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Comment by Magnets | Hacker News Reader

Too many of the people trying to solve the gender imbalance in STEM are ignoring the fact that girls and women just don't pick STEM (biology/maths excluded) at A-level or degree level and want to fix it by tipping the scales when it comes to hiring in the hope that will encourage more girls to follow STEM career and "fix" the problem instantly.

The problem isn't that women are overall disadvantaged when it comes to getting hired in STEM, it's that women are not choosing STEM careers.

You could argue that too many men in the workplace will put women off following that career, but I really doubt that is the only significant factor at play here.

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Why aren't they choosing STEM fields?

Because of intrinsic interests/tendencies, cultural expectations, pay (women often can afford to make less while their spouses make more), and finally the systems that naturally come about which enforce those things.

Also probably a fair heaping of sexism.

Could you share your top 1-3 ideas for solving this problem?

Why is it framed as a problem in the first place?

If you're running a convenience store and your customers purchase 65/35 apples/oranges, how would you solve a "problem" of getting them to buy 50/50?

Nowhere in real life do we see an equal representation unless it's enforced artificially.

If I told you that hispanics outnumber asians majoring in History 8:1, but asians outnumber hispanics majoring in Chemistry 10:1, then how would one solve that? Does that need to be solved?

Two reasons: 1) Women make less than men often because of career choices. If they make that choice because of shitty behavior in well-paying industries, then we have an injustice on our hands. 2) Underrepresentation of any group puts them at real risk of policies being made against their interests. Imagine a men’s family rights law office staffed only by women. I wouldn’t trust that for best representation. Also see the CA board rules about female representation just announced.

Downvote unwarranted for this reasonable answer. Refutations welcome.

I didn't down-vote you, but a few refutations: (1) shitty well-paying jobs are a fact of life, men often have to (and do) deal with that (e.g. oil rigs, finance, doctors, soldiers). STEM isn't even that well paid (compared to medicine or law) (being a soldier is shitty pay also AFAIK). If you're bent on solving this problem for women only, that's pretty sexist; or is this just the specific instance of this problem where you see most potential upside (unlikely IMO). (2) We're talking about jobs, not policy here. Also, the market adapts - you would just use a different product, a different law office! Are you worried about our tech being "too Asian" because of their over-representation?

What problem exactly? I'm definitely not going to try to solve the "intrinsic differences in interests" problem.

That "women's work" tends to get paid less then "men's work"? Well I'm not sure how true that actually is, but I'd recommend using unions. I'm presuming that part of the reason why "women's work" tends to pay less is because women, on average, are less comfortable negotiating. Using collective bargaining is the obvious way to fix that.

Because there are way easier opportunities than STEM. How many men go into STEM because they were interested in the field vs for a well paying job?

It’s socially acceptable for females to marry a rich guy and be a stay at home mom. I would say some women prefer the traditional route of raising kids full time so that should reduce the number of working women.

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