It's clear that institutional biases and societal biases exist, and that some of these biases may act as steering currents for certain people to go into certain careers. However, there always will be some cases of people who like to "steer against the current" and work in a field that's outside the society-traditional bias in one way or another (gender or otherwise).

A good goal, I think, is to ensure that merit is the chief qualification for employment. Statements such as (paraphrasing) "oil rigs are a man's club" and "pretty women would be a distraction" is way too sweeping -- lazy group collective thinking at its most absolute, playing on stereotypes of both women and men. Humans have a wide range of abilities and behaviors and it doesn't always divide neatly in binary form.

From a personal standpoint, I would call this biased group-think sort of hiring practices as far from optimal. If someone can do the job well, they should do it if they are good at it. I do know someone, for instance, who's a female welder. Apparently, only 5% of welders are women. Well, she's one of them and from all indications she's good at it. Luckily, the place she works at doesn't have a "welding is a MAN's job" sort of attitude.

(Note that this bias can also apply in reverse. Think of the current societal bias with men teaching elementary school, for instance.)

Now, whether or not government enforced action (eg, to what degree, and what tools, governments should use to challenge the bias) is a good thing or not, I think that's more of an open question. The truth is, in some cases, some people hold onto stereotype so heavily, that they will literally threaten people who challenge this "norm" with harassment and violence. Clearly in this sort of case, the government should be involved.

However, for something like standard hiring practices, I'm a little fuzzy as to how much government should dictate anti-discrimination policy, if any. I wouldn't mind seeing more data in this regard; at this point, I don't know how effective various tools have been at eliminating lazy hiring groupthink, or whether they aren't terribly effective at anything but increasing resentment.

I agree with you

>It's clear that institutional biases and societal biases exist, and that some of these biases may act as steering currents for certain people to go into certain careers.

We agree on that, too

>If someone can do the job well, they should do it if they are good at it. I do know someone, for instance, who's a female welder. Apparently, only 5% of welders are women. Well, she's one of them and from all indications she's good at it. Luckily, the place she works at doesn't have a "welding is a MAN's job" sort of attitude.

That's good. I would never want to work somewhere that had an attitude that "this is a man's job, only men can do it"

>Now, whether or not government enforced action (eg, to what degree, and what tools, governments should use to challenge the bias) is a good thing or not, I think that's more of an open question.

I agree with you there as well. Even though I wouldn't want to work for a company that refused to hire women due to some illogical bigotry, I don't think it's government's role to force results on to who companies can hire.

Look, we agree on almost everything, but I think you and others are missing my point because this is an emotionally sensitive topic for some people, and one that the media has also blown out of proportion. The idea that there are no differences between people is totally fraudulent. When are we going to sue the NBA for discriminating against Asians? What's the point if we don't? There are huge differences even between men and women. Serena and Venus Williams claimed they could beat any man in Tennis, and so they ended up playing a 203'rd ranked player "after he had a case of beer and a smoke," and neither could barely score a single point against him. There are differences between people and that's the way it is.

If any of these people arguing against this actually cared about human rights or civil liberties they'd have said so by now. What they really care about are their feelings. That's what this is about - that, and lawyers cashing in on new diversity laws.

Yeah, and girls prefer pink... How much of this is because of how women are brought up, believing that these are mens jobs, rather than by nature? Women do plenty of physically demanding jobs, just not generally these stereotypical "mens" jobs.

Hell, if you look at poorer countries, you see women doing all kinds of physically demanding stuff like carrying water for miles. Its not that they can't or won't do them when they have to, its that when they have a choice that they don't and I believe that's because from a young age and in media these things are portrayed as very un-womanly.

This means that even if preference for pink was purely by nurture (which I also consider unlikely), the data on toy preference strongly suggests that preference for certain jobs or activities is not purely nurture, and has at least some nature aspect.

Now, it is difficult to quantify how much exactly is the split between nature and nurture, one of the reasons being the fact that lots of what you would call nurture would never take place if a nature didn't provide people with preferences in the first place. However, blaming everything on "upbringing, culture and media" is certainly incongruent with reality.

>“War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”

― George Orwell, 1984

If people were really so equal, the NBA should be sued by Asians. There have been 2 (2!) women in history who have been able to dunk a basketball in a NCAA game. I could dunk a basketball in high school. Give me a break, the whole thing is ridiculously fraudulent. I would not want to work somewhere that had some bigoted, awful idea and attitude that a 'woman can not do a man's job,' I would never want to work somewhere like that -- but that's not the role of government to decide. We need people in government who are going to fight for civil liberties and human rights, people who will progress humanity off this planet and into the stars. People who will fight against corruption. Instead we get people who want to take advantage of people's feelings for their own profit or security.

Then why developers are mostly men? And why there is more and more female football/soccer players?

It might be harder for females to get muscles, compared to men but it does not mean they do not want to do and can do physically demanding jobs.

Modern mining is done primarily by machines which are tended to by mechanics. Ever wonder why there are so few mining jobs these days? That would be automation improving the efficiency and taking away manual jobs.

Speaking of which, truck drivers... will be obsolete soon. Even so, driving is not a task that inherently favors upper body strength.

OK, so the physical argument holds no water. What's left? Prejudice and social expectations -- which is to, say a prevalent institutional bias.

Besides, by focusing 100% on this physical aspect you're nearly just attack a straw man argument and ignoring the substance of everything else. Not every person is exactly the same and it doesn't matter. Get over it.

Work under a hot engine bay for 8 hours: no, but I've worked outdoors carrying construction material during heat waves, and I've worked indoors in cold data centers.

Holding my hands over my head until pain develops: yup. I don't recommend it to anyone.

Used an angle grinder: no. I have used lots of other power tools. Should you trust me with one? Not until I'm trained on it.

Lifted 300lb pieces of granite: no. We have these things called wheels, you might have heard of them? Using wheels and levers and ropes and pulleys, I have moved much heavier things. I recommend using appropriate tools. Hoists? Cranes? Block-and-tackle?