There is not "obviously" something wrong.

Would you say there is obviously something wrong with the plumbing industry that keeps women away? Or is it just that the smell of shit is too unpleasant? Likewise, some aspects of tech could simply be unpleasant to women, and there are reasons why men are more likely to put up with unpleasant work (like the need to feed a family). I have personally experienced a lot of unpleasant aspects of the tech industry (let's just say the movie "Office Space" is not far off the mark), unrelated to gender.

Mind you, I am not claiming nothing is wrong (although personally I consider it unlikely), just that it is not obvious, because there are other explanations for the gender ratio that don't involve "wrongness".

Women are just as interested in STEM fields until about the middle school/high school level. What changes around that age? All sorts of external peer pressures.

I work with a lot of women. They're not anything near a majority, but the org I'm in is big enough that there are plenty to speak with. They almost universally have many bad experiences and stories to tell that are specifically due to their gender.

By no means am I saying this is unique to tech, but I do believe it's worse. Even if it isn't, acting as if we've reached gender equality and it isn't common for women to face issues specifically due to their gender in tech, is so off base I recommend you take the time to actual speak with women and listen to them. Over the more than decade I've been in the industry, the amount of women I've spoken to who have said they haven't experienced sexism is easily a single digit percentage.

Do you have a citation for the interest of girls in STEM? And also, especially, citations about the peer pressure? Not my experience from High School - in my Maths class, there were only 3 girls out of 16 pupils.

When I was in school, there was also nobody being encouraged to pick up Computer Science. Boys were into computers despite the disdain by society, peers and parents. On a scale of 1 to 10, how attractive did being into computers make you to girls in High School?

Also, much is being made of the performance of girls in High School Maths, but let'S be honest, Maths at school often is not really Maths, it is calculating stuff. So it is perhaps not the ultimate measure.

Also, significantly more women than men study Medicine or Biology - somehow they don't seem to count as STEM? Why not? Given the choice between Medicine or Computer Science, I am not even convinced that Computer Science is the better choice in the long run. My stance has always been that women are too smart to choose CS - they shun the long hours in front of a screen in a windowless basement, devoid of daylight and human contact.

Interestingly I worked in a DNA sequencing centre - so very STEM related. Around 50% of the staff worked in the wet lab and 50% in the bioinformatics part. Around 50% of the staff were female and the vast majority of them worked in the wet lab part. Most of the males worked in the bioinformatics side. So even within STEM there appear to be some clear divisions with the disciplines that attract females / males.

> What changes around that age?

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with women being pursued by men at that age and generally having better things to do than sit in front of a computer screen throughout their teenage years.

Then, by the time they have to pick a university program, they feel so far behind the computer nerds that they don't feel they can compete or succeed in tech. That and they don't want to be lumped in with the socially awkward nerds that they associate with tech by that point.

Just my hypothesis, of course.

> by the time they have to pick a university program, they feel so far behind the computer nerds that they don't feel they can compete or succeed in tech

At the college level, I think that the social gap gets even worse. Women can get into frat parties where they don't know anyone, though they don't even have to because they are much more likely to be invited in the first place. Bouncers at bars/clubs will let them skip the line and overlook them during ID check.

Women are better paid in the services industry which gives them bank roll to sustain their partying lifestyle, although this isn't even needed because they can get people to pay for their cover/food/drinks.

All these privileges drive them away from looking up buffer overflow errors on Stackoverflow late at night.

By this line of reasoning, shouldn't there be a lot of unattractive women flocking to tech?

Historically, the few women in tech were often not the most attractive ones. It seems to have gotten better. Likewise, the male nerds were often not the most attractive ones.

Perhaps there are not that many unattractive young women, so their number is not sufficient to increase female participation in tech by a significant amount.

> What changes around that age?

For tech, males become more introverted.

At that age, introverted boys stay at home, play video games, post on bulletin boards (back in the old days), program, read, etc.

That is how many boys get into tech. They played video games, became immersed in internet forums and tech culture and trolled the internets.

Why do teen boys spend less time socializing and more time on the internet and video games?

That is the main question we could attempt to answer to find the root cause.

Perhaps you are not aware of this, but there are numerous studies that show bias, for example random shuffling of names on resumes and resumes with female names are rated lower than those with male names. Whether this bias is conscious or unconscious is of course hard to establish, but I think it's beyond dispute that it exists.

I am aware of them, but I am not convinced they tell the full story. For example there was the one of professors choosing PhD students (or assistants, something like that). It seems possible that they acknowledge the likelihood for women to drop out is higher than for men, so women are simply the worse investment. The bias was also shown by both male and female employers. The elephant in the room is: what if they had reasons to be biased (like having had the experience that women drop out)?

Also, it doesn't seem as if getting hired is the problem for women in tech, the problem is that there are not enough applicants.

And there also studies showing bias against men. For example the one where they made women conduct phone interviews with male voices and vice versa, and the women did slightly worse when they were given the male voices. There was another one were women were twice as likely to be hired for tech jobs than men.

I'm too lazy to look them up, but I find it interesting that only the "poor women" studies are being mentioned, and the others are quickly forgotten.

Edit: OK, I googled https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/women-twice-as-likely-to...

https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma...

I would say that there is something obvious wrong that is causing society to have 87.5% (Swedish statistics) of citizens, equal amount women and men, working in professions that has serious gender segregation in favor of their own gender. The trend is that the remaining 12.5% men and women that actually work in a gender equal environment (minimum 40% of each gender) is continuing shrinking and we have yet to see how far gender segregation will go until it start to reverse.

I sincerely doubt that the 43.75% of professions that is male dominated is purely caused by genetic aspect, nor the other 43.75% of profession that is female dominated. What I have heard it seems more like it is a combination of the flip of a coin and culture, through the question is then if culture simply adapted to segregation or if it caused it.

There are some jobs that require physical strength, and I think it is undisputed that men are stronger than women on average. Garbage men are an example for that (I think it is very strenuous work). I've read that while the military in many countries strives to allow more women, this has resulted in many injuries to women because they are more prone to injuries under physical strain.

There are some jobs that can not easily be done part time or don't allow for flexible schedules. For example, as a truck driver driving to Turkey for three days to pick up tomatoes, you can not simply go home after 8 hours to put your children to sleep. Surgeons have a similar issue: you can not leave and go home in the middle of a brain surgery, and you can not predict how long a surgery will take.

Also, women can often simply opt out of unpleasant jobs, by not returning after the baby break. Men have no such option. Women often don't need to earn s much money, either, as they can expect their husband to be the main breadwinner of the family. So they can opt for jobs with lower pay, but higher life satisfaction.

Most of it boils down to children and family. Feminists of course think that it is just a cultural norm that makes mothers take over most of the responsibility for the kids. In my opinion, it is completely different: women get the first pick because they invest more into bringing children into the world - so they get to decide if they want to stay home with the kids or go to work, and most simply prefer to stay home with their kids. Because, surprising perhaps to feminists, spending time with one's own children is not all that horrible after all. Basically, the womb is a really good bargaining chip.

It is also a pretty modern discussion, with all the office jobs that seem equally suited for men and women because they require no physical effort. In former times, the bulk of the work was impossible to do for pregnant women (who should avoid heavy lifting), so the question didn't even arise.

Here is a list that is google translated (https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...).

I can't say I see a clear pattern where physical strength is directly correlated to extreme gender segregation. The extremest male dominated profession is tile floor constructor (ie primarily bathrooms). Second was mechanic and third is tinsmith. The extremest female profession is indeed midwife, but it is then followed by dentist nurse, followed by pediatric nurse, followed by secretary in hospitals, followed by district nurse, followed by therapists, followed surgeon nurse, and we are still at 90%+ professions. After this comes a bunch of specific education and social security professions.

The common theme I would say is that female dominated professions are focused on social environments where a person can feel that they have a real impact on others in their local area, while male dominated professions is focused on profession where a person work mostly separated and alone, and where the work don't general cause a major impact in someones life. In return for not having those social benefit and status, they generally also have higher pay.

Tile floor constructor and dentist nurse, with both way over 99% gender segregation, are quite strong data point. You don't need massive strength to lay down tiles in a bathroom, nor is dentist nurse a very "children" focused profession. Why do those two profession so extremely repel each opposite gender?

Don't underestimate the tiling - iirc it is the job with the highest risk of becoming physically unable to continue working. (edit: "tiler" seems to be the job of tiling roofs. I found a list in German that puts it at 2nd highest risk, after scaffolder. Tiling (presumably) bathroom floors is at position 7 on that list of jobs most risky for becoming physically unable to continue working).

Looking at the male jobs in your list (the bottom of the list?), it seems to me there are a lot of them with high physical risk. For example fire fighter, or wood worker (? "forest face mask" - not sure what that is supposed to be, but if it is woodworker, that is the job with the highest lethality). Concrete worker sounds quite physical. There was an article about grip strength on HN which mentioned mechanics might have become weaker because of automated tools, so that seems to have involved some physical strain at least historically. Plumbing might actually be rather strenuous, too?

Anyway, I don't claim to have all the answers, just theories. Physical strength would of course not apply to all job segregation, I mentioned other factors in my previous post.

I spent several months at home with my <1 yr old son. I found it very hard indeed; much harder than either coding or academic research. His needs were difficult to predict, 'success' was undefined, constant watchfulness was hugely draining, and there was no chance of taking a break to get coffee (or go to the toilet, or to change out of a vomit-covered jumper). And I didn't know what I was doing.

People's mileage may vary, but I would be very reluctant to paint "spending time with one's children" as some kind of easy option. I returned to full-time work at the earliest opportunity and with a sigh of relief. Many other child carers (of both genders) would love to do the same.

Not quite sure why the difficulty of scheduling brain surgery or truck driving around children is apposite either. No particular reason (beyond ingrained expectations) why a woman can't do the surgery and her partner keep predictable hours and handle the children.

I had the opposite experience, I find coding much harder than spending time with kids (I also took off a lot of time for the kids). Also consider that as a stay at home parent, you don't really have a boss, and we have just learned from the interviews that bad bosses are a major reason for quitting jobs. I guess technically your spouse is kind of your boss, but if they fire you the state will still make them pay you, so you can't really lose.

Taking care of kids is strenuous, of course - the constant attention you mentioned, and also the sleep deprivation. But you can still watch a kid while sleep deprived, but you can not code sleep deprived (at least I can't - YMMV).

As I said, (imo) women get to choose who takes care of the kids and who does the job with unpredictable hours to feed the family. Or ultimately in a way both parents get to choose, because they choose who they marry. But many women choose already when they decide on their profession. As a man, you can not really speculate on finding a spouse that is fine with you being the stay at home parent. Nevertheless, such cases exist - they are just rarer, which is exactly what the numbers show.

Oh, OK.

For any given job where biology is not a factor (which is all of them except weight lifting and highly athletic sports), cultural norms are.

Women take care of children, typically, and their shit does not smell like roses. So you need a new hypothesis.

So you think women don't go into plumbing because of cultural norms? Really?

Ok, I wish somebody would study that and find the reasons. The baby argument doesn't hold, though, because it makes a huge difference if it is your own baby.

Better comparison would perhaps be care of the elderly, which involves cleaning up shit but also has a social component.

If the argument there is so few women coders why isn't it also why are there so many male garbage collectors (I could list a great many undesirable jobs here), prisoners, homeless and combat fatalities? Is the goal to balance those out as well?

Yes.

I would say weight lifting is not an exception at all. The cultural norm is that women should not be too muscular.

It is not just cultural norms, the strongest female athletes are about as strong as average men: http://media.townhall.com/_townhall/uploads/2015/11/13/8.jpg (linking to this chart without context because I don't have a lot of time to Google - but if you google, you will find lots of information on the differences in strength).

Or specifically for weight lifting, consider this recent case of a transgender woman winning an international weight lifting title by a significant margin: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/03/22...

I doubt that the women/girls who choose to compete in weight lifting hold back because of cultural norms. That would be a silly sport - basically it would be a competition about who cares the least about cultural norms. In any case, there should be several women who don't care about cultural norms (what about the raging feminists who reject the norms, for example).

"women/girls who choose to compete in weight lifting"

That is where the problem lies. When a 6 year old girl tells her parents she wants to become a weight lifter, her parents will say "how about ballet instead?". When a 12 year old girl tells her class mates she is a weight lifter all her friends will laugh at her.

The cultural norms prevent girls to participate. If they are strong-willed and decide to pursue weight lifting despite all of this, they would have a good chance to become very good because of their determination.

But there are female weight lifters. You mean they probably only started later in life, and they would be as strong as men if they started at 6? Not sure if weight lifting is even recommended for kids, what is the average starting age?

Also, I googled and a lot of the best female weight lifters look Chinese. I have a suspicion that they might be recruited by the Chinese system at early age and pushed for the glory of China, at the expense of their health. So cultural norms wouldn't be the issue here.

Here's an article exploring body image opinions of female tennis players:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/11/sports/tennis/tenniss-top...

Let's please not do this, either of you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html