The idea that women want different things than men is pernicious and it's not something we should accept without proof. For a long time we rationalized keeping women out of the work force by saying that they preferred focusing on the home. Yet, I know more stay at home moms that are bitter about having given up their career than the other way around. It's a lie we told ourselves to justify a social arrangement that disempowered women. We should know by now not to fall prey to that sort of thinking.

Besides, men and women have had distinct gender roles (and largely the same roles) in every society since before history; while (or rather, "because") I support women's rights to do whatever they dammed well please, it seems unlikely to me that we discovered in the last fifty years that that was entirely an ancient conspiracy to make women miserable, and thus we should push women into the careers we know they want (never mind that the evidence points in all different directions) even at great expense to the industry.

Anyway, the question isn't "should we force women to be programmers or housewives?". It's not a dichotomy and we shouldn't be pressuring anyone into anything.

The goal should be that everyone can freely decide which career path they want to join regardless of how the ratios in the final pipeline look.

I'm certain you know that's what he meant as well. You can disagree with him that any such obstacles exist (you'll be wrong, but at least you'll be coherent). But why instead waste our time and your own with a pointless no-op of a rebuttal?

What exactly are the barriers that exist for programming that were not cleared at the same time as those for math, economics, and medicine?

I suppose the word I'm trying to unpick is 'facilitate': is that by fair treatment of those already making it through the pipeline, so that the bad reputation is reduced, and more enter it, and so on; or is it by pushing more into the pipeline immediately?

> So if there are lots of girls who would feel the same way if society didn't bias them against the profession from an early age

I'm just not sure to what extent society has a duty to 'make people realise' that they'd enjoy a particular career path.

No it doesn't. Bias isn't always bad or oppressive. It needs to be proven that the bias is "bad".

If rich kids are underrepresented in tech because their families have connections in finance and they tend to major in finance more often, is this a problem that needs to be solved?

Frat bros are underrepresented in engineering in tech atm.

HR, recruiting and hundreds of other job families and careers have "biased pipelines". Should resources be spent to solve all of them?

Why only tech?

"Great" is necessarily a function with (at least) 2 inputs, the thing being considered, and the person considering it (or their goals).

Who is more likely to have a better job security, a STEM graduate or a med school graduate? What are the failure modes of each? Is a QA career better, or worse than that of a nurse (just spit-balling here, it might very well be the other way around)?

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I'd argue that men are more likely to be the risk takers, for evolutionary reasons. It makes perfect sense that they go for a career with lower chance at a bigger win. Less to lose -> take more risks.

Now, if you are a woman, you are extremely likely to have a quality of life higher than the average man. Why would you take risks when you don't need to?

That is the elephant in the corner of the room, isn't it?

Maybe it's not the women are irrationally opting out of tech. Maybe it's the men are irrationally opting in?

Lets stop there. What are we trying to solve? I'd say we are trying to solve this question: What makes a good life? STEM gets a lot of press because, obviously, it is a well paid field.

However, the answer to what makes a good life is not just money. I'd wager it is (almost) universally agreed that a good life consists of: (1) Enough money (see below), (2) a career you enjoy, (3) free time to pursue things you enjoy outside work, (4) good health ((4a) mental and (4b) physical) and (5) connections with other humans. Maybe people can quibble with this to some degree, but I think that is about as uncontroversial as anyone can be on the subject of a good life.

Accepting my definition for the sake of argument, how does a gender imbalance in STEM affect this? Does a STEM career affect all 5 of those elements? Just some? Just others? Certainly, a career in STEM provides "enough money". But is it a career EVERYONE will enjoy? Do you get a lot of free time? It seems rather unhealthy as well - there aren't a lot of healthy people in offices in general. As for connections, YMMV on that one.

I think we focus too much on money because it is so easily measured. But more money beyond about $75K in the USA doesn't appear to make people more happy: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628... If you make above $75K, then surely that is the time to optimise the hours of your day not towards making more money, but to add more of the other 4 elements of a good life.

STEM is not a panacea, and money is not the be all and end all of life. Trading better financial security for health, a career you enjoy and more free time and personal connections may be a sensible decision. I'm not convinced more people would enjoy STEM careers, any more than I think everyone would enjoy being a special units detective, and dealing with a lot of awfulness.

> We focus on money because it's easy to measure

My inner cynic thinks it's because it's the disparity that's politically expedient. Lots of other disparities are easy to measure (flexibility, workplace injuries and fatalities, etc), but we don't post much attention to those... :/