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Comment by return0 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that's it. The differences in percentages between men and women in STEM are just too big to attribute them to "early conditioning" anymore, esp. after so many years of campaining [1]. Either men are masochists and choose jobs that are "not fun", or men find STEM more fun than women. I believe, at least in Europe, there is no lack of exposure to STEM subjects.

The idea of interwoving them sounds a little bit silly: a sci-fi text will bore a student who is literature-oriented in the same way that a mathematical model of romance will sound cheesy to a math nerd.

1. http://techpageone.dell.com/business/study-women-stem-career...

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Years of campaigning means nothing if society hasn't notably changed as a result. It really is our entertainment, half of all television shows for children show men (boys) being innately superior in intelligence [1]. Even worse, there are no children's shows with primary female genius characters (they are all male), and when they do show up as non-primary characters their intelligence is often overshadowed by their feminine attributes.

It's even worse in teen TV, where the smart female characters are more often portrayed as being love interests for male characters over being smart.

And lets not even get into the rampant sexism in most mainstream video games (and their communities), even more important for software engineering and computer science since modding/making/playing video games seems to be a common factor for many male entrants, and relatively uncommon among female entrants to the field (at least in my recent but anecdotal experience).

This all leads to a situation where computers, engineering, science, and math are more often seen as male disciplines. We may have cleaned up a lot of blatant sexism, especially in modern workplaces, but our media is still teaching our children gender bias, often with a detrimental effect for both genders (for example decreasing college rates for males, how many male teen characters care about getting into college, have their shit together, etc).

[1] http://www.truechild.org/PageDisplay.asp?p1=6656

> Years of campaigning means nothing if society hasn't notably changed as a result

It may mean that what the campaign thinks is right is not what people want. It doesn't help that social sciences research on the subject is kind of taboo.

Fair enough. But towards the original point, dismissing a solution to a problem because of the relevant campaigning, and not the relevant changes seems like a pretty poor argument. Additionally, you could also take my statement as meaning, "if the campaigning isn't succeeding, perhaps trying to change the message will help". Which, encouraging STEM for all children, would be a new message that would also likely increase the number of women in STEM (eventually). This is actually a pretty common shift in the "women in STEM" movements as of late.

As a counter argument: There has been lots of campaigning on fixing the problem of limited numbers of women in STEM, but relatively few changes to the media portrayal of women in STEM or education of children to fix the problem. Perhaps more importantly, a vast number of STEM fields are in high demand, and our education system seems to be poorly equipped at encouraging students (in general) to enter (any) STEM field. So perhaps we can hit two birds with one stone and change how we teach STEM to be a more integral part of school, like the original post suggested with a relatively provocative title.

Make no mistake, there are plenty of literature-oriented sci-fi novels. Frankenstein was one of them that's taught regularly in schools, but there are plenty of modern examples as well. And I remember very recently a handful of stories on HN describing mathematical dating models. The problem is that the literature teachers aren't trained enough to discuss the STEM parts in any real depth; they're trained to think that readers are just supposed to accept the sci-fi assumptions in order to generate an interesting narrative conflict. And while that's partly true, it also results in throwing out a lot of really interesting discussion.

>Either men are masochists and choose jobs that are "not fun"

Another possible explanation is that perhaps there is cultural pressure on middle-class men to make a lot of money, regardless of how much pain is involved in getting said money. If you are only getting an undergrad degree, a STEM degree is probably the most remunerative course of action you have open to you.

Now, my perception is that society puts a lot less pressure on middle-class women when it comes to making money... but I'm not a woman; it is quite possible that my perception here is in error.

I wonder what the scenario is in Nordic countries which (supposedly) have much more female friendly society.

It's called the gender equality paradox. The more supposedly 'equal' the opportunities between genders are, the more the outcomes seem to diverge. Scandinavian countries have strong gender-based career divergence as well.

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