

Gender equality in STEM is more about just getting them in.

It's about social mobility for women. Which is why nobody cares about getting women as miners, plumbers and getting men as social workers.

Boys desire for large pay checks could be explained by patriarchal/societal expectations that they must be the main bread winner in a household

> patriarchal/societal expectations .. main breadwinner

Let's be clear who expects this: women do.

Most women will stop dating a man if they discover he makes less than they do. When I was still in the Bay Area I was on match.com for a bit. >90% of the women's profiles stated they expected their match to make more than they do (even having this information in the form felt a bit weird for me).

And no, this is not because of the "pay gap", which is a myth, or because they can't. In fact, the unwillingness actually increases with income levels, so the women who could most afford it are least willing to date a guy who makes less than they do.

Right! I'm really supportive of working towards social change where a person's role in life is no longer defined by their gender.

Given that there are consistent biological[1] and psychological[2] differences between the sexes globally, I'm not sure this would be an achievable goal without hormonal modification, which would wreck the quality of life of one or both genders.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology

Encouraging boys to make non-traditional career choices without making sure female marriage patterns change as well does not sound responsible to me.

I humbly suggest its none of our damn business how the women choose marriage patterns (if they choose to marry at all). Its definitely not "our responsibility".

I believe you read that the wrong way around. I'm not suggesting women change their marriage patterns.

I'm saying it is irresponsible to advice boys to make live choices that are at odds with female mating behaviour, because it adversely affects their life outcomes.

What are these "non-traditional" life/career choices you think are adversely affecting men's life outcomes due to "female mating behaviour"?

Your comments read as weirdly patriarchal, and dont reflect at all close to my experience with women.

Income is a more important factor in rating men's attractiveness compared to women.

Here is just one study I quickly dug up, there are others confirming this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726811...

Another one: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/pg_10?0::NO:10:P10_ETD_SUBID:113754

I don't understand whats patriarchal about my comment, care to elaborate? If you have a more solid data point than "thats not my personal experience", I'd be certainly interested in it.

>>> Income is a more important factor in rating men's attractiveness compared to women.

>>> I don't understand whats patriarchal about my comment, care to elaborate

I mean seriously, the answer is in your own comment.

Edit: I don't understand the downvotes.

His own comment implies income is an important factor to attractiveness for men then asks why is that a patriarchal thing. I'm not being patronising but it's obvious that it's expected for the man to be the bread winner which is patriarchal in nature. The man doesn't have to be the bread winner.

Why isn't a high income woman attractive?

Most men I know aren't in it for the paycheck.

There is a significant prestige factor to working in most STEM professions. The barrier isn't just that it's boring; it's exacting, requires significant foundational knowledge and builds in levels of understanding, and not getting any easier in terms of the work demands for things to be better, smaller, more efficient, and cheaper.

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