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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

60% of college students being women = "college education is biased towards women and women's needs."

80% of Silicon Valley engineers being men = "men and women choose different career paths based on preferences."

Things that will be said by the same people...

Glibness aside, you'll get no argument from me that the disparity in college education between men and women is a problem. That said, college attainment among white men from higher income families actually outpaces, slightly, college attainment for white women from higher income families. Much of the college gender gap is driven by 2:1 or greater ratios in college attainment, in favor of women, among blacks and hispanics. The increasing gender gap in college is intricately tied up with the country basically abandoning black and hispanic as well as lower-income white men.

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Not only glib but also a false dichotomy.

Choosing between two careers, say engineering and being a marine zoologist are equivalent in socially attributed worth and both require a similar amount of effort education-wise. Most people wouldn't argue that being an engineer is in an obvious way "better".

Choosing between going to college or not, for most people isn't an equal choice. The vast majority of people view going to college as a better option.

The difference is that having a college degree is a more-and-more important requirement for basically everyone not wanting a blue-collar job. Programmer is just one career choice out of many.

So, yes, the first example is an example of discrimination (possibly non-intentional), while the second could be caused by choices (there are probably other industries where there are many more women than there are men).

> The difference is that having a college degree is a more-and-more important requirement for basically everyone not wanting a blue-collar job.

I hesitantly suggest that of the people who choose to go into blue-collar work, most are men.

(Of the people who go into blue-collar work not because that is what they want but rather because that is simply where their life takes them, I would expect more balanced numbers. I don't have any numbers at all to support any of this.)

It is fascinating that it is always possible to find a section of the society that has less representation is something than it's percentage in overall population and claim rampant discrimination in our society. Until we make the representation in any area match exactly the population demographics to three decimal places, we'll always find ample evidence we have rampant discrimination, all the affirmative action and "diversity" preferential treatment notwithstanding.

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