Nobody seems to have a problem when it comes to auto mechanics, medical sciences, teachers, social services, lawyers, etc. Why are different interests such a controversial thing to accept?
2) tech is just the latest in a series. Comp sci degree enrollment for women DROPPED for recent decades - that's not a biological lack of interest. This has occurred in many professions - when the profession becomes high profile, the women are driven out.
3) you are proving the problem in the original memo. Instead of looking into any of the research on the topic, you are repeating what feels true. You speak with such confidence on the different interests of different genders, without considering how you know what the actual interests might be. (You're assuming what you see must be the result of interests, and use that to prove a difference of interests is the cause. That's a tautology) You assert that "no one seems to have a problem" with imbalances in other professions, when it is trivial to find people definitely have problems.
The research on the topic covers what I state about different countries and societies showing how different interests affect professions. Here are some links:
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-...
https://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-gir...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...
I've talked to Pr. Emeritus Mallard a lot three year ago, who was a biology researcher studying genotype and phenotype in animal/vegetal populations (for context, he got his degree around the time we discovered ADN). From what he remember, there was a lot more than 50% women when he started, at least as "programmers", although they were barely viewed as clever seamstress at the time.
Each time he wanted to do a computer-assisted statistical study in the early days, the programmer was a woman (again, from what he remembers) and he always thought the field was dominated by them, at least for grunts work.
I don't know what happened, by the time my daughter was doing CS the number of woman was < 10% and she and her compatriots were literally hounded out of the course by the bro-culture - personally I blame gamer culture, there's something terribly dysfunctional with kids these days
Could you elaborate? - interested in hearing more about this.
Computer science predates gaming, particularly online gaming with a social component, by a lot. You're committing the "all things with 4 legs are elephants" fallacy.
Here's once quote: "Starting when computer technology first emerged during World War II and continuing into the 1960s, women made up most of the computing workforce. By 1970, however, women only accounted for 13.6% of bachelor's in computer science graduates. In 1984 that number rose to 37%, but it has since declined to 18% -- around the same time personal computers started showing up in homes. According to NPR, personal computers were marketed almost exclusively to men and families were more likely to buy computers for boys than girls." ( from https://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-... )
Here's a graph of the data: https://images.techhive.com/images/idge/imported/article/ctw.... ( found via https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/women-computer... )
Those are only talking about successful degrees, there are plenty of more datapoints to look at when you consider entry vs completion, and similar stats from post-graduation careers. This doesn't prove causality, but their statement stands as viable.
This is cherrypicking in the most bizarre way: if you can't explain the earlier oscillation, why should I accept the later oscillation? Which also doesn't line up with the type internet gaming which was exploited around the 2010s mark where alt-right groups began aggressively recruiting out of the gaming community via the "gamergate" movement.
In every case you're datapoints don't make any sense - there weren't 12 years olds playing Call Of Duty in 1985 and learning to scream racial and sexual epithets in voice chat. Games with a substantial violent component - the first person shooters - Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992.
Which still doesn't actually explain anything, because it's not remotely clear how "shooting nazis" lines up with excluding women from CS.
Clearly women in the 1970s had no other obstacles - they couldn't obtain credit(!), much less be on equal footing in so many other ways. The issue is not "but there is an earlier oscillation", it's "if women have been slowly moving in direction of equality, what reversed that?" or "If women were able to 'be interested' back then, how can we claim they aren't now"?
Sexist (and racial) exclusionary behavior ticks up once a field becomes commoditized and the general populace move on in, because the general populace carry with them the prevailing attitudes of the times.
If you're going to claim that women were only hired as secretaries for software dev work I hope you have actual data behind your assertion.
I've seen this idea around and I think it's quite problematic. Some countries may have relatively "free choices", but that is just one cultural dimension. A culture is an inconceivably complex phenomenon. A culture also has education strategies, gender roles, specific kinds of toys and games, specific languages and sub-languages, a myriad of sub-cultures that youth will cluster around, cultural specific concepts and ideas and so on.
I'm not ruling out that biological factors play a role, but I see biological factors as just one part of a complex, and, additionally, if you look at history, it's very clear that cultural factors can and will override just about any biological imperative, from the will to live to the will to procreate. This should make it clear that cultural factors need to be systematically ruled out before we can begin to consider that biology is to blame.
Affirmative action policies literally make it easier for one group to get a spot in [insert institution here] than another group. And yet we still see discrepancies. We publicly shame and fire anyone who says "maybe biological differences play a role". And yet we still see discrepancies.
If we haven't ruled out cultural factors in the West at this point, I'm not sure how we can.
By effectively every metric, it is easier for a woman to become an engineer in 2020 than a man. There are many, many programs and initiatives which encourage women to get into STEM from an early age – the same do not really exist for men. Women get into (and graduate from) university at a higher rate. There is more funding available specifically to women that are pursuing STEM And yet still you have more men choosing to be engineers than women.
How could they be? That is an intractable problem. Cultural factors permeate our existence from birth. You'd literally have to catalogue every single thing influencing an individual's life from birth to the time they enter the workforce.
I have two daughters and I've seen just how powerful subconscious messages from media influence the way they think. My oldest daughter is only four and she is absolutely adamant that girls can _only_ marry boys. That's clearly because the Netflix shows and Disney movies she watches all have a "girl marries boy" narrative. Think about that: my daughter is only four, I've never talked to her about marriage, and she is already firm in her belief that same sex marriage is not OK.
You are talking about funding and affirmative action, but have you considered gendered advertising towards toddlers? Have you considered gendered concepts in TV shows and movies? How about in toys? Do you know how elementary school teachers, not to mention parents, are subtly encouraging and discouraging boys and girls by their words and actions? Children absorb these things and they are solidified into semi-permanent activation pathways in their developing brains.
There are a million factors here that we will never grasp. Affirmative action is useless if people's minds are already fully constructed by the time those programs take effect.
> Affirmative action is useless if people's minds are already fully constructed by the time those programs take effect.
This is exactly my (and, funnily enough, Damore's) point. Affirmative action / quotas are a bandaid that does not solve the problem and can actually make it worse by encouraging resentment (from non-affirmed groups) and increasing self-doubt (among affirmed groups). The solution is to treat individuals as individuals and not look at their race, sex, religion, etc. The only way to move forward as a society in the long-term is to truly look past any groups a person belongs to and see them as an individual. Continuing to lump people into groups and make decisions based of those groups has the opposite effect and will only hurt us in the long run.
> Your four-year-old daughter assuming that the norm is the only way to do something is her jumping to conclusions, not a mark against society
I didn't say it was a mark against society, you read that into my argument. If I thought this was wrong or bad, I wouldn't show her that kind of media. I am simply pointing out how _everything_ in a child's environment will influence their thinking, I made no moral judgement on the situation.
> Likewise, if she grows up thinking that girls shouldn't be programmers, that is on you.
I agree, but I think most adults aren't thinking "I'd better make sure my daughter knows she can be a programmer." If they aren't, then their children will be subject to myriad influences. That flows into my last point.
> This is exactly my (and, funnily enough, Damore's) point.
I read Damore's paper and that is not the part I take issue with. He claims the scientific evidence has established that women are _biologically_ less interested in engineering. I don't believe that has been established.
The parent comment referenced a study by Jordan Peterson that shows that in countries with more freedom of choice, women continue to choose people oriented occupations. My point is that freedom of choice _doesn't matter_ unless the entire society is focused on treating children equally. Again, I'm not making a moral judgement either way, just pointing out that the study doesn't take this into account. IIRC Jordan Peterson himself remarked that the results could be the effect of gender roles or culture.