zlacker

>>andren+(OP)
it’s fine and valid to research whether people encounter improper bias in their careers, which is clearly often the case. But their discussion is incomplete without at least recognition of another possible partial cause of gender disparity in tech, the fact that many sexist anti-STEM cues are given to children at a much earlier stage, way before careers are even on the horizon. These cues are delivered by parents, teachers, parents of friends, other adults, and other children. Cues can be as subtle as a wide-eyed look while reacting to the news that Sally wants to be a programmer, where Joey gets no such wide eyes for the same news. Any study that overlooks that cause, in order to focus only on the causes highlighted in recent dramatic episodes, is an example of the phenomenon mentioned in the title of the book their chapter appears in: Groupthink.

>>natch+x3
Many girls decide at around age 12 that a better life strategy is for them to get a husband that will do all the heavy lifting. This obviously worked for thousands of years and is likely a result of evolution and specialization. I always admire when I meet an independent woman that rejected this conditioning but it's very rare :( Maybe there should be a better approach to early-teenage girls to help them to make a different choice that would not render them uncompetitive in STEM fields later? 10,000 hours to achieve mastery or childhood dedication seem to be increasingly more relevant in STEM, similarly to piano/violin virtuosos.

>>bitL+R9
> likely a result of evolution and specialization

Economically speaking, I suspect this is more to do with the superior position of women, as a class, in setting the standards of what an acceptable relationship looks like.

If husbands are willing to do heavy lifting, wives would be economically irrational to do their own heavy lifting. I'm pretty suspicious that the deal offered to a housewife comes with better quality of life outcomes than the deal offered to most engineers. I've always assumed it is linked to the relative excess of young men to the number of young women (something like 107:100 or close to [1]).

It makes sense to me that the group with most power in establishing a relationship would choose not to be an engineer if they could be, say, mind the house.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio