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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

This question only ever seems to be asked about "desirable" fields. There doesn't seem to be as much of a push to achieve gender parity in sanitation work[1], for example.

The whole exercise feels like an effort to take attention off of the problem of income inequality by instead framing it as an issue of identity. Under this framing, "fair" means we have parity in male and female CEOs - never mind that those CEOs are still making 300x or more of what "frontline" workers make. Why not focus on pushing for higher wages in female dominated fields like teaching or nursing?

[1] https://www.zippia.com/sanitation-worker-jobs/demographics/

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On Hacker news I see this question mostly asked about desirable fields. In education, there is a huge push to recruit more men. I can't speak for sanitation specifically, but I have seen efforts to get more women into stable, well paying blue collar professions.

Rather than "desirable" I would maybe say something like "economically dominant". If the highest-paying and most-powerful careers in a society don't at least somewhat meaningfully reflect the demographics of that society, then, well, what does that demonstrate, and is that something we want to try to fix? Hopefully you can at least see the position where the answer to that last question is yes, even if you don't agree with it.

It may be that hire paying fields attract men who want to be able to attract mates. That women prefer men who make more than them is pretty established in research, as is is the lack of interest in what a woman makes as income. (On average in psych studies). Why wouldn’t we expect results and society to reflect this?

It's not -- "why wouldn't we expect important career X to have way more men than women, given <whatever>"

It's -- "if important career X has way more men than women, is this a good thing, at a net societal level, regardless of <whatever> that can explain why this is the case?"

Nobody is looking for complete and perfect parity in all influential careers. The intent is just to make sure that, for the highest-impact careers, we should work towards making them representative of our society, as much as possible

Do you believe some better out come for society as a whole, or some individuals in society will benefit from this intervention? Why? And at what cost?

Your question implies serval beliefs, which may or may not be true. And that others may, or may not share.

For one, I don’t think the average developer has a ton of say on how products get made. So that’s not likely the power you’re seeking to ensure changes hands? Market forces and legal structure pretty much ensure enshitification and other outcomes which many would likely consider sub optimal.

It is well established that teams with more representation make better decisions, likely because of their diversity of viewpoints. It is worthwhile both to companies and to society to have higher quality decision-making in fields like finance and in roles like chief executives.

citation(s) for this well established claim?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/%22The_Terrib...

The most commonly cited study is the McKinsey survey. But they didn't release their actual data set until years after publication, and when they did their analysis was thoroughly criticized: https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1296/GreenHandMar2024.p...

It doesn't matter if the average developer has any say on how products get made. What matters is the salary that developers earn, in general, at a demographic level, is generally among the highest. And it's important that the highest-salary occupations in a society, are equally available to everyone in that society, invariant to class or race or gender or creed or anything else -- measured by outcome, not by opportunity.

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