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I'l bite - how do Hackathons "epitomize gender imbalance"? Anyone can go to a Hackathon and compete.

From my experience, I see that usually hackathon events have more male attendees than female. I am sure there might be hackathons where that's not the case but I don't think it would be very inviting for any female to go to an event that's full of the opposite gender. Just imagine if you were one of 5 males in an event of 100 attendees and the rest were females. I think you would be a bit uncomfortable/out of place even though that's not the case.

That is one of the the general theory to explain why the work force becomes more gender segregated when people has more freedom to choose. Why would someone choose to feel out of place if they have the option to choose a line of work where they can be part of a majority rather than minority.

And thus we get a work force in places like Sweden where 85% of both men and women choose to work at places which is classified as severely gender segregated. Gender imbalance is the norm.

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