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This is pretty dismissive of the men who want to work in what you consider low status crappy jobs. There are plenty of men out there who expressly go to school with the goal of being an educator, for example. The discrimination those men face is very real.

It's ok to admit that there are some areas society has decided men shouldn't work in. It doesn't diminish the struggles of anyone else

Yes and no. For instance - there's generally a big gap between "go to school with the goal of being an educator", and being a preschool teacher. At least in the U.S., the latter tends to offer far lower status, pay, job security, etc. than being (say) a 7th grade teacher.

Between the low desirability, high turnover, and "we must fill the opening" nature of most bottom-end, female-dominated jobs, I'd guess that the anti-male discrimination is a fairly weak barrier to men who really want those jobs. Apply a bunch of time, especially when unemployment is low, and it's pretty likely that you'll be hired because they had no acceptable alternative. Or (say) a preschool wanted to have one male teacher, to be a social role model for little boys. Or (I have seen this done) a bookkeeping dept. wanted a couple males, to dial down the social drama that they experienced with a all-female clerkforce.

And for those concerned less about individual rights (to get the job one really wants, etc.) than about the larger-scale social downsides of discrimination, making it more difficult for men to obtain some types of low-status, low-pay jobs is a "pretty weak poison".

>> I'd guess that the anti-male discrimination is a fairly weak barrier to men who really want those jobs

Is this not the opposite of the line you quoted from the study?

>> "... positive employer response rates were much higher for women than for men."

> I'd guess that the anti-male discrimination is a fairly weak barrier to men who really want those jobs.

Based on what? For example, my wife and I have hired au pairs for many years. There are some men in the program, but almost no families will hire them. We certainly wouldn't. I'd imagine lots of care-adjacent fields are like that.

>I'd guess that the anti-male discrimination is a fairly weak barrier to men who really want those jobs.

I'm sorry to say you're definitely, clearly wrong about this. I am not an educator but I travel in those circles and I know at least a half dozen men who wanted to be early childhood educators and just couldn't find work, regardless of the need or their qualifications, and that is by no means a unique story. They all have stories of administrators, HR, etc flagrantly implying they might be pedophiles. It's not just 'the system's fault either, society is strongly prejudiced against men working with young children. The discrimination is real and these men actually suffer for it.

I'm not sure how to take your point of it being ok because nobody really wants these jobs anyway. Frankly it's hard to see it as anything other than reprehensible. Plenty of good, intelligent, well adjusted people do these jobs knowing the pay and conditions are terrible because they want to make a difference.

My unverified hunch is that HN skews towards those who value salary as form of status. I've probably more who studied computer science with a primary motivation of making money than I have who love the job itself. And the inverse it true for those I know in teaching. Suffice to say, there may be some value system projection when people say they don't think anybody wants those jobs.

> who really want those jobs

And why is it, Mr. Anderson, that you appear to really want this job? Could it be that you're a pervert?

Thank you, exactly this.

I can speak for myself and some of my male friends and say that there have been quite a lot of us who would have loved to become e.g. a kindergartner or a nurse.

While some actually did, they would not exactly say they "love it" anymore because of low pay and other harsh working conditions. I did not pursue this dream any longer because I realized that it is hard to find a woman when the majority of women prefer to choose men with high status and income (I do not want to generalize or be sexist here but I have the feeling that most women share this preference).

> The discrimination those men face is very real.

Yes, definitely. I can somehow understand how parents might be uncomfortable with a male kindergartner going to toilet with their child but there actually are men who can do this without being aroused or harassing the child.

> Which sure sounds to me like "employers try to fill low-status, low-pay, often-crappy female-dominated jobs with yet more females".

What an absurd interpretation. It takes a certain sort of mindset to react as if women having an advantage in certain jobs is somehow a downside, just because these jobs are "low status." It's not as if a man who gets rejected as a cleaner is going to instead become a FAANG engineer.

> Which sure sounds to me like "employers try to fill low-status, low-pay, often-crappy female-dominated jobs with yet more females".

That reflects an outmoded view of the labor market. These are good jobs for people who lack a college degree. Lots of the women in my wife's family have similar jobs. It's not like their brothers--i.e. men from similar educational and class backgrounds--are becoming doctors instead of nurses, or college professors instead of preschool teachers.

Yes, to a degree. But there are quite a few male-dominated fields with similar career prospects - semi-skilled building trades, road construction, sanitation work, truck driver, etc., etc. And there are often male niches within the female-dominated jobs - for adult patients who may be infirm, any decent-sized health facility will need some larger & more muscular workers (very likely male) on every nursing shift.

Those jobs are generally more physically demanding and dangerous, to offset the slightly higher pay. After my FIL dropped out of college, he worked as a window washer and forklift driver. Yes these are "male-dominated fields" but that's not because women are applying to these jobs and being excluded. Also, these jobs have been much harder hit by illegal immigration than most corresponding jobs for women.

Yes - the title here was so egregiously editorialized that I'm not even going to revert it.

Submitters: breaking the site guidelines like this will eventually cause your account to lose submission privileges. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and note this one:

"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

It takes a certain sort of mindset to ignore the fact that there are many male dominated roles that are low-status, low-pay and "crappy". Not to mention that men dominate fields where the work is physically dangerous; front-line military, forestry, oil rigs, sea fishing, construction and mining.

I think this requires major introspection, it relies on the idea that representation is only important in higher paying jobs when that still means exploiting yourself for a corporation

It's incredible the amount of mental gymnastics you do when men are being denied whole careers simply because of their gender and you still somehow try to spin this as women being the real victims.