Why do you think there are fewer women who choose to study STEM?
Anecdotally, they often don't end up studying STEM subjects because they're encouraged to focus on other subjects in high school.
Definitely citation needed, there are countless "Women in STEM" initiatives, almost begging girls to go into STEM fields.
> What’s clear is that there’s a vicious circle of perception and reality in terms of gender imbalance. And that schools, universities and industry are failing to show young people – and especially girls – the realities of technology jobs and careers in today’s world.
> Despite such exciting opportunities, girls aren’t considering technology as a career – partly because nobody is putting it forward as a possible option. While 33% of male respondents say they’ve had a career in technology suggested to them, the figure for females is only 16% – a glaring lack of advice that’s helping to reinforce the stereotype of a male dominated industry.
So even this slide deck points to a difference in interests and aptitudes as a key driving factor in women focusing less on STEM careers.
Why are the authors of these slides not equally concerned with the under representation of men in health care?
> women are more involved with healthcare than men – accounting for 77% of NHS employees
Why are women under-represented in senior leadership positions in the NHS?
The question of men disproportionately filling higher level roles within organizations is a separate question, and seems to affect other industries in addition to technology.
So a lot of male interest in technology is self driven.
This is a slide deck trying to show women are being unfairly denied a technology career, but then goes on to give a lot of evidence most of the discrepancy is due to self selection.
"The present study makes several important contributions to the literature. First, it is the first comprehensive meta-analysis on sex differences in vocational interests. We synthesized evidence from interest inventories over four decades and found large sex differences in vocational interests, with men preferring working with things and women preferring working with people. These sex differences are remarkably consistent across age and over time, providing an exception to the generalization that only small sex differences exist. Second, this study provides a systematic review of the sex differences in the STEM interests that has not previously appeared in the literature. The pattern of sex differences in theSTEM interests revealed by the present study closely resembles the composition of men and women in corresponding occupations and contributes to the understanding of the gender disparity in theSTEM fields. The results suggest that the relatively low numbers of women in some fields of science and engineering may result from women’s preference for people-oriented careers over things-oriented careers"
I contend that there may still be some forces in some industries that try to subvert efforts at more women in them, but those are few and far between. With the gender earnings gap already proven to be bullshit (and if anything, in tech, women are getting paid more simply because companies want to fill diversity quotas), we need to stop wasting time fighting amongst ourselves and focusing effort on real, actual problems. Workers divided over petty shit like this is what the rich and powerful want.
You are a Misogynistic man.
/s
EDIT: if it's unclear, this refers to the immediate parent of this comment.