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>>andren+(OP)
It’s important to investigate this topic from various perspectives, and the text contains a couple of important points (which of course are not new to anyone who’s been following this debate).

However, right at the beginning, this is really a bad argument: “There is particular concern about the lack of women in prestigious STEM fields, such as Ph.D.-level faculty positions, but surprisingly there is no concern about the under-representation of women in lower-level technical jobs, such as car mechanics or plumbing.”

This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender imbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural imbalances as those in high-level fields (an example: the recent study about facial recognition being less accurate on female faces). Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things.

Edit: In other words: no matter where one stands in the debate about the reasons for gender imbalance in STEM, it is totally reasonable not to be too concerned about imbalances among plumbers or car mechanics, because this imbalance does have less consequences. It doesn’t matter for any other aspect in life whether a woman or man fixes the car, but it matters who creates the algorithms that control everyone’s lives.

>>imarti+F4
> This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender inbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural inbalances. Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things.

I'm not trying to misrepresent you but are you making the claim that if we had more female PHDs in STEM, that would lead to more female plumbers and car mechanics?

Or is it more, the changes needed to get women into stem would necessarily get women into other "less prestigious" fields?

>>shard9+15
Neither. I only was critizing what I think is a flawed argument, nothing else. I didn’t make any mental connection to what you bring up. I understand why your impression is that I must have meant something more, as this usually is the case with comments about polarizing topics like this.

That aside (and not meant as criticism against you), it’s super frustrating how when it comes to this specific topic, it’s unbelievably hard to express a thought in a way which is not being misunderstood by others. We all seem to have a mental concept of the debate in mind and then just match everything we read to this existing concept, which leads to all kinds of misrepresentations.

>>imarti+j5
I initially read the comment as you positing your chain of thought (instead of theirs) and i was trying to work out the underlying fact being such a chain of logic.

I guess what ill say is that having a mental concept of debate, i personally find useful in getting to the root of ideas.

Of course circling the wagons in your echo chamber by always taking on the debate in your favour isn't good, asking people to further explain thoughts and arguments you don't understand/don't agree with i think is good and people should do more of it.