It's not meaningless at all. It directly refutes the constant argument that "women don't do engineering because they aren't interested in it".
Having an interest in something and being qualified for the position are two entirely different things. Being qualified has a large factor in whether or not you get a job related to your interest.
[0] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...
If gender bias (observable in staff behavior) plays a role in opportunity, then it stands to reason that women are less likely than men to advance in the field, given similar effort and experience.
My proposition is that interest is only a small factor in eventual career path and that interest alone won't land you many jobs. You have to put effort into obtaining the necessary credentials (be it academic or otherwise). Did you put that effort in because of interest? Sure, I can't argue that interest would play a factor into motivation but interest alone is completely meaningless.
An even better example would be "astronaut". Everyone I know thinks its the damnest coolest job a human being could ever have! I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in my office who wouldn't want to be an astronaut! But how many people become astronauts? Is it because it discriminates towards them or because its a lot of hard work and years of training that they haven't put the effort in to do? Or is it because interest alone is an irrelevant factor into eventual employment as an astronaut?
>That's what this article is trying to do - refute people who say "women aren't engineers because they aren't interested in being engineers".
I often see this argument more accurately represented as "women aren't engineers because they aren't choosing to be engineers" (which stems from a lack of interest in comparison to other fields)
How much do women like Engineering over Biology, Business, Psychology, and the myriad of other choices they are presented with? Is it wrong for women to prefer Biology over Engineering?
[0] I like strawberry icecream. I am presented three choices of icecream: chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry. I am allowed to pick two flavors. I pick chocolate and vanilla.
It seems that any statistics concerning gender should be treated as such until proven otherwise, regardless of which gender it is about.
Women are favored in child custody! Oh wait, when you consider how rarely men fight for their children, men are more favored! Oh wait, if you account for all variables except for gender, then...
Women are more likely to be raped. Oh wait, if you count being forced to penetrate, men are more likely to be victims. Oh wait, if you count out prisons as they are a special case that doesn't give information about the social trends of society, then women are still the primary victim.
Women get paid less for equal work. Wait, if you don't count all full time as equal but count overtime, they are paid equal. But if you look at raises based one experience then men are favored. But if you count experience based on hours worked instead of years (since someone working 80 hr/wk gets more experience in a given year) women are favored. But then if you...
In short, all of these issues are complex and you can manipulate the statistics to get the result you want.